I am all for trying new things, of approaching operas, plays or whatever with new and fresh ideas. I am quite happy with modern dress interpretations and coming at a story from a new and untried angle. As I said, their last two productions, La Traviata in particular, were very inventive and highly successful
Nicole Beutler’s Dido Dido with the experimental opera company Silbersee and co-producers the Ulrike Quade Company proves emphatically that a little can go a very long way. Using only Henry Purcell’s twenty-nine word, two stanza aria, repeated in various forms ad infinitum, the ensemble weaves a mesmerizing web of intricate and complex patterns.
In 1964, Rosemary Brown, a forty-eight-year-old widow, received a visitor to her sprawling terraced house in Balham, South London – Hungarian composer Franz Liszt who had died seventy-eight years earlier. Liszt, it seems had a favour to ask of the suburban housewife: would she please jot down a few tunes he had not managed to complete during his lifetime.
GROSCHENBLUES at Operadagen at Rotterdam Schouwburg.
The show opened, predictably enough, with Mack the Knife sung by Sven Ratzke who then proceeded to get us in the mood by describing, in English, the low-life bars and whore houses of old Berlin – tell us about it, thought the Rotterdam audience.
Performed by the Ragazze Quartet, augmented by Remco Menting on percussion and occasional synth, this was a song cycle inspired by Schubert but even more so by Elvis Costello’s masterpiece, The Juliet Letters. Nora Plain described the relationship between privacy, paranoia and the erotic.
FAÇADE, THE LAST DAYS OF MATA HARI. The story is told through the spoken word and by a selection of cleverly chosen songs of the period which convey the atmosphere and emotions of the story. There are songs by Debussy, Poulenc, Massenet, Satie, Saint-Saëns among others, as well as Old Sir Faulk, with words by Edith Sitwell, from William Walton’s glorious Façade
What I love best about opera is that it is total theatre, bringing together all the other disciplines and talents involved in the performing arts. You have high drama, great acting and singing, wonderful music, often dance, plus the opportunity for designers and directors to give full reign to their talents. This was demonstrated last night by Earth Diver, the opening performance of this year’s festival.
Wagner is quintessentially German, or at least how Germany used to be. And if not German, then certainly northern European, cast from the same die as Chekhov or Ibsen. The myths and tales from which they and Wagner take inspiration are the result of long, cold winter nights of old, huddled around fires, telling stories.
