The Queen Of Spades...

Last Friday night Stuart and I went to see the English National Opera production of Tchaikovsky's The Queen Of Spades at The London Coliseum in London glitzy West End.

This great opera has had people walking out though. So what gives?

Apparently the main cause of their dissatisfaction has been the lesbianism, gay sex threesomes and the stupid animal outfits. So yes, you've guessed right - it's a rather gimmicky production. I can just hear that the first production meeting, "Not too gimmicky is it? The chicken costume?"

There was lovely singing though - especially by the Brits in Acts I & II. Those two yanks were a bit unnecessary - plenty of UK baritones could have done just as well. The Countess was remarkable though in Act III.

By the time the flaming wheelchairs appeared we were laughing 'at' rather than 'with'.

But when we were subjected to the needless rape/oral sex scene in Act III it had got me quite angry - so angry that we were all for leaving rather like many of our fellow patrons did. Not clever.

Shame on the ENO. Great opera, poorly executed.

The Pirates Of Penzance...

Last week Stuart and I went to see Mike Leigh's ENO production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates Of Penzance at the London Coliseum in London's glitzy West End.

Back when I was a school child I was in our school production of TPoP playing one of Major-General's daughters - it was an all-boys school so we had to play the girls' parts too dontchaknow?

Hearing the jolly tunes brought back so many memories and I was singing and tapping my feet along to every note. Much to the annoyance of my neighbouring patrons no doubt.

The plot is silly of course with pirates and maidens and policemen and duty but then it is a parody.

The production was fine. But no more than that. The set did little and was sparing. But the performances were wonderful though - laugh-out-loud funny, joyous and tuneful.

High points for me were:- Climbing Over Rocky Mountain, How Beautifully Blue The Sky, Away, Away! My Heart's On Fire!, With Cat-like Tread Upon Our Prey We Steal, Poor Wandering Ones! and of course I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Major-General.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street...

Last night Stuart and I went to see the new semi-staged production of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street starring Emma Thompson at the London Coliseum in London's glitzy West End.

"Semi-staged?" you say? Yes, it's a sort of concert but still acted out using minimal props and no sets. "They do it all with shawls and lighting, love."

A couple of years ago we'd both seen the magnificent Michael Ball / Imelda Staunton production at the Adelphi and I'd seen both the 1980 production starring Sheila Hancock as Mrs Lovett and also the 1993 production starring Julia McKenzie in the same role. So Emma Thompson had big shoes to fill.

And fill them she did. Her voice was quite a revelation being soft when needed and oi oi brassy at all the right times. Needless to say her comic timing was perfect.
Her Mrs Lovett was cruel yet kind, heartless yet loving, knowing yet deluded.

Bryn Terfel's Todd was a thunderous wonderfully menacing rendition. He is the biggest operatic star on the London stage. In all senses. A voice so clear and seductive that you can hear every nuance and believe every utterance.

This production caught the mood of the piece just right turning the audience's affections first this way and then that as the wronged Demon Barber of Fleet Street sets out to enact his revenge. Quite a few innocents meet a grisly end before the corrupt and evil get their comeuppance in the barber's chair.

My only minor quibble would be that I would have loved to have seen a full staged production with the same actors. The miming of the props was a little distracting at times and having the dead simply walk off stage looked a little odd.

Catch it if you can!

La Traviata...

Last Friday Paul, Stuart and I went to see La Traviarta at the London Coliseum.

Peter Konwitschny's production at the ENO was well sung, well-acted and funny.
 
Giuseppe Verdi’s tragic masterpiece of The Fallen Woman runs for 1hr 50mins without an interval and starred Elizabeth Zharoff as Violetta, Ben Johnson as Alfredo and Anthony Michaels-Moore as Germont. 

Violetta ending was by conspicuous by its consumption. Nobody leaves until the thin lady sings.

Benvenuto Cellini...

Last Friday night Stuart and I went to see Terry Gilliam's production of Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini at the London Coliseum.

The English National Opera had invited Gilliam back (after the success of The Damnation of Faust) to their stage bring his unique bonkers style of production.  And he did. It was bonkers. And brilliant.

All the classic touches were there. Surreal, funny and dazzling.

Peter Grimes...

Last night Stuart and I went to see Benjy Britten's opera Peter Grimes performed by the English National Opera. Having seen it put on a few years ago at The Royal Opera House it was interesting to see this production at the London Colesium.

Sadly it wasn't as good. Not least because the lead actor was ill. His understudy was ill. The lead lady was ill. And her understudy was ill too. So with the entire A team ill and the entire B team ill too we got some (admittedly excellent) stand-ins to make up the C team. Not a good start.

The orchestra was fine and the singing good but the production was only OK - bonkers in places and slightly overblown - it just never really engaged. We didn't really care what Peter Grimes did, or didn't do.

It didn't help that the auditorium was boiling hot and the long ponderous pauses did little to keep a few people near us from nodding off. The overlong three and half hour running time could have been snipped a bit.

Satyagraha...

Last night Paul, Stu and I went to see Satyagraha at the ENO. It was a brilliantly hypnotic production. Jaw-droppingly wonderful. In has to be in the top ten best things I've seen on stage. Ever.

The opera is in three acts for orchestra, chorus and soloists. It was composed by Philip Glass, with a libretto by Glass and Constance de Jong. It's loosely based on the life of Mohandas Gandhi. The term satyagraha is the philosophy and practice of nonviolent resistance developed by Gandhi himself.

Act I. Tolstoy
On the Kuru Field of Justice
Tolstoy Farm (1910)
The Vow (1906)

Act II. Tagore
Confrontation and Rescue (1896)
Indian Opinion (1906)
Protest (1908)

Act III. King
New Castle March (1913)

Philip Glass's music is simply glorious: those repetitive patternings shifting and shining with ingenious rhythmic and melodic ideas, interlocking, overlapping, yet ever calm. But it was the staging that made the night so wonderful. So enchanting.

The director of the piece was Phelim McDermott (Shockheaded Peter) and Julian Crouch is the assistant director and set designer. Boy, they did an amazing job.

All three acts take place within an arc-like wall of curving corrugated iron. Within the slow waves of music and human movement, an ensemble of acrobats and puppeteers conjure miracle after miracle. Newsprint looms large: there is a ubiquitous whispering of newspaper as sheets are shifted, read (the founding of Indian Opinion was central to Gandhi’s work) — and then, almost imperceptibly, formed into gigantic papier-mâché puppet-figures of gods, beasts and politicians.

High in the iron wall, windows disclose the three iconic figures who watch over the three acts: Tolstoy, Tagore and Martin Luther King.

The beauty of the sung Sanskrit is bewitching: sober sepia projections of key passages replace supertitles; but verbal comprehension isn’t really the point. Although it would be inappropriate to single out individual performances in a work that has so little to do with conventional operatic glory, Alan Oke’s central performance as Gandhi is a masterpiece of compelling clarity and absorption.

As the last act unfolds, the great wall buckles and disintegrates, leaving a miming silhouette of the preaching King high on his plinth, and the diminutive figure of Gandhi below, singing a simple rising scale — no fewer than thirty times.

Stand out moments of the night for me were:
- the amazing floating coat hangers and the equally amazing floating lights lifted up high
- the weaving and crumpling up of a huge web of sellotape to produce at first a barrier, then a giant puppet man then an image of Gandhi himself
- the long newspaper streams across the stage that became first a barrier, then wings for Gandhi and then again sky high banners for projecting words all in one fluid motion.

Image after image is etched indelibly on the memory, in its masterly fusion of the aural and the visual. If you ever get a chance - go see.

La Bohème...

Last night Stu and I went to the ENO to see Jonathan Miller's brilliant revived staging of Puccini's powerfully popular opera La Bohème.

Atmospherically updated to 1930s Paris, this uber-romantic story of young love blighted by sudden tragedy unfolds on cinematically realistic sets inspired by the iconic photographs of Cartier-Bresson and Brassaï.

The story started with the lovers Mimì and Rodolfo meeting. Then falling in love. The ups and downs of their lives together and apart. And then Mimì was feeling a bit peeky. And then Rodolfo, who was a poet, went from being lost in her eyes to being lost for words. And when Mimì died, Rodolfo was just simply... lost.

He should have perhaps known that when a leading lady coughs in Act 3 she'll be dead by the end of Act 4. This is opera after all.

The cast were great. The orchestra sublime. And the staging simply wonderful. Five stars for Mr Miller. A great revival.

The Mikado...

Last Friday night Stu and I went to see Jonathan Miller's production of The Mikado staged by the ENO at the Colesium in London's glitzy West End.

Essentially it was Mr Selfridge The Musical. And none the worse for that. Three little maids from school are we...

Madam Butterfly...

Last night Stu and I went to see the ENO's production of Puccini's Madam Butterfly at the Coliseum in London's glitzy West End.

It was a sumptuous show filled with beauty, spectacle and stunning performances.

The story of heartless American navy officer who does the dirty on sweet Japanese geisha is full of emotion and this is fully brought out in Anthony Minghella's Oliver Award-winning production. The costumes were amazing, the set a wonder and the lead performers sang and acted their hearts out.

Mary Plazas as Cio-Cio San was simply a triumph.

If you ever get the chance to see this show. Go. It's a delight.

The Flying Dutchman...

Last night Stu and I went to see an English National Opera production of Wagner's The Flying Dutchman at the London Coliseum.

It was a great show directed by hot young thing Jonathan "Sweeney Todd" Kent although the weight of the opera perhaps dragged itself beneath the waves at times. This was by no means the fault of the creatives, Paul Brown's design is glorious, it's just that Wagner can plod at times - "some sublime moments but some terrible half hours."

Also Kent had decided that there should be no interval so with all three acts laid end to end there were a few people shifting in their seats for the two and quarter hour stretch.

The story tells of a ghost captain, The Dutchman, who having invoked the Devil to save him in a storm is cursed to roam the sea forever without rest. An angel brought to him the terms of his redemption: every seven years the waves will cast him upon the shore; if he can find a wife who will be true to him he will be released from his curse. He happens upon a sea-captain Daland who after seeing The Dutchamn's gold promises him his daughter Senta's hand in marriage. Much of this is viewed by an infant Senta in a dream.

When the captains return to dry land enter stage left femme-fatale the real Senta and with boyfriend Erik in tow.

Much toing and froing occur and let's just say it doesn't end well.

Philip Glass Disney Opera The Perfect American UK premiere at ENO...

Philip Glass's opera about Walt Disney is to get its UK premiere at the English National Opera (ENO) next year according to the BBC.

The opera, called The Perfect American, imagining the final months of the life of Walt Disney as told by a fictional Austrian cartoonist who worked for Disney in the 1940s-50s, will have its world première at Madrid's Teatro Real on 22nd Jan 2013.

Peter Grimes...

On Friday night Paul and I went to The Royal Opera House to see Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes. It was unlike anything I'd seen before. A sort of Bertolt Brecht meets Leonard Bernstein. The fishing village was full of gossipy self-righteous but flawed characters. The storm was raging outside. The mob was chasing the 'monster'. It has it all. The work has been called "a powerful allegory of homosexual oppression", and one of "the true operatic masterpieces of the 20th century, but the composer's own contemporary (1948) summation of the work was simpler: "a subject very close to my heart—the struggle of the individual against the masses. The more vicious the society, the more vicious the individual." The crowd scenes were particularly well played with the mob moving like a slithering organism hounding fisherman Peter Grimes for a crime he may, or may not, have commited. Heartily recommended.

The Damnation of Faust...

On Saturday night Paul and I went to the English National Opera to see Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust. The London Coliseum had given itself up to the wonderful Terry Gilliam for the night.

We were in for a treat: the music was great, the acting lovely, but it was Gilliam's production that wowed.

For two and half hours we languished in a visually stunning production flowing through 100 years of German history from the mid-1800s to the Third Reich.

It was a breathtakingly show - ranging from the artistic and subtle design of Bauhaus to looking like The Producers' Springtime for Hitler. The sets were simply amazing and use of video projection perfectly judged.

Gilliam's little Monty Python tricks and seductions seeped through too such as the oversized box on Faust's back at the beginning and the fight over the Cake of Europe.

We loved it. I hope the show gets a tour and indeed returns to London. It'll be well worth seeing it again.

Parsifal...

Last Friday Paul and I went London Coliseum to see English National Opera's bum-numbing five and a half hour long Wagner opus Parsifal.

In our seats for a 5pm prompt curtain up we were awestruck from the first note.

As some guy also at the performance on Twitter wrote: "Well, Parsifal at the ENO was marvellous. I'm all tear-stained. John Tomlinson surely the greatest singer we have. What a performance."

And I couldn't agree more. JT was brilliant. The whole kit and kabudle was brilliant actually.

The set was a masterpiece of invention (even the big revolving rock got a mention in the programme.) The orchestra was sublime and the singers superb.

Wagner at it's best.

Don Giovanni @ London Colesium...

Last night Stu and I went to see Don Giovanni as performed by the English National Opera at the London Coliseum.
It was a new production of Mozart's work directed by Rufus Norris (Afore Night Came, Cabaret, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Festen) with the set designed by Ian MacNeil (Festen, Ariodante, Billy Elliot: The Musical).
Don Giovanni (part Don Juan, part Casanova), a young, arrogant, sexually prolific nobleman, abuses and outrages everyone else in the cast, until he finally encounters something he cannot kill, beat up, dodge, or outwit - a guest who he has greatly wronged. This new interpretation of a classic tale takes our anti-hero from some nasty sexual violence through three hours of thoroughly rotten bad behaviour to a very sticky end. The cast were good. The music good too. The set was something else though. The elements raced and twirled and span like dodgem cars - the cast seemed to have to leap out of it's way. Still, we both enjoyed it and it never flagged. The English translation was a hoot too - very contemporary. Recommended.

Related articles

• Rufus Norris makes opera debut (bbc.co.uk)
• Don Giovanni - review (guardian.co.uk)
• Don Giovanni, ENO, Coliseum, review (telegraph.co.uk)

La bohème...

Last night Paul and I went to the ENO to see Jonathan Miller's brilliant staging of Puccini's powerfully popular opera La bohème.

Atmospherically updated to 1930s Paris, this uber-romantic story of young love blighted by sudden tragedy unfolds on cinematically realistic sets inspired by the iconic photographs of Cartier-Bresson and Brassaï.

The story started with the lovers Mimì and Rodolfo meeting. And then falling in love. And the ups and downs of their lives together and apart. And then Mimì wasn't feeling very well. And then Rodolfo, who was a poet, went from being lost in her eyes to being lost for words. And then Mimì died. And then Rodolfo was just simply... lost.

He should have perhaps known that when a leading lady coughs in Act 3 she'll be dead by the end of Act 4. This is opera after all.

The cast were great. The orchestra sublime. And the staging simply wonderful. Five stars for Mr Miller. A great revival.