Opera’s innovative British summer season
They’re back! But with a difference. Summer season opera producers have twisted, contorted and seemingly succeeded in confronting Covid to bring some semblance of normality to the blossoms of music that sprout in the countryside at this time of year. For a fashion guide to what’s going on, read the Tatler review here.
On the international scene, there have been frequent cancellations. The latest victim, the wonderful Savonlinna Festival in Finland, is shelved until summer 2022. So, instead, here is a “Staycation” look at what good old Britain has to offer – no need to worry about a sudden change from “Green” to “Amber”.
Nevill Holt Opera
Nevill Holt Opera in Leicestershire has invested in a stunning new outdoor venue. It’s a fantastic construction alongside the existing mellow-yellow converted stable/auditorium, with a triumphal arch. On a foggy day and with dodgy GPS, it might pass for Wembley on the A1.
It even sounds like a football stadium. “The Premium Grandstand” is undercover with a clear view of the pitch – sorry, stage. Then, there is open seating – a euphemism for getting wet — all the way down to a Lawn ticket. Disclaimer: You must bring your own seat. Perhaps next year there will be an even cheaper option where you can bring your own lawn.
David Ross, who has created the Nevill Holt miracle, is not blind to the vagaries of British weather. For a 6 per cent fee, there is insurance protection against being rained off. The season has been slipped to August. Verdi’s La Traviata and Mozart’s Don Giovanni are on offer.
Standard fare? Except Traviata is being directed by Jamie Manton, an up-and-coming force with English National Opera (ENO). He is directing Janacek’s Cunning Little Vixen at the Coliseum in 2022. Designer Camilla Clark is in charge of the set. Clark’s la Bohème, ENO’s bravura 2020 drive-in production, was well received.
Don Giovanni is directed by Jack Furness, founder of Shadwell Opera, an Emerging Artist Director for Scottish Opera in 2015/16 and Revival director of Royal Opera House’s 2014 Don Giovanni in 2019. His production was lauded for its focus and control. In the hands of Danish director Kasper Holten, the original staging was deemed too distracting – choreographed movement too frantic – and Furness was praised for improving its focus. He will be working with Jenny Ogilvie, ENO’s choreographer, responsible for their spellbinding Mask of Orpheus.
Grange Park Opera
Grange Park Opera is another rural idyll. “The Theatre in the Woods” can be discovered at West Horsley Place, Surrey. This year’s season runs from 10 June to 18 July. To cope with Covid, they launched an online Interim Series of two operas, Britten’s Owen Wingrave, alongside Britain’s first opera commissioned during Covid, appropriately named A Feast in the Time of Plague as well as 16 interesting “shorts”.
The summer season, pretty much already sold out, offers four productions – Verdi’s Fallstaff, Puccini’s la Bohème, Rimsky Korsakov’s Ivan the Terrible and the premiere of The Life and Death of Alexander Litvinenko, by Anthony Bolton. The libretto is by Kit Hesketh-Hervey.
This is a fascinating topic for operatic treatment. I am sure the Bolton/Hesketh-Hervey work will be produced elsewhere, so even if you can’t get a ticket for Grange this season, there will be plenty of other opportunities. Here is how the work is constructed.
A prologue starts at the dramatic bed-ridden end of Litvinenko’s life, familiar with news footage of the time. The chorus sings about the dreaded chemical polonium; Sasha (Alexander Litvinenko) delivers his famous deathbed speech.
Act I: We go back six years to the arrival of Sasha and his wife, Marina, in the UK. They reflect on their first meeting and his time with the FSB. In October 2002, a mass hostage-taking at Moscow’s Dubrovka Theatre is staged by the FSB to spread anti-Chechen feeling.
Journalist Anna Politkovskaya helps negotiate with the terrorists. There is an attempt to blow up oligarch Boris Berezovsky’s car. Sasha, sympathetic to Boris, saves him from later arrest.
Sasha is sent to Chechnya to help wipe out terrorist resistance. Hypocritical hierarchy is exposed. Poorly-clothed Russian troops have inadequate equipment whilst Russian generals prove ineffective and drunk. Having seen the sincerity of the young Chechen fighters, Sasha returns to Moscow, a changed man.
When asked to assassinate Boris Berezovsky, Sasha refuses. He makes a video criticising the FSB and highlighting endemic corruption. It is shown on Russian TV, and Sasha is imprisoned. He realises Russia is no longer safe for him. He is left with no choice but to flee abroad.
Act II: As thanks for sparing his life, Berezovsky helps Sasha’s family escape Russia and bankrolls them in London. Boris hosts his 60th birthday party at Blenheim Palace, and Sasha runs into an old colleague, Andrei Lugovoy. They decide to set up in business; Sasha does not realise Lugovoy still works for the FSB.
Putin then passes a law that Russian traitors can be killed anywhere in the world. Journalist Anna Politkovskaya visits the Litvinenko’s in Muswell Hill and tells Marina about her experiences in Chechnya. She delivers chilling news: the FSB is using an image of Sasha’s face for target practice.
The Litvinenko’s hear that Anna has been murdered outside her Moscow apartment on Putin’s birthday.
On the pretext of attending a football match, Lugovoy arrives in London. (At least he didn’t pretend he wanted to visit Salisbury Cathedral). He meets with Sasha and offers him that cup of tea laced with polonium. Sasha declines at first but, dropping his guard, he drinks. That evening he feels ill. It takes time for the highly toxic Polonium to be identified. It emits alpha radiation that leaves a trail back to the closed city of Sarov in Russia.
We flashback to the meeting with the Head of the FSB at which Sasha sets out FSB corruption. Sasha is in hospital. On his deathbed, he blames Putin but believes that Russia will rise again. He dies. Marina sings a final lament to the accompaniment of a Russian Orthodox funeral prayer.
Bolton has written, well… nothing. He is a legendary fund manager turned composer. He was the UK’s most celebrated stock-picker of the 1990s and 2000s and is still on the board of Fidelity. Asked about his musical style, Bolton says, “It’s not going to be very difficult”. Warned of potential brickbats he is on record as responding, “The world may think it’s rubbish. Still.” That’s the ticket! He has already adopted the Rossini carapace of dismissing critics as dolts. Bound to go far.
This is braver by far than surfing the equity markets. By hook or by crook, I shall review Bolton’s operatic debut offering in due course.
Hampshire’s Grange opera
Technological innovation is at the heart of Hampshire’s Grange opera; The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra is The Grange Festival’s resident orchestra. Covid regulations meant it was unable to play at this year’s festival.
The Festival’s artistic director Michael Chance explained: “The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra felt unable to commit so many young and unvaccinated players in close proximity for a prolonged time in a small pit or to be responsible for compromising the performance altogether should players become infected with Covid. This has been the most challenging of all the compromises we have faced.”
Options considered included repositioning the orchestra to a separate building but this does not seem like a fruitful plan. What could work is cutting the number of players to a basic, socially distanced quorum, but this would be hopeless with no audience present. It would mean no uniformity of sound, dispensing with an orchestra altogether and using just keyboards. Nope!
Using pioneering technology to play the full orchestral score digitally live, with the singers on stage. The Grange Festival has chosen the last of these.
Michael Chance, Artistic Director, claims: “You will hear a live spontaneous performance conducted live with the orchestra presented on multiple digital sound files.” That means it’s a recording.
“It’s one remove from having the full orchestra actually present in the theatre, which we are unable to do, but to all intents and purposes as close to the live physical event as cutting-edge technology allows. It also provides the certainty we need to deliver our festival as fully, as entertainingly and as safely as we possibly can.”
Interestingly, the Grange website does not bang on about the digital orchestra bit. Audience reaction may be visceral. Watch out for the “I want my money back’ aria, followed by the ‘We wuz robbed” chorus.
Onstage are Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Rossini’s La Cenerentola, Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, a production of My Fair Lady and a play, King Lear, acted by opera singers. The blurb says; “Just occasionally, something startling and wholly original occurs in the world of the performing arts, which has the potential to change the cultural landscape and become a historic event.” It sounds like ass-covering for “this may be a dud” – perhaps that is unkind.
The road to opera-going normality is proving rocky. Alarmingly, New York’s Met has yet to sit down to serious negotiations with Local One, the union representing stagehands. The projected start of the 21/22 season in September is under threat. The Glimmerglass Festival in upstate New York is enforcing social distancing – and already sold out before tickets were offered to the public.
As I write, an email has pinged into the inbox from Wexford Festival Opera, setting out a ticket-rationing system to cope with limited seating. My finger will be hovering over the “Confirm” key the moment bookings open!