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OperaUpClose: Shakespeare at the Opera, North Wall, Summertown, Oxford, 15 April 2016
To mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, OperaUpClose has designed an operlet entitled Music oft hath such a charm mingling the characters Beatrice and Benedict and Sylvia and Demetrius in a story set to the music of Shakespearean songs Schubert’s Who is Sylvia? And Gerald Finzi’s setting of It was a lover and his lass and from operas by Gounod Roméo et Juliette, Verdi Falstaff, Britten A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bellini I Capuleti e I Montecchi, Thomas Hamlet and Berlioz Béatrice et Bénédic and the musical Kiss me Kate. The concocted story has Benedict having an affair with Sylvia, discovered by a heartbroken Sylvia and by Demetrius. The setting is a beach picnic. The musical accompaniment and continuity is provided by Juliana Gallant on the piano, wearing a large floppy hat.
This is a thoroughly light-hearted and appropriate way to mark the centenary, in contrast to the pathetic effort of Welsh National Opera. It opens with Who is Sylvia? Sung as a duet, which works extremely effectively, followed by the sequence of operatic excerpts with words suitably adapted by Ashley Pearson. The singers were Sylvia – Elinor Jane Moran, Beatrice – Flora Mcintosh, Benedict – Anthony Flaum and Demetrius – Nicolas Dwyer. The lighting designer was Andrew May and the operlet was directed by Valentina Ceschi.
To mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, OperaUpClose has designed an operlet entitled Music oft hath such a charm mingling the characters Beatrice and Benedict and Sylvia and Demetrius in a story set to the music of Shakespearean songs Schubert’s Who is Sylvia? And Gerald Finzi’s setting of It was a lover and his lass and from operas by Gounod Roméo et Juliette, Verdi Falstaff, Britten A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bellini I Capuleti e I Montecchi, Thomas Hamlet and Berlioz Béatrice et Bénédic and the musical Kiss me Kate. The concocted story has Benedict having an affair with Sylvia, discovered by a heartbroken Sylvia and by Demetrius. The setting is a beach picnic. The musical accompaniment and continuity is provided by Juliana Gallant on the piano, wearing a large floppy hat.
This is a thoroughly light-hearted and appropriate way to mark the centenary, in contrast to the pathetic effort of Welsh National Opera. It opens with Who is Sylvia? Sung as a duet, which works extremely effectively, followed by the sequence of operatic excerpts with words suitably adapted by Ashley Pearson. The singers were Sylvia – Elinor Jane Moran, Beatrice – Flora Mcintosh, Benedict – Anthony Flaum and Demetrius – Nicolas Dwyer. The lighting designer was Andrew May and the operlet was directed by Valentina Ceschi.
Georges Bizet, Harry Blake: Carmen, OperaUpClose, Oxford Playhouse, 20 January 2016.
The intimate small scale company OperaUpClose’s latest production, which had its first performance at the Soho Theatre in association with the Theatre and the Belgrade Theatre Company on 5 August 2015, was shown at the Oxford Playhouse on 20 January 2016. This was a new post-feminist look at Bizet’s great creation Carmen reduced to a duration of two-and-a-half hours from the original four hours, with a cast of nine, no chorus and with the orchestra replaced by a quartet of piano cello, flute and violin.
The first thing to be said is what a brilliant musical success this was. Against all expectations, the scoring for the four instruments by Harry Blake and performance by Juliane Gallant, Alison Halford, Emily Callaghan and Nicole Crespo O’Donoghue captured fully, from the opening burst of sound, the excitement and atmosphere of the opera. This was sustained until the end in full support of the singers. The flute-playing of Emily Callaghan deserves special mention. It was the music which held the whole thing together and which remains the lasting memory.
As ever, we were on tenterhooks to find what new insights and lateral thinking the director and librettist, Robin Norton-Hale (Artistic Director and Chief Executive of OperaUpClose) would bring to the production which had stimulated her previous productions. Clues were to be found in an interview of Norton-Hale by Nicola Lisle in The Oxford Times headed ‘Revealing New Look for Classic Carmen’. Working on the libretto led her to see Carmen in modern terms as a victim of domestic violence killed by her ex-partner rather than as a free spirit, living dangerously, careless of her own safety. Another insight is that the whole situation arises as a result of the crushing boredom of life for the girls working in the factory to the soldiers on garrison duty. The programme emphasises the first of these points with reprinted newspaper article: ‘Half of all British women murdered by men ‘Killed by Partners’ and a piece by Robin Norton-Hale ‘This is not a Love Story’. The simple soldier, José, allows Carmen to escape custody after being charged with guarding her after a fracas. After serving a sentence and now obsessed with her, he follows her with her group of smugglers into the mountains where, while he is away visiting a dying mother, Carmen takes up with Escamillo a toreador. José returns and stabs Carmen awaiting Escamillo’s return from the bullring.
What comes over in performance is that Carmen’s sexual allure is entirely a figment of José’s imagination as he becomes her stalker. She appears as an ordinary girl, playing with fire rather than an object of male fascination. The banality of the characters is emphasised. José is a weakling with an undertone of violence, Escamillo lacks flamboyance, the factory girls are chattering companions. But the surprise of the production is the role of Micaëla, the girl next door from his home village who loves José. Those seeing the opera for the first time can be forgiven for thinking it is all about the attempts of Micaëla to free José from the clutches of Carmen. The most moving scene of all is their duet in Act 1 when she comes as emissary from his mother and he blindly refuses to see that she is expressing her own love rather than transmitting that of his mother.
This may or may not be a valid updating of the story of Carmen to twenty-first century English domesticity from nineteenth century Hispanic temperament but it is not what is contained in Bizet’s score even when reduced from full orchestra to instrumental quartet. There is certainly no place for castanets! The production is on tour with alternate casts. In Oxford we saw Flora McIntosh as Carmen, Anthony Flaum José, Richard Immerglück Escamillo and, outstandingly, Louisa Tee as Micaëla.
The performance filled the Oxford Playhouse but we missed the intimacy of North Wall in Summertown, the natural Oxford home of the Company. However, OperaUpClose are returning to North Wall on 12 February for an intriguing children’s opera Ulla’s Odyssey and 15 April for a programme of Shakespeare songs in celebration of the centenary.
The first thing to be said is what a brilliant musical success this was. Against all expectations, the scoring for the four instruments by Harry Blake and performance by Juliane Gallant, Alison Halford, Emily Callaghan and Nicole Crespo O’Donoghue captured fully, from the opening burst of sound, the excitement and atmosphere of the opera. This was sustained until the end in full support of the singers. The flute-playing of Emily Callaghan deserves special mention. It was the music which held the whole thing together and which remains the lasting memory.
As ever, we were on tenterhooks to find what new insights and lateral thinking the director and librettist, Robin Norton-Hale (Artistic Director and Chief Executive of OperaUpClose) would bring to the production which had stimulated her previous productions. Clues were to be found in an interview of Norton-Hale by Nicola Lisle in The Oxford Times headed ‘Revealing New Look for Classic Carmen’. Working on the libretto led her to see Carmen in modern terms as a victim of domestic violence killed by her ex-partner rather than as a free spirit, living dangerously, careless of her own safety. Another insight is that the whole situation arises as a result of the crushing boredom of life for the girls working in the factory to the soldiers on garrison duty. The programme emphasises the first of these points with reprinted newspaper article: ‘Half of all British women murdered by men ‘Killed by Partners’ and a piece by Robin Norton-Hale ‘This is not a Love Story’. The simple soldier, José, allows Carmen to escape custody after being charged with guarding her after a fracas. After serving a sentence and now obsessed with her, he follows her with her group of smugglers into the mountains where, while he is away visiting a dying mother, Carmen takes up with Escamillo a toreador. José returns and stabs Carmen awaiting Escamillo’s return from the bullring.
What comes over in performance is that Carmen’s sexual allure is entirely a figment of José’s imagination as he becomes her stalker. She appears as an ordinary girl, playing with fire rather than an object of male fascination. The banality of the characters is emphasised. José is a weakling with an undertone of violence, Escamillo lacks flamboyance, the factory girls are chattering companions. But the surprise of the production is the role of Micaëla, the girl next door from his home village who loves José. Those seeing the opera for the first time can be forgiven for thinking it is all about the attempts of Micaëla to free José from the clutches of Carmen. The most moving scene of all is their duet in Act 1 when she comes as emissary from his mother and he blindly refuses to see that she is expressing her own love rather than transmitting that of his mother.
This may or may not be a valid updating of the story of Carmen to twenty-first century English domesticity from nineteenth century Hispanic temperament but it is not what is contained in Bizet’s score even when reduced from full orchestra to instrumental quartet. There is certainly no place for castanets! The production is on tour with alternate casts. In Oxford we saw Flora McIntosh as Carmen, Anthony Flaum José, Richard Immerglück Escamillo and, outstandingly, Louisa Tee as Micaëla.
The performance filled the Oxford Playhouse but we missed the intimacy of North Wall in Summertown, the natural Oxford home of the Company. However, OperaUpClose are returning to North Wall on 12 February for an intriguing children’s opera Ulla’s Odyssey and 15 April for a programme of Shakespeare songs in celebration of the centenary.
WA Mozart, R Norton-Hill: The Marriage of Figaro, OperaUpClose, The North Wall, Summertown, Oxford, 13 February 2015.
The latest offering from the enterprising minimalist opera company OperaUpClose to be seen in Oxford was a new English-language version of Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro. Reduced in running time from two hours fifty minutes to two hours and with seven singers playing the eleven roles (excluding Susanna’s bridesmaids) and accompanied by clarinet, viola and piano, this condensed version nevertheless fully represented the spirit of the original and provided an utterly delightful evening’s entertainment. The new orchestration was by Musical Director Alex Beetschen and the new English libretto, replacing da Ponte, by Artistic Director Robin Norton-Hall. Whatever the intention, what came over was a fresh and refreshing look at Beaumarchais.
The reduction was mainly achieved by cutting severely the recitatives, incorporating much essential material into the arias. A major misjudgement was to omit the part of Barbarina, thus spoiling the symmetry of four interacting couples, each in a different relationship, of Count-Countess, Figaro-Susanna, Bartolo-Marcellina, Cherubino-Barbarina which makes the opera so great.
During the overture, the cast entered in everyday clothes to set up the scene and adopt their costumes. The line-up was as follows (from the alternative casts given in the programme): Figaro Richard Immerglück, Susanna Sarah Minns, Count Tom Stoddart, Cherubino Felicity Buckland, Bartolo (also don Basilio, don Curzio, Antonio the gardener) Henry Grant Kerswell, Marcellina Mary-Jane de Havas. The musicians, occupying a corner of the stage on the occasion were Alex Beetschen (piano), Sarah Douglas (clarinet), Frances Higgs (viola). It was strange to hear the overture played by the instrumentation of the Kegelstatt Trio but it worked well and one soon adjusted.
The first Act followed the original script quite closely but with the absence of the recitativo secco and continuo to which we are used these days. As we have noted of previous productions, the singing of this Company is adequate but has the enormous virtue of clarity of the words in the absence of surtitles, though some were better than others. The singers were all young, barely emerging from student days with experience only of minor roles in minor companies. This was an interesting interpretation in which Figaro and Susanna seemed to be carried along by the tide of events, rather than controlling them. Instead it was the commanding figure of Kerswell as Bartolo and his other roles who seemed to pull things along. Marcellina was well-performed and her spats with Susanna convincing. The Count of Stoddart maintained his dignity and authority despite all. Cherubino managed to get in everyone’s way. The staging of the complexities of Act 2 was extremely well managed but we missed the complications of Barbarina and the pin in the last two Acts. However the exceptional performance in a higher class, was that of Louisa Tee as the Countess. With a beautiful voice and serene manner. Her rendering of the two set piece arias, Love is cruel sung to the tune of Porgi amor and He adored me….to that of Dove sono… .
At the end the cast removed their costumes, packed them away and took away the stage props, leaving the audience thoroughly delighted, having been offered new insights into this great opera.
Giuseppe Verdi, Robin Norton-Hale: La Traviata, OperaUpClose, North Wall Arts Centre, Summertown, Oxford, 21 February 2014.
The enterprising opera company OperaUpClose, founded in 2009 at the Cock Tavern, Kilburn with a version of La Bohème set in London 20th century bed-sitter land now has a repertoire of some fifteen operas. These are new, abridged, chamber opera versions of great masterpieces, arranged by Artistic Director Robin Norton–Hale, with new dialogue and with the orchestra replaced by at most a trio of instruments. Some of these productions are taken on tour, of which the most recent, La Traviata, was seen at the North Wall Arts Centre in Summertown Oxford on 21 February.
In this new version the action is moved from nineteenth century France to the jazz age of nineteen-twenties’ USA It tells the familiar story of the high class consumptive good-time girl Violetta who gives up her life to co-habit in the country with her first real love, the up-state lad Alfredo until she is persuaded by his father Germont, a Senator, to abandon him for the sake of the family honour (though not explicitly his re-election chances). Returning to her old haunts under the protection of her sugar-daddy, an industrial baron, she is publicly humiliated by Alfredo. Later, learning the truth from his father, Alferdo returns to find Violetta on her death- bed, for her to die in his arms.
In this production there is a single set furnished with sofa, card table/ desk representing a withdrawing room, smoking room to Violetta’s salon, the cottage in the country, a card room adjoining a party room where Flora is entertaining and Violetta’s bedroom. The cast is reduced to five, with the Baron doubling with the Doctor. With a rotating cast, in Oxford we heard Prudence Sanders as Violetta, Philip Lee as Alfredo, David Durham Germont, Christopher Jacklin as the Baron/ Doctor and Flora Mackintosh as Flora. The orchestra was reduced to Christopher Goodman clarinet, William Rudge cello and Musical Director Elsbeth Wilkes piano. There was no chorus. The gypsy entertainers at Flora’s party are represented by a wind-up gramophone playing ‘I got no one to talk with,…’ – ingenious but not altogether convincing.
During the overture we hear party noises from the cast behind the scenes but this does not make up for the lack of a chorus and we have to fill in our own memories of the early scenes from the familiar tunes played by clarinet, cello, piano, a combination of wind, strings and keyboard which has proved so successful in earlier productions. Violetta enters wearing slinky, sexy, lounge-pyjamas to greet the men (including both Germont and his son!) and Flora, the action then following the original. In the last Act the carnival is replaced by the sounds of electioneering. However, reduction to chamber opera with no chorus alters the balance, focussing on the dialogues between the characters. The singing is of a higher standard than in the past, particularly Sanders as Violetta and Durham as Germont. The latter gives a well-rounded interpretation, more sympathetic than usual, expressing genuine concern for his family. As before the diction is clear with no need for surtitles.
25 February 2014
Gioacchino Rossini: The Barber of Seville, The North Wall, Oxford, 28 September 2012.
This was the second visit to Oxford of the small intimate opera company OperaUpClose. Founded in 2010 and now under the joint artistic directorship of Adam Spreadbury-Maher and Robin Norton-Hale it gained instant renown for an Olivier Award-winning production of La Bohème set in twenty-first century London bed-sit land. This translation in time and space was extremely successful, drawing unexpected parallels between the life of young people struggling to earn a living, here and there, now and then. The latest offering from this Company was announced as a version of Rossini’s comic masterpiece moved from Beaumarchais’ Seville to the England of Jane Austen. In this version, Count Almaviva, (here as the Marquis of Bath – not inappropriately), is trying, incognito, to woo the young heiress Rosina, by insinuating himself in various guises into the Salisbury household of her guardian and suitor Dr Bartleby with the aid of his factotum Figaro the barber. Other characters are Mr Basil, Rosina’s music teacher and Bertha the maid. (For perspective, the opera was first performed in 1816, the year of publication of Emma.)
The question we were all asking in the foyer on arrival was: would the audience be required to participate, as it was in La Bohème, by mingling with the singers as the crowd in the Café Momus? On this occasion not. We entered the auditorium to find an unusual amount of space occupied by the stage, furnished with back curtains, three coloured picture-windows of the English countryside and innumerable white chairs on castors which moved around, grouped to represent furniture and as props, including the Marquis’ horse (á la Ionesco). The only audience participation was Figaro’s leaflets, advertising his services, handed out to selected members with ad lib comments on their needs for them, during the Factotum aria.
This was a hilarious performance, doing justice to the overlying influence of Rossini’s score. It was sung in a new English version by Robin Norton-Hale accompanied by solo piano. Emily Leather the pianist showed amazing technical prowess and powers of endurance, the repeated notes and staccato scales of the accompaniment retaining clarity and precision from the first notes of the overture to the final sextet. The singing on this occasion was far better than previously. The principals, Elinor Jane Moran as Rosina and Philip Lee, Marquis of Bath, we had heard before as Mimi and Rodolfo. Rossini’s music was far better suited to their light-opera style of singing than to that of Puccini. Rosina was particularly youthful and acted with great charm with a mixture of teenage innocence and knowingness (of which we have to be so wary these days). One could foresee her difficulties to come in Mozart’s sequel. Lee played the Marquis in his various guises with great panache, though whether his drunken dragoon was not a bit over the top for Jane Austen if not for Seville remains a question. Stephen John Svanholm gave a convincing picture of Figaro and the character roles of Dr Bartleby (Dickon Gough), Mr Basil (Julian Charles) and Bertha (Louise Lloyd) excellently played. The last, in her extended aria bemoaning the servant’s lot, was particularly effective.
The transport from Seville was only partially successful. Like many productions based on a clever notion,, the director appeared to run out of ideas as things went on. The opening was promising. Reference to and direct quotes from Austen’s writing worked well, as did the setting of one of Rosina’s Second Act arias to Shelley but after a time the opera relapsed to a timeless opera buffa style with modern infelicities such as ‘you’re joking’, replacing potential subtlety by sheer entertainment – but none the worse for that. The men’s words were perfectly clear but I had to struggle with the ladies’
The audience went away happy, looking forward to the next visit of this Company.
5 October 2012
Giacomo Puccini, Robin Norton-Hale: La Bohème, the North Wall Arts Centre, 24 March 2012.
OperaUpClose was formed in 2010, under the Artistic Directorship of Adam Spreadbury-Maher, as the resident company at the King’s Head Tavern in Islington, now renamed as London’s Little Opera House. It aims are to introduce opera to new audiences by producing new versions of well-known operatic works adapted to unusual surroundings. In this it has something in common with the locally based Opera Anywhere which has been delighting audiences for a number of years now. On a small and intimate scale this is in the same spirit as, on the grandiose scale, Graham Vick’s productions for his New Birmingham Opera Company.
For their first production as OperaUpClose, they had chosen a new version of Puccini’s La Bohème, which the cast had premiered at the Cock Tavern, Kilburn at Christmas 2009 to great public and critical acclaim. It received the Olivier award for best new opera production of 2011. The version of the opera is an adaptation by Robin Norton-Hale translated into English and from nineteenth century France to twenty-first century Britain; the orchestra is replaced by a solo piano. This transposition works extremely well, if losing some romanticism, in replacing the bohemian set of artists and writers by the antics of a group of impoverished young people presumably struggling to exist on welfare payments and the seamstress Mimi replaced by a Ukrainian cleaner, unable to claim them. Pens and paper are replaced by laptop computers, and lamp light by coin operated electricity meters; paint and canvas remain but we have mobile telephones. Otherwise things are much the same with the binge-drinking moved from the Café Momus to (here) a Broad Street pub. In Oxford the opera was performed at the North Wall Arts Centre in Summertown, with the action moving from the cosy auditorium for Act I to the foyer with cast and audience intermingling for Act II, jostling round the bar and back for the last Acts – not quite the atmosphere of a London pub but an adequate substitute using a little imagination!
The set had the right tattiness of bachelor living and could equally have represented nineteenth century Paris, against which the rumbustuous antics were played out before the arrival on Mimi. Her first scene with Rudolfo has the words ‘your fingers are half frozen’ unnecessarily replacing the timeless ‘your tiny hand is frozen’. The proceedings follow the familiar path, falling in and out of love, until Mimi is dumped by her rich lover and returns to die in Rudolfo’s arms.
It has to be said that by opera-house standards the singing is appalling, with, for the most part, operatically untrained voices adopting more a cabaret style of singing. The exception who caught the ear and eye was Prudence Sanders as Musetta. But this does not matter. Every word is audible, every emotion conveyed, the character of each member of the cast carefully delineated so that at the end we are all in tears, as is usual with this opera. The success is in no small part due to the indefatigable pianist, on this occasion Elspeth Wilkes, who holds the whole thing together
OperaUpClose now has a repertoire of five operas in a season running from March to May. It is aimed at bringing new audiences to conventional opera but I adopt the sceptical point of view that it only attracts old opera audiences to new productions and new audiences to this form of entertainment. But I hope we may see this Company again at the North Wall!
29 March 2012
This was the second visit to Oxford of the small intimate opera company OperaUpClose. Founded in 2010 and now under the joint artistic directorship of Adam Spreadbury-Maher and Robin Norton-Hale it gained instant renown for an Olivier Award-winning production of La Bohème set in twenty-first century London bed-sit land. This translation in time and space was extremely successful, drawing unexpected parallels between the life of young people struggling to earn a living, here and there, now and then. The latest offering from this Company was announced as a version of Rossini’s comic masterpiece moved from Beaumarchais’ Seville to the England of Jane Austen. In this version, Count Almaviva, (here as the Marquis of Bath – not inappropriately), is trying, incognito, to woo the young heiress Rosina, by insinuating himself in various guises into the Salisbury household of her guardian and suitor Dr Bartleby with the aid of his factotum Figaro the barber. Other characters are Mr Basil, Rosina’s music teacher and Bertha the maid. (For perspective, the opera was first performed in 1816, the year of publication of Emma.)
The question we were all asking in the foyer on arrival was: would the audience be required to participate, as it was in La Bohème, by mingling with the singers as the crowd in the Café Momus? On this occasion not. We entered the auditorium to find an unusual amount of space occupied by the stage, furnished with back curtains, three coloured picture-windows of the English countryside and innumerable white chairs on castors which moved around, grouped to represent furniture and as props, including the Marquis’ horse (á la Ionesco). The only audience participation was Figaro’s leaflets, advertising his services, handed out to selected members with ad lib comments on their needs for them, during the Factotum aria.
This was a hilarious performance, doing justice to the overlying influence of Rossini’s score. It was sung in a new English version by Robin Norton-Hale accompanied by solo piano. Emily Leather the pianist showed amazing technical prowess and powers of endurance, the repeated notes and staccato scales of the accompaniment retaining clarity and precision from the first notes of the overture to the final sextet. The singing on this occasion was far better than previously. The principals, Elinor Jane Moran as Rosina and Philip Lee, Marquis of Bath, we had heard before as Mimi and Rodolfo. Rossini’s music was far better suited to their light-opera style of singing than to that of Puccini. Rosina was particularly youthful and acted with great charm with a mixture of teenage innocence and knowingness (of which we have to be so wary these days). One could foresee her difficulties to come in Mozart’s sequel. Lee played the Marquis in his various guises with great panache, though whether his drunken dragoon was not a bit over the top for Jane Austen if not for Seville remains a question. Stephen John Svanholm gave a convincing picture of Figaro and the character roles of Dr Bartleby (Dickon Gough), Mr Basil (Julian Charles) and Bertha (Louise Lloyd) excellently played. The last, in her extended aria bemoaning the servant’s lot, was particularly effective.
The transport from Seville was only partially successful. Like many productions based on a clever notion,, the director appeared to run out of ideas as things went on. The opening was promising. Reference to and direct quotes from Austen’s writing worked well, as did the setting of one of Rosina’s Second Act arias to Shelley but after a time the opera relapsed to a timeless opera buffa style with modern infelicities such as ‘you’re joking’, replacing potential subtlety by sheer entertainment – but none the worse for that. The men’s words were perfectly clear but I had to struggle with the ladies’
The audience went away happy, looking forward to the next visit of this Company.
5 October 2012
Giacomo Puccini, Robin Norton-Hale: La Bohème, the North Wall Arts Centre, 24 March 2012.
OperaUpClose was formed in 2010, under the Artistic Directorship of Adam Spreadbury-Maher, as the resident company at the King’s Head Tavern in Islington, now renamed as London’s Little Opera House. It aims are to introduce opera to new audiences by producing new versions of well-known operatic works adapted to unusual surroundings. In this it has something in common with the locally based Opera Anywhere which has been delighting audiences for a number of years now. On a small and intimate scale this is in the same spirit as, on the grandiose scale, Graham Vick’s productions for his New Birmingham Opera Company.
For their first production as OperaUpClose, they had chosen a new version of Puccini’s La Bohème, which the cast had premiered at the Cock Tavern, Kilburn at Christmas 2009 to great public and critical acclaim. It received the Olivier award for best new opera production of 2011. The version of the opera is an adaptation by Robin Norton-Hale translated into English and from nineteenth century France to twenty-first century Britain; the orchestra is replaced by a solo piano. This transposition works extremely well, if losing some romanticism, in replacing the bohemian set of artists and writers by the antics of a group of impoverished young people presumably struggling to exist on welfare payments and the seamstress Mimi replaced by a Ukrainian cleaner, unable to claim them. Pens and paper are replaced by laptop computers, and lamp light by coin operated electricity meters; paint and canvas remain but we have mobile telephones. Otherwise things are much the same with the binge-drinking moved from the Café Momus to (here) a Broad Street pub. In Oxford the opera was performed at the North Wall Arts Centre in Summertown, with the action moving from the cosy auditorium for Act I to the foyer with cast and audience intermingling for Act II, jostling round the bar and back for the last Acts – not quite the atmosphere of a London pub but an adequate substitute using a little imagination!
The set had the right tattiness of bachelor living and could equally have represented nineteenth century Paris, against which the rumbustuous antics were played out before the arrival on Mimi. Her first scene with Rudolfo has the words ‘your fingers are half frozen’ unnecessarily replacing the timeless ‘your tiny hand is frozen’. The proceedings follow the familiar path, falling in and out of love, until Mimi is dumped by her rich lover and returns to die in Rudolfo’s arms.
It has to be said that by opera-house standards the singing is appalling, with, for the most part, operatically untrained voices adopting more a cabaret style of singing. The exception who caught the ear and eye was Prudence Sanders as Musetta. But this does not matter. Every word is audible, every emotion conveyed, the character of each member of the cast carefully delineated so that at the end we are all in tears, as is usual with this opera. The success is in no small part due to the indefatigable pianist, on this occasion Elspeth Wilkes, who holds the whole thing together
OperaUpClose now has a repertoire of five operas in a season running from March to May. It is aimed at bringing new audiences to conventional opera but I adopt the sceptical point of view that it only attracts old opera audiences to new productions and new audiences to this form of entertainment. But I hope we may see this Company again at the North Wall!
29 March 2012