Catalani La Wally Opera Holland Park -first thoughts

Preparing for Alfredo Catalani's La Wally at Opera Holland Park, I was struck by its potential. It's an Italianate Der Freischütz. The music may be good-natured Romantic, but the heroine, Wally is extraordinary. She's an elemental, part-woman, part nature spirit, lives alone, in the wilderness, surviving, one imagines, on sheer force of will. Compared with Wally, Carmen is a wimp. This story isn't set in the high Alps for nothing. The mountains loom upwards towards the stratosphere. Extraordinary heroine, extraordinary setting : mountain peaks, frozen glaciers, crevasses, snowstorms and an avalanche. And then the star herself, Gweneth-Ann Jeffers, who created a sensation in 2010's OHP La Forza del destino. Jeffers is unique.Her voice rises fearlessly to any challenge, and is capable of exquisite colour and sensitivity. And she has a personality to match and stage presence. This woman is a born diva and can act so well she can fill a stage on her own (which she does in Act IV). Potentially an ideal Wally.

But was the Opera Holland Park production team working from the same score? There's almost no way anyone could stage La Wally realistically, for a narrative like this demands suspension of disbelief. Landscape settings on this grand scale would have been technically impossible in Catalani's time. Realism in opera isn't "tradition" but aberration. This opera is surreal nature fantasy, but that doesn't mean banal. Designer Jamie Vartan sidesteps the issue altogether, using a painter's dropcloth, suspended by guy ropes that remain clearly visible throughout and threaten to trip the singers at several points. Only in the very end does the dropcloth make sense, when it's manipulated to look like mountains, but by then the opera's nearly over. Until that point, we're staring at the carved portico that remains of Holland Park House which completely  undercuts the idea of open horizons and wilderness. Since the opera itself comprises two distinct parts it might have been more effective to realise the difference with different settings, Perhaps filmed projections would work in the first part, contrasting the banality of village life with the turbulence of nature in the mountains? Even a good old fashioned painted backdrop of mountains and kitsch, so the singers can do their thing unburdened.. 

The staging is so awkward that if you didn't know the plot you'd be lost. Gellner (Stephen Gadd) chases Hagenbach (Adrian Dwyer) up to the peaks and pushes him into a crevasse in the glacier. Wally struggles up the slopes, and pulls him out. Danger, urgency, heroism. If this were a Leni Reifenstahl mountain movie, you'd see slippery ice-clad precipices, and bursts of snow as crampon digs into rockface. (I'll write about Riefenstahl's movie The Holy Mountain next week). Catalani's music describes the urgency and struggle. Whirling figures like wind, trudging staccato, tearing, screaming figures from the string section, alarums from the brass.  Instead what we get at OHP is a trestle table not three feet high, covered with cloth. Gadd scuffles with Dwyer who rolls onto the other side of the table.

And what of Wally, that extraordinary creation? Director Martin Lloyd-Evans keeps Jeffers busy doing things like change her clothes. .As Wally's music shows. It's passionate, throbbing with frustration. That's why Ebben? Ne andrò lontana is so poignant. Wally knows what leaving civilization means. Wally is a complex, confused personality who takes eveything to extremes. Which is why she overreacts to the silly game in the tavern. And why she has no qualms risking her life to save Hagenbach. Jeffers sings with great force and depth, but she's directed to move in an inhibited way, as if she's domesticated and gussied up. Pearls? By nature she's an Edelweisss. Maybe this direction is trying to show how Wally is trapped in the village, but it doesn't bring out the exceptional vividness in her character. I've been following Jeffers's career for about five years and am convinced from past form that she is capable of much more than this. Great potential, underutilized, a wasted resource.

If Jeffers isn't able to act much in this production, her singing makes up for it. Her Act II and Act IV arias are superb, emotionally nuanced, richly coloured.. Jeffers's Wally thinks and feels deeply, and you "hear" the role much more than the largely cardboard way it's shaped in this production. Jeffers sings abroad these days but she really should be groomed for greater things in this country. She's an asset British opera should nurture properly.(and yet another Oxford Lieder Festival graduate).

Generally strong cast.  Adrian Dwyer and Stephen Gadd sing Hagenbach and Gellner better than they are called on to act. Stephen Richardson's Stromminger is weighty - pity the character dies after Act 1. Alinka Kozari's Walther is bright and wittily characterized. Charles Johnston was Il Pedone and Heather Shipp a sparky Afra.

Peter Robinson conducted. Catalani's music isn't sophisticated, relying more on atmospheric effects to paint imagery. Horns on one side, trombones and trumpet on the other, "calling" to one another as villagers in the Alps might do. The sound of distant hunting horns, long booming alpenhorns (trombones), the sound of cowbells, bright sunny flute motifs, not-quite-Ländler dances, just bucolic enough to be humorous. Yet when the story develops into tragedy, Catalani's writing leaps into higher gear. Stormy passages, dread with foreboding, reinforcing Wally's arias. The avalanche roars through the orchestra. We see an acrobat hanging from a rope on stage but the music has already told us that Wally and Hagenbach have been so overwhelmingly engulfed that no trace of them remains.
 
Get to this Catalani La Wally at Opera Holland Park because it's unlikely that there'll be another production any time soon. Don't worry too much about the staging. Focus instead on the singing and the orchestra and enjoy. I'm probably going again Wednesday. A more formal  review is here in Opera Today.  My focus is on the opera and its potential, which is why I avoid doing shallow.

Photos : Gweneth-Ann Jeffers as Wally and Adrian Dwyer as Hagenbach. Photo Fritz Curzon.
Gweneth-Ann Jeffers as Wally and Stephen Richardson as Stromminger. Photo
Fritz Curzon.

Flashmob La Rondine OHP

THIS SHOULD GO VIRAL. Thanks to a friend this lovely clip on a normal day at Tesco. Clue, it's the 24/7 Tesco off the A4 near Holland Park. Hint. Then some guy in the line opens a bottle of wine and serenades the check out girl. Spot the other members of the cast among the crowd, who look amazed! This is exactly the sort of publicity opera needs. Opera needs "ordinary" people to enjoy without prejudice or prejudgement. The trouble with opera is that it carries connotations of class, status and social expectations. Snobbery poisons the fun. Opera Holland Park is fun, which is its unique selling point. I love the way this integrates "ordinary" people with the magic of opera. No-one is ever "ordinary" if they can enjoy something beautiful even on a trip to the shops. Way to go, OHP !

La Rondine - Opera Holland Park

Glorious production of Puccini La Rondine at Opera Holland Park. This is the sort of thing that makes OHP worth going to.  Please read Ruth Elleson's review.

I'd never thought costumes could make an opera, but the designs here recreate the heady mix of grande luxe and heady abandon that fits the period and the characters. Magda and her friends don't wear corsets in any sense. They're not buttoned up, but others are. Hence the tragedy. I wish I could find a photo of one of Poiret's famous "Grecian" dresses with dozens of tiny pleats, designed to skim the body so it moves like a zephyr.  Freedom in clothing, freedom in spirit and the arts. Puccini firmly in the vanguard of the modern age. And so much fun!

What I'd give for the dress with mock bustle and ombre shadings from white thru grey. Or the eau de nil "Empire cut" dress, or almost best of all the trio of black and white outfits that Georgette, Lolette and Gabriela wear at Bulliers! Congratulations to the designers, Peter Rice and Chrissy Maddison.

Performances, too, were highly credtable. Kate Ladner's Magda looks splendid, and sings well, so carries the principal role well. But it's the secondary roles that catch the irreverent joie de vivre. Nearly everyone in this plot is outside society and owes nothing to the received order of things. Hence Bulliers which is raffish and louche. Perversely, Magda stands out in this crowd because she's trying to look incognito. but that's part of the impishness of this opera.

Which is why the spicy alternative roles matter so much. The cabaret girls are talented women who make an independent living and presumably aren't kept, like Magda..Sean Ruane's Ruggero limps mysteriously - has he been in other wars? If so, it's extra tragic that he's going back, perhaps to die, after his brief chance of love.  Hal Cazalet's Prunier is too healthy to be Erik Satie, but just as alternative. And Hye-Youn Lee's Lisette epitomizes the whole gaudy, naughty, vivacious spirit of the opera. She, too, has dreams, but accepts setbacks graciously. When she sings about the whistles of the crowd, she makes the episode seem funny even though it ended her hopes. At least, one thinks, for the time being.

If you're going to do country house opera in the west of the city as Opera Holland Park does, you have a lot of competition. The facilities in a municipal park are never really going to be quite as glamorous, though the OHP crowd is dressier than Glyndebourne.  Lots of money about, but I suspect different values. There's more room to manoeuvre artistically. Productions like this La Rondine come pretty close to the polish of The Royal Opera House, but can OHP pull off such wonders every time? At least OHP is approaching the major league. There's so much fuss made of pub opera these days, though it's always been around. But with pub opera, you always have to make enormous allowances. So much so that while pub opera can be amusing, it can't be taken seriously as art. As a vision, OHP is unique, and worth supporting on principle.

Cheery cherry L'amico Fritz - Opera Holland Park

Crusty old Confirmed Bachelor seduced by kid with fruit! Said Mascagni, "I want a simple libretto, something almost insubstantial, so the opera will be judged entirely on its music."  Verdi said the libretto of L'amico Fritz, now on at Opera Holland Park, was "the worst libretto I've ever seen". Certainly it has its charms, rather like the painting here by Georg Roessler (1861-1925)  Imagine, it's 20th century! The kid has cherries hanging from her ears like earrings. But on the other hands there's a lot to said for cheery cherry escapism. And as Mascagni hoped, the music does stand on its own. "The happy ending may never be in doubt, but what it lacks in dramatic tension is more than compensated for by the opera’s glorious, irresistible music. This romantic fable set in an idyllic rural world is just the thing to beguile one’s cares." Read more in Opera Today

Opera Holland Park 2011

Public booking starts today for Opera Holland Park's new season. Opera Holland Park's Unique Selling Point is that it's informal and fun. What OHP also does best is relatively uncommon repertoire performed with great conviction. So the real must-see this season could be Alfredo Catalani's La Wally.(from 29 July). It's a gorgeously over the top melodrama, pivoting on the soprano part, which pretty much carries the whole opera. Gweneth-Ann Jeffers should be in her element. She's got the personality, the charisma and the voice for those lavish star turn arias. This might be the highlight of the season.

Similarly, Mascagni's L'Amico Fritz will be a draw. Reliable cast - Eric Margiore and Anna Leese, OHP stalwart. I'm going to Puccini La Rondine because the large cast includes many up and coming young talents. It's tough getting ahead in this line, so they need all the support they can get. Lots of other promising names in other operas too but I can't face basic repertoire unless there's something  special. Since Don Pasquale is a new production, directed by Stephen Barlow, has a good cast and is  conducted by Richard Bonynge, it might be interesting.
 
Singers aren't objects on an assembly line. Just as in any business, you get more from your workers if they feel valued. If anything people management in the arts is even more important than in other businesses, because singers and players "are" the product. Committment and enthusiasm are intangible, but when they're missing, the difference is so obvious it can sink a show. Because nobody's making a fortune at OHP, everyone seems to pull together. The choruses at OHP, for example, tend to work well as a unit even though the individual voices aren't much.

Let's face it, for under £60 you are never going to get Tebaldi or Pavarotti. But on the other hand, prices like these approach the cheaper seats at ROH or ENO.While productions in these bigger houses may often disappoint, they are in a different league. This is the quandary OHP faces. It needs prices high enough to survive, but it doesn't have the sheer volume bigger houses can produce.  Some people go to OHP in evening dress to do their toff thing. But what is the point of tuxes and gowns in a municipal park in a city suburb where grubby kids run around and the toilets stink? If they're so rich, why not contribute more ? Some in fact do so privately, but noblesse oblige was once a better indicator of class than wealth.  I was reading about a woman whose legacy provides cheap seats for pensioners and students (though not all of whom are poor). She's long dead but her memory lives on.
HERE is a link to last year's OHP La forza del destino. Search this site for more on the singers and Stephen Barlow