Chorus!: Music by Bernstein, Bizet, Dvorak, Gershwin, Handel, Korngold, Leoncavallo, Mascagni, Poulenc, Prokofiev, Puccini, Rameau, J. Strauss II, Stravinsky, Verdi, Wagner, Soloists, Welsh National Opera Chorus; and Orchestra; Donald Nally (conductor) Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, 02.10.2006 (GPu)

 

 

Conductor: Donald Nalley

Original Director: David Pountney

Revival Director: Karen Gillingham

Designer: Nikki Turner

Lighting Designer: Neil Austin

 

 

Soloists: Robert Winslade Anderson (bass), Meriel Andrew (soprano), Amanda Baldwin (mezzo), Neda Bizzarri (mezzo), Julian Boyce (baritone), Paula Bradbury (soprano), Daniel Chadwick (baritone), Michael Clifton-Thompson (tenor), Simon Curtis (tenor), Megan Llewellyn Dorke (soprano), Philip Lloyd Evans (baritone), Daniella Ehrlich (mezzo), Claire Hampton (soprano), Fiona Harrison (soprano), Rosie Hay (soprano), Alun Rhys Jenkins (tenor), Howard Kirk (tenor), Alastair Moore (baritone), Sian Meinir (mezzo), Jack O’Kelly (bass), Sarah Pope (mezzo), James Robinson-May (bass), Ian Yemm (tenor); Chorus and Orchestra of Welsh National Opera, conducted by Donald Nalley.

 

 

Chorus! is an interesting idea, is generally well executed and makes for a pleasant evening in the theatre. Originally intended as an ‘easy way in’ for audiences unfamiliar with opera, this showcase for the operatic chorus (with some solo contributions sung by members of the chorus) is capable of serving both that purpose and the entertaining of a more operatically-experienced audience.

Using a pretty basic stage, limited props and simple costumes, with some striking – but ungimmicky – lighting effects, the production largely manages to make each short(ish) item segue into the next fairly seamlessly, to produce a kind of larger emotional arc which, while it lacks the dramatic of intensity of a single opera, does make a theatrical sense of its own. There’s laughter and tears, love and lust and much else.

Some of the transitions/connections are very effective indeed. The spinners of ‘Summ und brumm’ from Der Fliegende Holländer remain on stage, silently spinning (at invisible spinning wheels) as the men of the chorus, masked, come on stage singing ‘Zitti, zitti’ from Rigoletto, and become the subjects of a mass abduction. Another intelligent moment of theatre occurs when the Hans Sachs of “Wach auf!” (from Die Meistersinger) rises from his chair and becomes the Paul/Pierrot of Korngold’s Die tote Stadt. The second half opens with a beautiful sequence of ‘Christian’ episodes – beginning with the fervent, well-nigh possessed prayer of ‘Oh, Doctor Jesus’ from Porgy and Bess, which is succeeded first by the delightful humour of ‘Andiam! Din, don!’ from Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci and then by the beautiful ‘Ave Maria’ from Poulenc’s Les dialogues des Carmélites. This particular sequence ends with ‘Innegiamo il Signore’ from Cavalleria rusticana – utterly human desire reasserts itself.

Like any good anthology, Chorus! depends on the skills of both choice and arrangement. As regards choice, it is by no means limited to the familiar war-horses. Yes, there is room for ‘Va pensiero’ (which gets a moving performance of mingled pain and tenderness) and the ‘Humming Chorus’ from Madam Butterfly; but we also get to hear ‘Di dons … Quoi, quoi?’, the so-called Quacking Chorus, and ‘Chantons Bacchus’, both from Rameau’s Platée, and certainly not over-familiar. As I have suggested above, the ordering of items is very well conceived to make each comment on what goes before and comes after, to exist in often ironic relationships with its neighbours.

The WNO’s chorus has been a very definite strength for a number of years and it is good that they should get the chance to take more of the limelight than usually falls to them. At their best they displayed an admirable blend and interplay of voices and sang with considerable subtlety – perhaps more of a hallmark than sheer power. Much credit belongs, no doubt, to Donald Nalley who has done outstanding work with them in recent years, and to the Acting Chorus master, Simon Philippo. Just occasionally, given their chance as soloists, one or two members of the chorus were perhaps close to being over-parted, but there were no real flops and several very definite successes. Fiona Harrison gave a moving performance of ‘The Song to the Moon’ from Dvorak’s Rusalka; Daniel Chadwick was assured and poignant in ‘Mein Sehnen, mein Wähnen’ from Die tote Stadt; Alun Rhys Jenkins captured the spirit (no pun intended) of Rameau’s ‘Chanton Bacchus’ and Rosie Hay and Michael-Clifton-Thompson gave a very decent performance of the Brindisi from La traviata (but why was everybody drinking coffee?).

There was, then, much to enjoy and for WNO regulars it was good to see the chorus, which has contributed so much to the company’s success in recent years, being given the chance to dominate the stage. Still, the evening left one with the feeling that one had only been entertained. The greater depths and heights were missing, not through any fault in the performers, but because, by its very nature, this was an evening lacking the sense of narrative and dramatic necessity, or those fascinations of character development and extended relationship, the larger structures of musical pattern and argument, that a single opera by, say, Mozart, Verdi or Wagner can give us. However well-made the anthology – and this was very well-made – it necessarily lacks the insistent coherence, the sheer weight, of the fully realised single work. Still, it is hard to imagine this particular exercise being done very much better.

 

 

Glyn Pursglove