Opera North on Tour: The Lowry Theatre, Salford Quays. 12-16.2. 2008 (RJF)

PUCCINI : Madama Butterfly

BRITTEN:  Peter Grimes

JONATHAN DOVE:   The Adventures of Pinocchio (2007)


With a little planning and circumspection, theatres can be filled easily with well thought out and  imaginatively produced productions, particularly those that were oversubscribed first time round. This is what Opera North has done with its   present winter tour while also, premiering a spectacular brand new work which has attracted well-deserved critical acclaim.

In my review of Tim Albery’s production of Madama Butterfly last autumn, with the superb Anne Sophie Duprels as the tragic heroine, I noted that the two performances at The Lowry were sell-outs. Well, at this early reprise, the Tuesday night performance was ninety percent full and the Thursday another sold out show. The single performance of Phyllida Lloyd’s award winning production of Peter Grimes was likewise played to a full Lowry -  the largest theatre played by Opera North with nearly two thousand seats. With this kind of financial flow through at the box office, Opera North can afford to chance its arm with a premiere of a new work once in a while. Had there been any chance of a less than a rapturous welcome for Jonathan Dove’s Pinocchio, then  spreading  the cost with another theatre, allied to financial help from generous donors and a superb production was still likely to bring good news. As it turned out,  a good house on the Friday night  followed by a full one on the Saturday - with a 6pm start and aimed at the whole family - justified Opera North's strategy admirably.

Seeing two performances of the same work, relatively close together is an interesting experience. In the autumn,  I found Albery’s staging of Butterfly full of felicitous details and very much focussed on the different moralities of Japanese and American behaviour, like the removal of shoes on entering a Japanese house. The different mores were and still are starkly outlined in the pre-opening mime in which a Geisha goes demurely about her domestic business and is contrasted  with American tarts, in hot pants and fishnets and plenty of flesh on show, applying their make up before going out 'on the pull'  ; as  the opera has been updated. This picture is strongly reinforced later when the American girls come to survey Butterfly’s body with total incomprehension at the conclusion. Along the way,  the production focuses on Butterfly’s change  from being Japanese in behaviour, dress and religion in Act I to becoming Americanised in dress, makeup and  hairstyle in Act II when she firmly believes that she is Pinkerton’s wife and he will return to her. The balletic choreography of the spreading of flower petals to welcome the returning Pinkerton is elegant and joyous and contrasts sharply with the lead-up to Butterfly’s suicide, which is particularly poignant, even harrowing,  as she returns to Suzuki’s Shinto shrine and grasps the fateful dagger. The ending in this version of the opera is emotional enough and  few dry eyes were left in the house on both occasions. Albery’s imaginative staging takes place in Hildegard Bechtler’s evocative and apt set which has moving screens and a picture window view of mount Fujiyama  and  the production is one of the best I have seen of this opera. It should serve Opera North well for many more revivals:   winners like this need to be garnered if scarce subsidies are not to be dissipated.

Seeing Phyllida Lloyd’s production of Grimes again in Anthony Ward’s sets,  I was struck how little extraneous scenery and props were involved and how well they were used. The  backdrops were imaginative too with Grimes’s hut, more representational than real, being erected before our eyes. The vivid picture of the physically imposing Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts’s facial agony at finding - and then lifting and carrying away  - the dead body of Grimes’s second apprentice remains as gripping a picture as any I have experienced on the operatic stage. As with Albery’s Butterfly, Phyllida Lloyd’s production abounds in details, particularly in throwing the hypocrisy of the townspeople into sharp relief. The abstainer Bob Boles’ drunkenness, portrayed by Alan Oke, and Swallow, superbly played and sung by Richard Angas, groping the nieces, are particularly germane. Likewise,  Roderick Williams’s smarmy and spiv-like Ned Keene, pushing drugs, is a disturbing assumption well sung. Add a well-rehearsed cast and the impact of the story, and Britten’s music becomes overwhelming. I was particularly struck by Jonathan Summers’  Balstrode who I felt surpassed Christopher Purves’s portrayal in the original run,  for his acting and strength of singing. Opera North's chorus of committed singer-actors plays a significant part in the impact of this production. If I have any reservation it concerns audibility of words. Even when sitting half a dozen rows from the stage I lost the text in the Grimes- Balstrode narrative in Act I , whilst Britten’s orchestral dynamics defeated Giselle Allen and others later although the  dynamics were  softer with James Holmes on the podium rather than Richard Farnes. Talking  with others who had been present at Butterfly, sung in Italian the previous evening, there was much discussion about the benefit of surtitles in illuminating the aspects of the story. As with the Katya last year I found no person who would not have preferred to have them.

Diction was also a problem in Pinocchio, except when Jonathan Dove restrained the orchestral textures to permit near dialogue. Unlike the bel canto composers and Verdi, Dove and many others - including Britten - do not use the orchestra to support the voice in the expression of words. Rather,  the orchestra often tells the more dramatic aspects of the plot with richer, even strident, textures which restricts verbal comprehension; the only grumble I heard from the adults and the many children who attended the performance. The opera story, set by Alasdair Middleton, does vary from the well-known tale and has many details that were lost through lack of audibility. Would surtitles have helped here too? Maybe. But I do not want to let that reservation detract from the quite magnificent constantly evolving sets and action in Francis O Connor’s production with their massive varieties of colour and attention to detail. How the workers in the fly tower coped with them demands I do not know and  it may be   a new requirement of opera conservatories that entrants should not suffer from vertigo these day! The basic set was full of surprises - the portrayal of Pinocchio swimming among the waves and his appearance alongside Gepetto in a whale's belly were veritable theatrical miracles. Victoria Symmonds coped well with her ever-lengthening nose and acted and sang the role superbly, as did  Mary Plazas - Blue Fairy who appears at regular intervals to rescue Pinocchio from his latest scrape -  and Rebecca Bottone as a lithe chirping Cricket. Comparisons really are mostly odious and I will simply add that there was not a weak link among the singers including those from Opera North’s chorus.  Singly and in ensemble, they were glorious; something that should never be taken for granted.  Opera North’s tour continues to The Grand Opera House, Belfast from 19^th February and the Theatre Royal, Newcastle from 4th March. A week at Sadler’s Wells from 26^th February will include three performances of Pinocchio and two of Peter Grimes.

All the works for the Spring/Summer season are  focussed on the Shakespearean theme. The first production will be of Macbeth, Verdi’s first setting of the great playwright's work, in the revised 1865 version. This will be Tim Albery’s first Verdi opera for the company. Premiered in Leeds on 23^rd April with Music Director Richard Farnes on the rostrum, Johan Engels, the designer for Opera North’s Eight Little greats, returns for it.  Macbeth will be sung by Robert Haywood with Antonia Cifrone as his Lady. Albery  is also responsible for Britten’s A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, to be premiered on 3^rd of May, and Gounod’s Romeo and Juliette on 17^th May, after which the season at Leeds concludes on May 24^th. This operatic Shakespearian extravaganza should excite all opera goers. With costumes for Macbeth designed by Brigitte Reiffenstuel, responsible for those in the ill starred Rigoletto of 2006, and  remembering both that production and Glyndebourne’s efforts with Macbeth more recently, I hope there are no caravans to be seen. Britten’s opera is conducted by Stuart Stratford and James Laing will sing Oberon. Romeo and Juliette will be sung in French with Leonardo Capalbo cast as Romeo and the Slovenian lyric soprano Bernardo Bobra as Juliette. Martin André conducts.

Thethree Shakespeare based operas tour for weeklong seasons of five nights at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham from 28^th May, the Theatre Royal, Newcastle from 3^rd June, The Lowry, Salford from 10^th June and, a new location for Opera North, the New Victoria Theatre, Woking from 17^th June. Some commonalities in basic set design will allow some venues to have a matinee performance of A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream on the Saturday afternoon followed by Macbeth in the evening.

Robert J Farr 

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