Opera... Shot!

Michael Betteridge

Two short new chamber operas by experienced composers both of whom are relatively new to the form.  Sounds like an experiment with a lot of potential right?  Potential it had, but successful it was not.  Regardless of the critical response, The Royal Opera House struck gold with Anna Nicole.  It has made its impact and will be firmly placed within the canon of 21^st century opera.  Opera Shots provided us two more new pieces The Tell-Tale Heart by Stewart Copeland – drummer and founder of The Police – and The Doctor’s Tale by Anne Dudley with libretto by esteemed Monty Python performer Terry Jones.  Potential they both had: musically, dramatically and lyrically, but for me they both fell flat.

The evening began with Copeland’s adaptation of Poe’s wonderful text.  I am often wary of ‘popular’ composers tackling opera.  Not because of any snobbery on my part or perceived notion of what a musical education should consist of: many of our great ‘popular’ artists were, and continue to be, highly skilled musicians and composers regardless of their background, and many have gone on to shatter the classical world’s illusions.  I am wary because of the main challenge opera poses to even the greatest ‘classical’ composer: a firm understanding of drama.  Popular music, on the whole, is rarely steeped in drama; storytelling yes, but rarely drama.  From what I know of The Police they are hardly the commercial equivalent of Wagner (maybe Kate Bush comes closer?).  And unfortunately my initial prejudices were indeed confirmed when the whole work lacked a sense of dramatic development.

What Copeland did do though, he did very well: he did not manipulate Poe’s text to the extent of destroying the meaning of the words.  A very clever approach to word setting in which Edgar – our protagonist – rhythmically spoke his way (not unlike Schoenberg’s Sprechgesang/Sprechstimme) through the text whilst our chorus of five sang the same libretto simultaneously.  Yet although the text was not lost, the drama was.  The second half of the piece should have built to the climatic discovery of the heart after the continual heightening of the guilt Edgar feels.  But this was not seen in any aspect of the music or text – just denoted by a wriggling and writhing from Edgar on stage.  Hats off to director Jonathan Moore who brought out the madness within the work succinctly and simply throughout, despite the failings of the composer.  Also Richard Suart, as Edgar, was fantastic – a perfect interpretation which could have so easily been mannered.

I expected the second piece to redeem the evening, but unfortunately it too missed the mark.  The concept could have been just wonderful: a local GP who, oddly, is in fact a dog, is forced to stand down by the GMC and then persecuted by those he tries to stand up to.  There could have been a subtext about prejudice, but without it the work would have had a wonderful lightness to it.  The first five minutes of the work showed fantastic promise: beautiful musical lines, the setting up of a great story, etc, but moments of musical and dramatic clunkiness began to impede the work.  For example Dudley threw in random jovial and trivial musical pastiche moments which did not quite work and only made the audience cringe rather than laugh.  Also a misunderstanding of writing for voice meant that a lot of the lines for lower voices just did not project: substantial parts of the score for mezzo Harriet Williams sat below middle C.  My main gripe though was the misunderstanding from both composer and librettist of pace and how episodic moments, with fussy scene changes, really slow down the pace of any theatrical work and can break the fourth wall.  The best moments were when Dudley and Jones were let loose and allowed to wallow in a moment, rather than having to forward the story along.  Jones’ libretto, like Dudley’s music, had flashes of brilliance, but also too many easy rhymes and inelegant and clumsy phrases.

The aspect of the evening that infuriated me the most was not these two substandard operas, but the under rehearsed and frankly student feel of the performances.  Movements were, unintentionally, rarely in sync or accurate; singers often had intonation problems; many set changes were clumsy and not fully considered.  I recently saw Vanesssa by Samuel Barber at the RNCM and although similar issue arose in this production, they were nowhere near as drastic as at the Opera House.  Stylistically the student production was much more slick and well crafted than the effort at Covent Garden.  Writing new opera takes time, money and a lot of effort from many parties.  This hard work was extremely evident in Anna Nicole.  It was nowhere to be seen for these Opera Shots.  I hope this was a blip, or maybe even a bad night (regarding intonation/movement), but I would be horrified to think that the Opera House would take smaller projects less seriously.  Yes Anna Nicole was a huge gamble in so many ways, especially financially, and considering the current situation I do not blame them for thinking with their money heads, but artistic integrity must be 100% regardless of the size or scope of a project. 

Opera Shots is a wonderful concept and I hope the Royal Opera House continues to push it and develop it, but only when and if they have the time, money and resources for what is still an extremely ambitious task: creating new and exciting opera.