SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

A Knife at the Opera: Buddug Verona James (mezzo), Andrew Wilson-Dickson (electronic keyboard). Townhill Theatre, Swansea 29. 4.2009 (GPu)


Buddug Verona James has sung (inter alia) the roles of Orfeo (with Opera Atelier in Canada) and Orlofsky for Holland Park Opera; she has premiered roles in operas by (again, amongst others) Gerald Barry (Intelligence Park), John Woolrich (In The House of Crossed Desires) and Jonathan Dove (Tobias and the Angel). For one company or another she has sung the Sorceress in Dido and Aeneas, Rosina in The Barber of Seville, Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro, Vitige in Flavio – and Mad Margaret in Ruddigore. As an actress she has played roles in the Welsh soap opera Pobol y Cwm and in Welsh-language Shakespeare. Of her versatility there is then, no doubt, and she exploits it to the full in her touring show A Knife at the Opera, in which she plays and sings seven different roles, a show devised with her – and her versatility – in mind.

The show’s spoken text is the work of Chris Harris, himself a considerable comic performer and it amusingly accommodates some very familiar (and one or two slightly less familiar) arias in a fashion which nicely allows both the absurdities and the beauties of opera to come to the fore (and not always one at a time, either).

Six opera critics have been murdered – in a variety of fashions. Each has written venomous reviews of one or more singer (not, of course, the kind of stuff you would ever find on the pages of MusicWeb International). We get to hear some choice quotations from their reviews read out by the detective investigating the murders, one Gethin Gumshoe – accompanied by a sergeant (played by Andrew Wilson-Dickson). Gumshoe turns out himself to be both an opera fan (in love, it seems, with most of the female singers he has ever seen and heard) and an aspirant singer (his performances with the Merthyr Amateur Operatic Society have had some bad reviews too). His investigation of the murders naturally leads him to consider as suspects the six opera singers who have each been the particular victim of the murdered critics.

As Gumshoe, James the actress comes into her own, with some good physical humour, some broad jokes; it’s a nice comic characterisation which creates a figure at times excessively self-confident at others very unsure of himself. The relationship with Wilson-Dickson’s policeman works well and Wilson-Dickson’s performance (beyond his well-established musicianship) has some nice comic touches. Occasionally the necessary costume changes, as James becomes each singer, shedding her Gumshoe raincoat (and moustache) for something more feminine, do rather rob proceedings of momentum, for all of Wilson-Dickson’s work at his electronic keyboard, though even his obvious skill doesn’t entirely reconcile me to that instrument. If resources allowed, some use of film (of the various divas) might be a valuable addition here. But the quibble is a small one – the energy and humour generally carries the audience along well.

The six divas who have become suspects are Miss Macho, Miss Bagwitch, Miss Baroque, Miss Acrobatics, Miss Diva and Miss Dot Demisemiquaver. Each is a kind of ‘specialist’ in the complex operatic trade. Miss Macho specialises in trouser roles – James’s singer is a splendidly accented Russian who intersperses Cossack dance steps in her performance of ‘Bramo di trionfar’ (from Handel’s Alcina). James’ genuinely impressive mezzo voice was heard at its best here. Miss Bagwitch, on the other hand, embodied the lesser-ranking, hard-working professional who specialises in supporting roles as witch or hag, aunt or nanny. James’s Miss Bagwitch – permanently masked when in character (and therefore known, we were happily informed as the “Bantam of the Opera”) had more than a touch of the dominatrix about her (both in appearance and in such details of her private life as we were given). Her aria was ‘Marrito Vorrei’ from La Finta Semplice, sung in a witty translation by Adam Pollock, the humour of which James exploited to the full. What is remarkable in A Knife at the Opera is the success with which it effects sudden transitions from broad humour to moments of poignancy. Thus some knock-about humour prefaced a very moving performance (for me the purely musical highlight of the evening) of Cleopatra’s ‘Piangerò’ from Handel’s Giulio Cesare, James was at this point a very dignified and pained presence on stage, summoning up a complex set of feelings quite without support of context or set. By way of contrast, the performance of Rosina’s ‘Una voce poco fa’ was ‘sung’ by a rather charming squashy doll with a very expressive face seated (like a ventriloquist’s dummy) on the knee of Gethin Gumshoe. Its ‘performer’, Miss Acrobatics naturally embodied the coloratura (coloraturalura as Gumshoe had it) specialist. A splendid red wig, a fine white fur coat and James became ‘Miss Diva’; the fur coat was removed and the castanets picked up to accompany the Spanish costume beneath the coat, and we had the ‘Chanson Bohème’ from Carmen. For all the efforts of James and Wilson-Dickson this was one place where one missed the orchestral colours of the real thing. By way of contrast to the starry figure of Miss Diva, the last of the six singers was Dot Demisemiquaver, the rather prim vegan described in the programme notes as “an intellectual opera singer who reads music very well, and is notable for her disciplined approach both to her music and to her colleagues. As most singers aren’t very good at counting she has found her niche”. Real musical humour depends on competence and there was no doubting the technical skill which underlay Buddug James’s very funny performance of ‘The Unaccompanied Aria’ from Tom Johnson’s The Four Note Opera.

Suspicions were resolved by the not very surprising (but entirely fitting) revelation that Gumshoe himself had been responsible for all the murders – partly because he wanted to revenge the savage reviews meted out to singers he adored and partly because he felt that such critics were one reason why he hadn’t been allowed the opportunity to win a place in the pantheon of Welsh singers, alongside such figures as – in his own words – Allied Jones, Bryn Teflon and Charlotte Chapel. One final opportunity existed. It might be his last performance before justice (or suicide, in the best operatic traditions) caught up with him. He left the stage to return in full Roman soldier’s regalia to sing ‘Dove Sono’ (not to be confused – well not too completely – with Mozart’s aria of the same name), a witty and powerful aria written by Andrew Wilson-Dickson. Like much else in the show it was the product of wit, knowledge and technical accomplishment. At its end, the close of the show, the strains of the theme from The Pink Panther came – as they had before the show began - from the loudspeakers. Inspector Clouseau bookended Handel and Rossini, Mozart and Bizet, in a manner which sums up the spirit (and methods) of this accomplished entertainment.

Both Buddug Verona James and Andrew Wilson-Dickson (each of whom, amongst their many other accomplishments , teach at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama) are fine musicians. What makes for such a delightful evening is their ability to laugh at themselves and their professions, while also demonstrating some of the real beauties and depths of the art. Warmly recommended. Don’t miss any chance you might have to see A Knife at the Opera.

Glyn Pursglove

Buddug Verona James' web site is here.

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