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SEEN AND HEARD UK OPERA REVIEW
The Oxford Revolution
Voice of Pokayne - Jonathan McGovern
James Meredith - Marcus Farnsworth
Die Weisse Rose
Sophie Scholl - Aoife Miskelly
Willi Graf - Frederick Long
Hans Scholl - Johnny Herford
Christoph Probst/The Evangelist - Stephen Aviss
Alexander Schmorell/The Grand Inquisitor - John-Owen Miley-Read
First Clerk, Prison Guard - Irina Gheorghiu
Second Clerk, Gestapo Officer 1, Janitor - Jonathan McGovern
Gestapo Officer 2 - Maximilian Fuhrig
Soar to Heaven
Li Jingji (Mother) - Irina Gheorghiu
Wu Taianshi (Father) - Jonathan McGovern
Wu (Son) - Katie Bray
Li (Daughter) - Belinda Williams
Two Younger Children - Hannah Bradbury, Annie Rago
Zhou (Red Guard) - Ruth Jenkins
Red Army Officer 1 - Belinda Williams
Doctor, Red Army Officer 2 - Laura Kelly
Red Army Officer 3 - Irina Gheorghiu
Puppeteers - Helen Bailey, Nicholas Crawley, Kerri-Lynne Dietz, Thomas Elwin, Fiona Mackay, Sarah Shorter
David Pountney (director)
Robert Innes Hopkins (designs)
James Farncombe (lighting)
Carolyn Choa (choreography)
Mark Down (director of puppetry)
Nick Barnes (puppetry designer)
Never say never again: Sir Peter Maxwell Davies had declared that Mr
Emmet Takes a Walk (first performance, 2000) would be his last
music-theatre piece. However, upon appointment to a position at the
Royal Academy of Music, Davies first declined and then, five minutes
later, accepted: 'OK, I'll do it - but it must be about students and I
want to do it with David Pountney … and we should try and do it
somewhere else, as well as the Academy, and make it a joint commission.'
And so, it has come to pass: Pountney has acted as librettist and
director; the Juilliard School has acted as co-commissioner; the new
piece is indeed about students, as indeed was Royal Academy Opera's
recent production of Così fan tutte.
Kommilitonen! presents three stories of student activism, an idea
suggested by Pountney to Davies on account of its alleged
unfashionability. (It depends where one looks really.) In the meantime,
however, the idea has become more topical than the creators might have
expected. The three stories are those of the Mississippi Civil Rights
pioneer, James Meredith (The Oxford Revolution) Munich
students' heroic wartime resistance ( Die weisse Rose), and
Chinese students turning upon their parents during the Cultural
Revolution (Song to Heaven). Short scenes alternate between the
three stories, not always 'in turn' - we do not visit China until the
fifth scene - but nevertheless so as to provide a panorama of student
political experience. The difficulty seems to be how to bring the
stories together, and I was not entirely convinced by the synthesis
attempted at the end, partly because the 'message' is unconvincingly
optimistic - we win because we survive - and partly because the
appearance of characters in each others' worlds simply seems forced.
Moreover, the superimposition, during the second of the two acts, of a
choral voicing of the Passion narrative (in Latin) upon Die weisse
Rose, itself somewhat confusingly sometimes in English and
sometimes in German, seemed equally forced, though religious and
theological concerns have for some time been of great importance to the
composer. The introduction of a Grand Inquisitor was, I assume, a
deliberate nod to Dallapiccolla's magnificent one-act opera of political
commitment, Il prigioniero, or perhaps it was to Schiller, but
it seemed a little arbitrary in the face of what otherwise remained
realistic, reportage even. When compared dramaturgically with a work
such as Il prigioniero, let alone the daring marriage of
agitprop and experimentalism in the operas of Luigi Nono, this did not
always convince, enjoyable - perhaps curiously so - though it certainly
was. Incidentally, I have no idea why Kommilitonen has been
translated as 'Young Blood'; it is neither a literal nor a contextual
translation. 'Fellow students', or, if one wished to be more
'political', '(student) comrades', would surely be preferable.
What of the music, though? Davies did a thoroughly professional job, as
one would expect. The composer has long been associated with music for
younger musicians, children included, and with other community projects.
This, I can imagine, was a joy for the young musicians of Royal Academy
Opera to work upon, nothing too 'difficult', grateful for the voices, an
important choral part, and much to enjoy from the (chamber) orchestral
standpoint too. Davies clearly did not want to present student
performers with something unduly daunting, but at the same time, I could
not help but wonder whether something a little less conservative in
terms of musical language might have worked. Very little, if any, of the
music would have been inconceivable to a composer working in the 1920s.
Berg (a honky-tonk piano inevitably puts one in mind of Wozzeck,
though there are of course precedents in Davies's work too) and
still more so Weill often come to mind in what was in general a frankly
tonal score. Britten seemed a guiding presence too. Despite the division
into twenty-eight scenes, the two acts are through-composed. There are,
though, several memorable moments, not least the choral marching to
glorify the Cultural Revolution, and a splendid trumpet solo (very well
taken) during the confrontation of the Inquisitor with the Munich
students. There is a good bit of parody, long, of course, a
preoccupation of the composer; one could not help but smile at the
incongruent jazz-band puppetry for the Maoist party scene (no.23).
Nevertheless, I equally could not help but wish for the old bite of a
work such as
Eight Songs for a Mad King; it might have been an
angry young man's music, a line difficult to sustain forever, but its
radicalism still takes one's breath away.
Davies had collaborated with Pountney before; indeed, he was the
librettist for Mr Emmet Takes a Walk. 'I knew,' Davies remarks,
'that the stage direction would not be a travesty of text and music'.
And the direction did seem to serve the work well - hardly surprising, I
suppose, if director and librettist are one and the same person. The
stories are generally told clearly and with wit; puppetry, in danger of
becoming merely fashionable on the opera stage, does not fall into that
trap here. Set designs and changes are skilfully conceived and executed.
The intimacy of the Jack Lyons Theatre helps, but great credit is
nevertheless due to all concerned.
Musically, this was very much a company performance rather than any sort
of star vehicle, for which enabling credit is certainly due to composer
and librettist. It seems in that context invidious to single out
particular vocal performers, since all convinced, though I wish the
unwelcome trend of having American characters sing in pseudo-American
accent might be curtailed. No equivalent was attempted with the German
and Chinese stories, so why do so when it comes to the United States?
More importantly, however, one truly gained a sense of singers' musical
and dramatic interaction, having developed a work from scratch. There
were no weak links whatsoever. Jane Glover directed the excellent Royal
Academy Sinfonia with verve and formal clarity.
Mark Berry