Bernstein - Trouble in Tahiti & Poulenc - La voix humaine (Buxton, 2025)

Trouble in Tahiti - Leonard Bernstein
La voix humaine - Francis Poulenc

Buxton Festival Opera, 2025

Iwan Davies, Daisy Evans, Charles Rice, Hanna Hipp, Chloé Hare-Jones, Harun Tekin, Ross Cumming, Allison Cook

Buxton Opera House, 23rd July 2025

There have been double bills of short operas at the Buxton Festival in the past that have adventurously even managed to connect two different works that appear to have very little in common. I reviewed The Maiden in the Tower & Kashchei the Immortal by Sibelius and Rimsky-Korsakov in 2012 and La Princesse Jaune and La Colombe by Saint-Saëns and Gounod in 2013, but I don't think there has been one since then. This double bill for the 2025 Buxton International Festival is a hard sell however; two works with a very bleak outlook on relationships which, for all their differences, are actually complementary on some level. It still takes a little creativity to link Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti with Poulenc's La voix humaine, but in the Buxton tradition Daisy Evans managed to do that quite successfully, even if that meant doubling up the misery.

As bleak as the outlook is in each of these works individually, their strength is that they are very good at what they do. What they do is present a miniature opera with a concentrated intensity that suits material that would probably be less effective (and unendurable) if they were drawn out any longer. Their very concision make them special, allowing a singular mood to be explored, offering a rare intensity that would feel out of place in a longer work (although Ambroise Thomas has a go at rivalling such emotions with his long soliloquies and a mad scene that lasted a whole Act in Hamlet at the Buxton Festival on the previous evening). Whether the two works gain or not from being connected - or whether they even should be brought together - is debatable, but as far as the Buxton production went it did intensify the works without overburdening their inherent simplicity.

Trouble in Tahiti is a challenge in itself, almost setting itself up to be deeply unlikeable in a way that is hard to define. Bernstein's treads a tricky line between parody and satire, between seducing the audience with catchy show tunes that celebrate the ideal of the typical suburban American married couple (of the 1950s) by setting it to sunny music, with a cheesy chorus, radio jingles and musical numbers while at the same time throwing in some dissonance that hints that there is a dark and corrupting side to the American dream that lies beneath the surface. The libretto throws out some cliched lines, undoubtedly sold by idealistic musicals like the film 'Trouble in Tahiti' that Dinah goes to see, but yet they also reveal truths about the circumstances of a married couple at a standstill in their relationship and about to grow more distant.

There is a lot to 'unpack' in the contrasts of the sunny music and the reality of the disintegration of a relationship, so what you probably don't need in a production of Trouble in Tahiti is anything that just makes it even more 'troubling'. Or maybe you do, because while the opera hints at Sam being a bit on the fresh side with his secretary - something he doesn't even consider as cheating, but just a part of conforming to the natural law of being a man - Daisy Evans' production went further to show evidence of Sam's philandering. She does this quite cleverly (and maliciously) by tying Bernstein's work into Poulenc's La voix humaine.

The presence of Allison Cook behind a lace curtain in a warmly lit room off to one side of stage was an early clue to what was to come in the second part of the double bill, the little box room practically an ideal of a typical set for Poulenc's La voix humaine, a room designed to feel perfectly claustrophobic for a woman waiting on a phone call from her lover, feeling trapped and caged with no way out of her predicament. What you might not have expected however was Sam to wander into the room while he is supposed to be out at the gym and start undressing the lady in the room. It's there that Sam goes to deliver his master of the universe soliloquy, boasting of his masculine superiority, winning another kind of 'trophy'. Is the lady of La voix humaine his secretary, Mrs Brown? She's going to be let down by the time we get to the second part of the double bill. Things really aren't going to get any more cheerful.

"That was the most depressing opera I've ever seen", a lady exclaimed at the interval in the bar of the upper circle at the Buxton Opera House. "Wait until you see the next one", I warned. I didn't of course spoil it for the lady by telling her that La voix humaine is about a woman unravelling at the breakup of a relationship who attempts - and maybe even succeeds - in committing suicide while on the phone to her ex-lover. Perhaps I should have said something, as I'm sure she went home traumatised after Allison Cook's performance as the lady left hanging on the telephone.

That indeed is the unfortunate premise and fate of the lady of Poulenc's (what is usually a) monodrama. The perspective of the double bill production changes accordingly however, the little box room off to the side of Trouble in Tahiti opening up to show a woman spilling sleeping tablets over the dresser and floor as she tries to reconnect a faulty telephone connection so that she can pour her heart out to a man who traditionally we don't actually see on the stage. It's usually the case that no other figures are seen and no other voices heard - or needed in this intense piece - but here the phone is picked up in the home of Sam and Dinah.

Given this insight into the other side of the phone line serves to take in the wider context of what we are witnessing. We see Sam making silent gestures, trying to be placatory and being somewhat insensitive to what he probably sees as emotional blackmail, while it's clear that it really amounts to a call for help to simply hear a sympathetic human voice. That isn't found either when Dinah, tired of these mysterious calls to her husband, picks up the phone and is devastated by what she hears. Not for the woman's sake, of course, but for her own marriage and for which she will probably forgive her husband in the end.

La voix humaine doesn't need this. It's debatable whether it helps in any way to visualise the person on the other end of the line, and take such a determined stand on what their nature might be. We already get hints of that from the one-sided conversation, so it doesn't need to be spelled out. There is something to be said for just letting us see the woman, 'Elle', and Allison Cook did not need any additional props or bodies (the chorus from Tahiti also make mournful appearances) to get across the state of mind of her character. But the touches and the connections were subtle and unobtrusive, and it seemed that rather than opening up the claustrophobic drama, it may indeed have made it feel even more traumatic.

There was perhaps a greater challenge for Iwan Davies and the Buxton Festival Orchestra to marry together the two completely different styles of music for the two short operas, but they presented both superbly. As with the outstanding Hamlet the previous evening, the key to really making all these pieces work is in the singing. Perhaps even more so here since there is a lot of intense solo singing, although Hamlet had that too. Charles Rice as Sam and Hanna Hipp as Dinah were both tremendous, engaging you in their own personal worlds and making you feel the depth of their troubles in their clashes. Allison Cook, much like her Gertrude the previous night, also had a rather extended physical meltdown in this production of La voix humaine as 'Elle', and carried you along, all too emotionally involved in the torment she was going through. 

Whoever was responsible for pairing these two operas together - I imagine it was the Festival Opera director Adrian Kelly - really challenged the audience and put you through the wringer. You weren't going to see many smiling faces when you left the opera house, but it would be hard not to be impressed with the unique qualities of these works, the performances and the creative artistry in making two short operas that never sound all that appealing in synopsis come fully alive and show deep insights into their human characters.

External links: Buxton International Festival

Thomas - Hamlet (Buxton, 2025)

Ambroise Thomas - Hamlet

Buxton International Festival, 2025

Adrian Kelly, Jack Furness, Alastair Miles, Allison Cook, Gregory Feldmann, Richard Woodall, Yewon Han, Joshua Baxter, Tylor Lamani, Dan D’Souza, Per Bach Nissen, John Ieuan Jones, James Liu

Buxton Opera House, 22nd July 2025

Adapting Shakespeare's Hamlet as a grand opéra would necessarily have imposed certain conventions that could only work against the dramatic flow of the play, not to mention the surely unacceptable requirement to rewrite the play's bleak conclusion, so you can't really fault Ambroise Thomas then for the approach he takes. I doubt that even Verdi, a contemporary of the French composer, would have done it much differently since his own versions of Shakespeare take similar necessary liberties with the plot and characterisation to fit with the conventions of the opera form. Well, he might not have included three (not just one, not just two, but three! Or at least two and a half) grand opéra drinking songs, but you can't fault Thomas for excess when it comes to this particular work. To state the obvious, there is a lot of drama in Hamlet.

And death. A lot of dark drama, death, madness, vengeance (you almost wish Verdi had given it a go on that basis, but we have Macbeth and Otello, not to mention Falstaff, and those are all great in their own way) and, drinking songs notwithstanding, that's the ominous tone that rightly dominates in Thomas's Hamlet. Correspondingly, that's the tone that is established in the 2025 Buxton International Festival production directed by Jack Furness and conducted by Adrian Kelly. It's dark, dramatic in voices, ominous in the music, dynamic in its performance, matching the pent up anger of the production's Hamlet, Gregory Feldmann, who paces the stage like a tiger, raging out self-absorbed soliloquies. It maintains this mood so effectively that it comes as no surprise then when we come to the Act IV, we find that Thomas has composed not just a mad scene for Ophelia, but a whole mad Act.

But there are genuine valid reasons for such excess of emotion in Hamlet. Perhaps Thomas's lyrical score and the truncated French language libretto shorn of the original's poetry don't get to the heart of the many factors that contribute to its depth of expression, but the music although romanticised is dramatically attuned. What it needs to work on stage (and rarely achieves in my experience) is a director who is prepared to delve into what remain contemporary and relevant themes in the play that are not fully exploited in the opera version. Jack Furness does just that in a direct and simple way without over-imposition. One of the many themes that can be drawn out of Hamlet for greater attention is the subject of what it is like to live under surveillance in a corrupt, self serving and authoritarian state and the impact this has on society. If there is any theme that is more relevant to the world (and the UK) today, a way that lets us see deep into the heart of the drama of Hamlet and see the changes happening in our contemporary world reflected back at us, it's this.

This is handled well by the director with simple side touches that don't impose on the dramatic content of the opera, but rather give it depth and context. We get a hint of it right at the beginning of the production when a lone protestor runs to the front of the stage during the wedding of the new king Claudius to his dead brother's wife Gertrude with a poster that suggests 'No Kings' or 'Not My King'. He is quickly bundled off stage by heavily armed militia who continue to carry out brutal arrests and beatings in the musical interludes between acts. At the beginning of the final act a hooded woman is led across the stage, knelt down and summarily shot in the back of the head to the shock of the audience.

Where this is relevant is in how it feeds into Hamlet's behaviour. With such state oppression and killing of civilians going on in the background, his fury at the man who he believes has killed and taken the place of his own father is compounded by his inability to translate that righteous anger into action and prevent such wider crimes against the populace. You can feel that in every scene; it's not self-pitying grief but self-questioning doubt. Hamlet rages impotently and hates himself for it, retreating into madness. In that context, the original 'happy ending' composed by Thomas which hurtles in there with no warning, works really well here. Or is made to do so by Jack Furness in the Buxton production.

Thomas's original ending sees Hamlet alive and crowned king, but since it wasn't felt that this twist would be accepted in Shakespeare's own country, it had to be reworked for the opera's London premiere a year later in 1869. Not that Hamlet expiring over the dead body of Ophelia in the final scene is any truer to Shakespeare, but letting Hamlet live and become ruler opens up more questions that it resolves. Here, since the director has laid the groundwork for what a corrupt ruler has done to his people, Hamlet knows that action is needed; the voices of the dead tell him. He knows also that he can't just unleash chaos and leave it for someone potentially worse to come along, but needs to own it. Even Shakespeare's play, although it ends on a completely different note, nonetheless has a similar message that Hamlet's story must serve as an example to others.

What also helped the opera work so well in the Buxton International Festival production was a balanced restraint in the set designs and presentation. For the most part the drama takes place on narrow platforms on a wide staircase. It looked like Sami Fendall's set designs would be inadequate for such an epic drama but - a little like Olivier Py's production of this opera - it recognises that the real drama in Hamlet is an interior struggle. As such, Jake Wiltshire's hugely effective lighting and swirling mists provided a great deal of support to make Thomas's score feel much more ominous than it might have otherwise. There were however additional touches where required; a slatted wall a cage where Hamlet prowled like a tiger unable to pounce on his vulnerable uncle, and the riverbank scene for Ophelia; both scenes simple but effective. The underlying menace was ever present in the US ICE-like immigration military troops maintaining order by rounding up protestors and troublemakers.

Conducted by Buxton's musical director Adrian Kelly, the festival orchestra gave a balanced reading of the score with no inappropriate Verdi-like bursts of thunder. Instead, the flowing melodies and the dramatic accompaniment of the score were allowed to work within the context of the stage production to achieve the necessary impact. Best of all was the singing. There was well-deserved acclaim for Yewon Han's Ophélie. She very much has a key role in the opera and not just a scene stealing role despite being written to appeal to a French audience in thrall to the character, but here the role was dramatically coherent and, as sung by Yewon Han, vocally effective. Allison Cook was excellent as Gertrude. Often the victim of Hamlet's anger and abuse, she rose to the challenge of the role and you really felt Gertrude's conflicted position. Alastair Miles is still one of the best bass singers in the UK and was outstanding as Claudius. Gregory Feldmann's intensely delivered soliloquies as Hamlet were met with surprising silence during the performance. That was more of an indication that they were too raw, too real, and it seemed rude to intrude upon his grief with applause that would have broken the spell. At the curtain call however he received and deserved every plaudit and cheer.

I haven't had a lot of time for Thomas's Hamlet up to now, but to be fair it is not performed that often and as an opera it has to compete with one of the greatest plays in the English language, in French moreover and in a grand opéra format, so the challenges are considerable. The production I saw in Strasbourg in 2011 appeared to have been heavily cut and seemed to me disjointed and I couldn't get past what had been done to Shakespeare's poetry and dramatic drive, As an actor himself, Olivier Py showed that there was considerably more you could do with the work in his 2014 production for at La Monnaie in Brussels, but Jack Furness and Buxton have proved again that neglected works with perceived flaws can have those weaknesses turned into strengths. What they do here in opera terms is what any dramatic presentation should do when confronted with a complex work like Hamlet, which is make it feel vital, relevant and relatable. And any production of Hamlet whether theatrical or operatic should have you gripped, shocked and impressed, and this superb production at Buxton did just that.

External links: Buxton International Festival

Strauss - Salome (Ghent, 2025)

Richard Strauss - Salome

Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, 2025

Alejo Pérez, Ersan Mondtag, Allison Cook, Thomas Blondelle, Angela Denoke, Michael Kupfer-Radecky, Denzil Delaere, Linsey Coppens, Daniel Arnaldos, Hugo Kampschreur, Timothy Veryser, Hyunduk Kim, Marcel Brunner, Reuben Mbonambi, Leander Carlier, Igor Bakan

OperaVision - 16th January 2025

The German theatre director Ersan Mondtag, should his opera work become more regularly produced and distributed, looks likely to become someone worth following. Already noted for his work on Franz Schreker's Der Schmied von Ghent at the Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, Heinrich Marschner's Der Vampyr at Staatsoper Hamburg and on Rued Langgaard's Antikrist for the Deutsche Oper Berlin, whether he provides any great insights into those works or not, the fact that he works with challenging pieces of a certain character is reason enough to take notice. That and the fact that he clearly has a very distinctive and colourful approach to opera direction, as is evidenced again here in another production of a very challenging work that he has undertaken for the Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, Richard Strauss's Salome.

Extravagantly staged, with not too much in the way of personal re-interpretation, the only way I can describe Ersan Mondtag's visual look for the Flanders production of Salome is that it seems to appeal more to the feel of the Gothic otherworldliness of Oscar Wilde's Symbolist dramatic poetry in appearance and mood. It doesn't hold to any Biblical context or appear to hint at any modern day commentary. Rather, it has a fairy-tale look that seems to inhabiting the same dark mystical world of Pelléas et Mélisande’s Allemonde or Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle; which is to say a world of dark mystery with an underlying threat of menace and violence, it explores dark corners of forbidden desire that can't be easily brought out or expressed rationally or in any more familiar human terms.

Wilde and Strauss's faithful German version of this struggle with forbidden desires is marked between the corrupt, twisted lust of Salome which pits itself against the steadfast moral purity of John the Baptist, or Jokanaan. It's not clear from this production that Ersan Mondtag takes any new, original or even discernible position on this. That fact is borne out by a short production video on the OperaVision site where the two Salomes for this production run, Allison Cook and Astrid Kessler, both have different views on the nature of the Princess, the former seeing her as a "victim" the other a "brat". Mondtag doesn't seem to come down on one side or the other, nor indeed really have any contribution to make or contemporary resonance on the work, unlike say the recent Tcherniakov Hamburg or the Christof Loy Helsinki productions. Or at least no overt contemporary reference. The programme notes suggest that the director "sees parallels between the historical Herod, vassal of the Roman Empire, and contemporary dictators such as Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko", but I'm not sure you would come to this conclusion independently.

The set may in fact distract from drawing any such allusion, but Herod's castle with its huge statues carved out of stone, demonic murals and opening to a dungeon certainly has a bold and menacing appearance. Impressive looking, it illustrates the scene well in terms of a kind of banality in its dull expression of a brutal controlling regime where corruption is indulged, even celebrated. It's a grey, dusty world of stone, Herod's militaristically dressed troops pale and colourless. Even Narraboth is not distinguished from the surrounding dullness, although Herodias's Page wears black. Only Salome and Jokanaan stand out against this forbidding background, Salome with fiery red hair in long blood red split leg robe, and Jokanaan austere and pale as ivory, undoubtedly from his imprisonment in the dark dungeon at the lower level of the castle, wearing a loin cloth and bright purple robe.

With a kind of Gothic Soviet brutalism on the outside, the second scene of the opera revolves to present a contrasting decadent brothel-like world of the interior court of Herod, the disputing Jews all grey bald pointy headed and alien-like, the women in grotesque grey costumes with pointed hoods. Herod comes in a fat bodysuit, a wonderfully irreverent caricature of a Lukashenko-like leader. In this environment Salome's Dance of the Seven Veils really comes to life and extends outward, the dreamlike fairy-tale fantasy imagery of obscene naked body suited dancers extending Salome's desire for Jokanaan and entwining itself with Herodias's nightmare and offstage screams of horror. Along with Herod's lustful desires, it blends together the fevered atmosphere of the combined lusts, fears and desires of all assembled.

It's the best part of this production, making the most of the music Strauss composed for this section and it ties in well with the scene of wholesale slaughter that seems to be the only natural outcome for this decadent regime at the always shocking climax of the opera. These key scenes might be the best part of the production design, where the choreography and direction all have something more to offer, but elsewhere Mondtag's direction remains in complete accordance with the score and its performance here at Opera Ghent. Conducted by Alejo Pérez, it's dark and seductive where it ought to be, luring you in, but hinting at the dangers to come in flashes of decadent dissonance and menace such as the deep rumble of the "rustling of giant wings".

Just as critical to the work as a whole are the singing performances and we really have some terrific singing here from an excellent cast, conveying all the extremes of the expressions of secret taboo lusts and the corruption of power. Allison Cook is excellent throughout as Salome but really comes into her own in the final scene, sung exceptionally well. In an interview she describes the need to approach the role like a marathon, demanding stamina and the ability to build the role up in stages. That technique is very much in evidence here and works powerfully, throwing herself completely into the character and reality of the horror she has wrought.

There is perhaps more of a hand of a director in this production then in the defining of characters, or at least that's the way it seems from how well each of the performers make an impression in their acting and singing roles. Jokanaan of course remains an enigma, an object of lust as well one of moral purity that only reflects or highlights the corruption of the soul that has fermented in this hypocritical and repressive society that indulges it own vices while condemning others, and perhaps that's really what Michael Kupfer-Radecky's performance succeeds in revealing here. Thomas Blondelle is also excellent as Herod, again making a real presence and contribution to the intent of the work as a whole, and it's great to see the Angela Denoke giving her customary fearless performance as Herodias. 

External links: OperaVision, Opera Ballet Vlaanderen 

Strauss - Salome (London, 2018)

Richard Strauss - Salome

English National Opera, London - 2018

Martyn Brabbins, Adena Jacobs, Allison Cook, David Soar, Michael Colvin, Susan Bickley, Stuart Jackson, Clare Presland, Trevor Eliot Bowes, Ceferina Penny, Simon Shibambu, Ronald Nairne, Daniel Norman, Christopher Turner, Amar Muchhala, Alun Rhys-Jenkins, Jonathan Lemalu, Robert Winslade Anderson, Adam Sullivan

The Coliseum, London - 12 October 2018

The English National Opera has been struggling to establish an identity in recent years (amongst other financial, artistic and personnel problems), so it was interesting to see that the current new season would have a strong female perspective with works that would "explore and examine some of the patriarchal structures, relationships and roles of masculinity within our society." The first production of the season, Richard Strauss's Salome directed by Adena Jacobs, an Australian theatre director working in opera for the first time, might not entirely fulfil the remit, but offers some new outlooks on a surprisingly adaptable text and score.

Oscar Wilde's original play can hardly be seen as a feminist work and hardly presents its female characters in the most flattering light, but it is very much a work that explores sexual desire and power, challenges social attitudes and gives it a very strong female focus. Wilde's concerns would be very much personal ones of course, to do with unspoken and unspeakable lusts and the danger of exposing them to a hypocritical society that is fascinated by but represses such urges, or at least the public expression of them. Coming from a woman, as it does in Salome, is even more challenging and daring.

Given voice through Wilde's decadent poetic reverie and imagery through a woman, Salome can still shock and make an impact 100 years after it was composed and still challenge conventional morality, social inequalities and gender issues, not least in Richard Strauss's extraordinary tone poem score for the work, a score that also pushed the boundaries of musical expression. While Salome's actions are hardly flattering towards the female sex, they have been twisted on one side by exposure to the corruption and vice of the court of Herod, the Tetrarch, and struggle on the other with the condemnation of religious authorities represented by Jokanaan. It's in highlighting how female expression is crushed between such "patriarchal structures" that Jacobs' production is at least partially successful.

Considering that Salome is a one-act opera that takes place in a single location, the production design at least manages to be varied and expressive of more than just the physical location, attempting rather to illustrate the very intense interior drama that takes place in the mind of Salome. Taken on those terms - and Wilde's use of symbolism in his text would certainly tend to lead it in that direction - it might excuse some of the more random and expressionistic touches applied. Herod in particular is rather grotesquely presented in a bathrobe, glittery vest and undershorts and wallows around in the disturbingly large amount of blood spilled by the suicide of Salome's guard and silent admirer Narraboth. As an expression of the corruption and hypocrisy of the court of the Tetrarch, it makes its point.

That's one side of the oppressive force in the society that Salome has been brought up in. The other is the religious moralising of the prophet Jokanaan, whose mystical imagery and phrasing presents an authoritative and attractive alternative, but Salome comes to find it also prohibitive. Disdainful of the earthly treasures promised by Herod, attracted to the condemnation of her despised step-father and his corrupt, vice-ridden world, and aroused by the alluring promises of Jokanaan (something that is very much brought out in the resonant bass register of the role), Salome reacts violently when neither of these patriarchal structures offer her any personal expression or freedom, but rather seek to further enslave her and any like-minded women with their own strong sense of identity and desires.

The imagery that Adena Jacobs uses in the ENO production can be somewhat obvious, but it least it doesn't need to rely on the sometimes obvious symbolism and imagery that Wilde has provided (the moon, blood, ripe fruit). Some of it is more successful than others; the moon inverted into a black hole surrounded by flowers for the concluding scene of Salome with the head of Jokanaan is striking as a visual representation of Salome's dark desire. The backdrop of a woman with a blindfold not so meaningful - blind desire, abused woman kept in the dark or something else, take your choice. Elsewhere the use of live cameras didn't offer anything more to the intensity of the work, one camera affixed to a muzzle over the mouth of Jokanaan, another seemed to be carried by Narraboth watching Salome, but since nothing was shown of the latter, I presume the camera malfunctioned at the performance I attended.

Much, but probably not as much as you think, can rest on the centrepiece of the Dance of the Seven Veils. Here, to be frank, it was a bit of a mess. Salome was presented as a joggers-wearing teenager, the dance performed mostly around the decapitated and spilled guts of a giant pink My Little Pony by a team of twerking backing dancers that you would see for an artist like Beyoncé. Beyoncé may be seen in some circles as the representation of female empowerment, but by others she is nothing more than a money-making product and business woman in a (patriarchal) music industry. If there was any female empowerment done it wasn't here but perhaps more in Salome getting dirty with herself in her earlier encounter with Jokanaan.

Whether Jacobs' production and direction brings anything new out of the work, whether it succeeds in tapping into female desire any more than Wilde and Strauss is debatable, but it was at least someway successful in harnessing the unquestionable power of the work. Far more was done on that front however by Martyn Brabbins conducting of the English National Opera Orchestra, sensitive to the light and shade of the work and its fluid dynamic, a little muddy in places, but breathtakingly thunderous in the impact and punctuation of the thematic motifs that accompany the action.

The musical pleasures were supplemented by some good singing and dramatic performances. Allison Cook wasn't strong all the way across the formidable range of Salome, but her delivery of the high end was chilling and precision powered, particularly in the calling for the head of Jokanaan. David Soar's bass had a persuasive warmth and authoritative allure as Jokanaan (supplemented of course by Strauss's majestic brass fanfares). Michael Colvin has the right kind of fragile seediness as Herod and was perfectly accompanied by Susan Bickley's Herodias. There were fine performances also from Stuart Jackson as Narraboth and Clare Presland's Page. The quality of the singing and the delivery of Strauss's remarkable score went some way to salvaging a rather messy production that nonetheless had some interesting points of character and distinction.

Links: English National Opera

Turnage - Anna Nicole

Mark-Anthony Turnage - Anna Nicole

The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London 2011

Antonio Pappano, Richard Jones, Eva-Maria Westbroek, Alan Oke, Gerald Finley, Susan Bickley, Loré Lixenberg, Peter Hoare, Rebecca de Pont Davies, Allison Cook, Andrew Rees, Grant Doyle, Wynne Evans

Opus Arte

Dealing with a low-brow subject, treating it to an outlandish and tasteless staging, with crude language and bad-taste humour, there is a danger that Anna Nicole, an opera by Mark Anthony Turnage about the former Playboy model who died of a drug overdose in 2007, could be accused of making Eurotrash out of American Trash, but the language and the staging befits the tone of its subject. The barrage of rhyming couplets in the libretto from Richard Thomas (Jerry Springer the Opera) may clearly signal their intention to rhyme at the end with four-letter words and other mildly shocking profanities, but at the same time there is wit and pathos here in a libretto that actually manages to cut through the niceties directly to harsh crude reality of the circumstances of Anna Nicole Smith’s life, unpalatable though that might be to the average opera-going audience. Benjamin Britten and particularly Billy Buddcomes to mind in the use of language, in its subject – which is also about a kind of loss of innocence on a bigger level than just the personal – and in Turnage’s score, which also adopts his usual jazz and American influences, successfully finding the right tone for each occasion.

The colourful, tastefully tacky set-designs by Richard Jones also adopt the right tone with plenty of eye-catching sights not commonly seen in an opera house, including a sequence in a lap-dancing parlour replete with artificial breast-enhanced women twirling themselves gymnastically and provocatively from poles. The decision to present the opera as if it were a reality-TV show in which a chorus of TV hosts interview Anna Nicole Smith, already dead but looking back over her life and tracing the path from smalltown girl to media celebrity that will ultimately lead to her destruction, is a masterstroke and it imbues the piece with a slightly sinister edge that grows as the opera proceeds. The tone darkens considerably by the second half, when it does indeed become a tragedy, as the people in Smith’s life disappear to be replaced by masses of ominous black figures with TV cameras for heads.

Antonio Pappano, conducting the orchestra of the Royal Opera House, does well to allow the music score to assert its presence and not be overshadowed by the spectacle or the libretto. Eva-Maria Westbroek is marvellous in the title role, and well supported by Gerald Finlay and Alan Oke. As more of a Wagnerian soprano, Westbroek is not really tested by the limited singing demands of the role, but she sings exceptionally well and manages to bring out the inherent humanity of her character, never letting her be merely an icon, nor indeed, allowing the performance to descend into parody. Whether the opera ultimately has anything new to say or whether it touches on anything deeper in its subject – if indeed there is anything deeper to be drawn from its subject – is questionable, but Anna Nicole demonstrates nonetheless that opera can still be a vital artform to address contemporary subjects in a powerful manner that can connect with a modern audience.

On Blu-ray from Opus Arte, the opera – opening with a legal disclaimer that it is “not intended to be an actual factual depiction of any person” – looks every bit as bold as it should, the striking colours deeply saturated, with strong blacks and contrasts, and a good level of detail. This often looks just stunning, and it is well filmed, picking out the singers at the right moments, while also allowing the overall impact of the set to be appreciated. The audio tracks in PCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 are also effective in allowing the detail of the musical arrangements to come through. Subtitles are in English (so you can check that they actually sang what you thought they sang but couldn’t quite believe), French, German and Spanish. Aside from a Cast Gallery, the only other extra on the disc is a brief Production Report (8:25), introduced by Pappano, which nonetheless covers the development of the opera well with interviews with Turnage, Thomas and Westbroek.

Turnage - Anna Nicole

Mark-Anthony Turnage - Anna Nicole

The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London

Antonio Pappano, Richard Jones, Eva-Maria Westbroek, Alan Oke, Gerald Finley, Susan Bickley, Loré Lixenberg, Peter Hoare, Rebecca de Pont Davies, Allison Cook, Andrew Rees, Grant Doyle, Wynne Evans

World Premiere - February 17th, 2011

A few eyebrows will have been raised, and no little amount of scepticism expressed, when it was announced that Mark-Anthony Turnage would be writing an opera for the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden about Anna Nicole Smith, a former Playboy model who died of a drug overdose in 2007. In reality, however there’s nothing at all new about opera dealing with women who live scandalous lives and come to an untimely end. If Turnage’s Anna Nicole is unlikely however to be considered a masterpiece on the scale of Madama Butterfly, La Bohème, La Traviata or Lulu, it at least has the advantage of dealing with a contemporary subject with the kind of social lifestyle and aspirations that a modern audience can relate to more easily. And if the merits of Anna Nicole as an opera can certainly be questioned, there is at least no doubt, judging from the headlines and media attention that it has generated, that is indeed a worthy subject of great interest to the general public.

Commissioned by the Royal Opera House under the direction currently of Antonio Pappano – a great supporter of opening up opera to a wider audience – the general public would at least have been no doubt familiar with the subject of the opera, Anna Nicole Smith, and have some familiarity with the nature of her “career” and the circumstances of her death at the age of only 39. What was rather less certain was the tone that would be adopted by Mark-Anthony Turnage (Greek, The Silver Tassie) – a composer who can be rather experimental in his work, and is known for incorporating jazz and other forms of modern music into his compositions. It didn’t take too long for it to be established that the tone of the opera would be heavily influenced by the choice of Richard Thomas as librettist, the resulting barrage of rhyming couplets, with a high swearword quotient, bring Anna Nicole closer to Thomas’ work on Jerry Springer the Opera than to Turnage’s Greek.

Initial and surface impressions however prove to be deceptive, for while Anna Nicole Smith’s early life, her escape from the “shithole” backwater of Mexia (pronounced Mu-HAY-ah, we are told, as if it gives the town some kind of distinction) and her first marriage to Billy Smith is very much the kind of material that US daytime TV shows thrive on, it does nonetheless have a relevance to how a large proportion of society live and it reflects their aspirations, unpalatable thought they may appear to an opera-going audience. Just as significantly, the manner in which the opera is initially presented and the tone it strikes is vitally important, and indeed it ought to match and be appropriate to the content. The decision then to present it through the medium of a chorus of TV hosts to whom Anna Nicole, already dead but looking back over her life in the manner of a reality TV show and tracing the path that will ultimately lead to her destruction, is a masterstroke, imbuing the piece with a slightly sinister edge that grows as the opera proceeds. The opera darkens considerably by the second half, when it does indeed become a tragedy, as the people in her life disappear to be replaced by masses of ominous black figures with TV cameras for heads.

While there are certainly plenty of eye-catching sights in the imaginative, colourful, tastefully tacky set-designs (by Richard Jones) to provide entertainment, with strong language and even a sequence in a lap-dancing parlour replete with breast-enhanced women twirling themselves gymnastically and provocatively from poles – all things that are, I think it’s safe to say, not all that common on the stage of the Royal Opera House and likely therefore to generate interest and headlines – it’s easy to be distracted from what is going on musically and in the opera as a whole. Richard Thomas’ rhyming couplets, which deliberately clearly signal their intentions to rhyme at the end with four-letter words and other mildly shocking profanities, actually manage to cut through the niceties directly to harsh realities of the circumstances of Anna Nicole’s life in a tone that is appropriate and understandable to a modern-day audience. It’s reality-TV language, but there’s something in the phenomenon and popularity of reality-TV as a representation of the American Dream that is worth examining, and Thomas’ libretto gets to the hard truths and the tragedy of it all, wrapping it up cleverly in pithy, satirical and witty phrases.

It’s easy also to be distracted from what Turnage is doing musically, but he, likewise, succeeds allowing the nature of the opera’s subject to establish the correct tone rather than imposing his own upon it. In doing so moreover, Turnage nonetheless finds a perfect expression for his own musical language and the often American influences that he draws from and incorporates into his music. Anna Nicole Smith’s leaving of Mexia (pronounced Mu-HAY-ah), for Huston, where she works in a Wal-Mart store, is set to a blues rhythm that matches the zombie-like movements of its employees, a swinging jazz percussion accompaniment is used for the strip-club scene, while other scenes evoke George Gershwin. Antonio Pappano, conducting the orchestra of the Royal Opera House, succeeded in allowing the music score to assert its presence at such times, darkening the tone considerably in the tragedy of the Second Act, by which stage the audience were thoroughly in the grip of the piece and solemnly mindful of where it was leading. Much credit for the embodiment of the tragedy that Anna Nicole’s life would represent has to go to the Eva-Maria Westbroek. As a Wagnerian soprano, her voice wasn’t at all tested by the limited singing demands of the role, but she sang exceptionally well and managed to bring out the inherent humanity of her character, never letting her be merely an icon, nor indeed, allowing it to descend into parody.

Whether Anna Nicole is ultimately considered a success as an opera – it received a very warm reception at its World Premiere from the audience at Covent Garden and a guardedly positive response from the national press – it is at least a success as far as the Royal Opera House is concerned, selling out its initial short run of six shows, but more importantly generating more interest and front page headlines than any other important opera event, premiere or any drawing of the biggest names in the opera to the house have achieved. Beyond its artistic merits, whether the opera ultimately has anything new to say or whether it touches on anything deeper in its subject – all of which are debatable and subjective – what Anna Nicole demonstrates is that opera can still be a vital artform that can address contemporary subjects in a powerful manner that connects with a modern audience.