Sleepwalking

 And so to the opera. I have been out and about for the last week or so, including a brief trip to Glasgow, to which I may return in due course. But most of my time has been spent at the Buxton International Festival, specifically the opera part of it. 

The best thing I saw was an excellent production of Bellini's 'La sonnambula', which transcended the original sexist power set-up in a rather novel, and much appreciated by the audience, twist at the end. Set in a sixties staff canteen - more 'Made in Dagenham' than 'Dinnerladies' - the period details were finely judged; Lisa dropped more than her handkerchief following the arrival of the mysterious stranger. Both musically and dramatically it was very good indeed.

I was less taken with performances of Mozart's 'Il re pastore' and Handel's 'Orlando', although as I'm never likely to get the chance to see either again I am glad that I was able to on this occasion. The singing and playing was very good, but the operas are somewhat slight, especially dramatically. Alexander the Great appears in the Mozart piece and was played as Napoleon, which was amusing even if the characterisation was mainly displayed by him wearing his bicorne sideways. If neither of those pieces gave one the opportunity to be emotionally invested in what was going on on stage that was made up for in the musical 'The Land of Might-Have-Been', in which the story of Vera Brittain in the First World War was told accompanied by, mainly, the songs of Ivor Novello. I thought it all worked rather well, albeit being very reminiscent of many similarly toned plays I saw between 2014 and 2018 as the centenary of the war which didn't end all wars was commemorated. Still, I hope the story of the losses and sacrifices and futility of those years never ceases to have an impact on me, and it certainly did this time. 

Silla

 And so to the opera. In a rare crossover between the ultimate art form and wargaming I have been to see Handel's 'Silla'. The 'Infamy, Infamy' game which I played in Nottingham a couple of weeks ago took place in the Social War of 91-87 BCE, and the Lucius Cornelius Sulla who was involved in those as a military commander becomes Silla in Rossi's libretto. The setting is (sort of - it's not terribly historically accurate) the civil wars of a few years later, through winning which Sulla/Silla becomes dictator. It is, as the programme tells us, about a womanising populist leader who rises to power, but is brought down by those closest to him when he loses his appeal to the populace. It had a contemporary setting (*), presumably so that the audience could more easily read into it whatever parallels they could find.

It was all very good, although the music seemed vaguely familiar. Some subsequent research tells me that the dramma per musica was written for a specific time and place, only performed once and the music was simply used again in 'Amadigi de Gaula' which, of course, I saw last autumn. Among what is by now the traditional trouser-role same-sex relationships and gender-swapping, this production of 'Silla' did contain a couple things I'd never seen before at the opera. At one point Mars, god of war, encouraged the audience to clap along, which did nothing so much as prove that classical music audiences are as incapable of keeping rhythm as any other sort. Then, a bit later on, some members of the orchestra joined in the singing. If you live long enough then you will see most things eventually.

 * I can't help thinking they missed a trick by not setting it in 1960s Liverpool and giving a key role to the cloakroom attendant at the Cavern, all of which would undoubtably have been a lorra lorra laughs. 

World Opera Day

Lack of wargaming here has been compounded by quite a lot of people that I know going down with Covid plus a large house being rendered totally uninhabitable by a water leak. I haven't been ill and it's not my house - although it used to be - but the knock-on effects have kept me away from my duties as a bloggist. I haven't however been kept away from the opera, and as it's World Opera Day I am minded to catalogue those that I have seen.

The plot of English Touring Opera's 'Amidigi di Gaula' by Handel is a love triangle with added sorceress and knitting. At a key moment our hero shows his friend a picture of the woman he loves, only for the friend to realise that they both love the same person. This trope seemed very familiar and I spent quite some time trying to recollect which other piece of high culture I had seen it in before. I eventually came to the conclusion that I had been thinking of the Laurel and Hardy film about the French Foreign Legion (the name of which escapes me for the moment), in which everyone has joined up to escape a broken heart and are found to  all be carrying a photograph of the same woman. I can't remember whether as many of them end up dead as was the case here.

Death often features in opera, but not usually to the extent of Holst's Savitri where he appears as a character in his own right. In Northern Opera Group's production he comes in through a side entrance and stalks slowly and menacingly through the audience before reaching the stage, being implausibly tricked out of his victim and exiting stage right still singing. I preferred that to the other Holst one-act opera it was coupled with, 'The Boar's Head'. The basis for this was all the Falstaff pub scenes in Shakespeare's Henry VI plays taken out of context and rammed together. I think I'm reasonably au fait with those, but I still couldn't work out what was going on. And for some reason the fact the staging featured a door but no walls irritated me enormously.

Back to death on the stage, although this time in a ballet. Opera North's Bernstein double bill included his opera 'Trouble in Tahiti' coupled with 'West Side Story Symphonic Dances'. In the former no one dies (although perhaps it's true to say that love does), but in the latter, well we all know the story. According to the programme the choreography reflects life in South Africa under apartheid, but it looked like the same old street gangs to me; I enjoyed it anyway.

2 Chronicles 21:14

Your bloggist is a notorious Billy No-mates, and is therefore as psychologically prepared as anyone for self-isolation. But just to be sure I have put some cultural fuel in the tank to see me through.

Opera: I saw Opera North's excellent new production of Kurt Weill's 'Street Scene'. They have a real flair for musical theatre and for his work in particular. I wish they would revive their production of 'One Touch of Venus'. I also saw OperaUpClose's 'Madam Butterfly'. It was set in modern Japan and the scenery was quite reminiscent of the poor neighbourhood in 'Parasite' if you've seen that. As usual with that company I really enjoyed the small scale and intimacy, but - and it's a big but - they changed the ending. How can you change the ending of Madam Butterfly? I also saw a concert featuring various Baroque works including Purcell's 'The Yorkshire Feast Song', which was apparently commissioned for the annual dinner of the London Society of Yorkshiremen in 1690. Clearly the bastards have been banging on about how wonderful they are for centuries; although now I've written that I don't know why I am in the slightest surprised. Also on the programme was Handel's 'Eternal Source of Light Divine', a setting of the poem by Ambrose Philips. Whilst Philips was no great shakes as a poet, he was the original 'Namby-Pamby'; don't tell me this blog isn't educational.

Theatre: I saw a very fine, very dark version of 'Oliver Twist', by Ramps on the Moon, a company which mixes D/deaf, disabled and able bodied actors in productions which build captioning, sign language and other forms of accessibility right into the fabric of the show (see here for their version of 'The Threepenny Opera' - also, satisfyingly, composed by Weill) . In a way this production was the opposite of colour blind casting, with the actors' deafness being the crucial link that held Fagin's gang together. The Artful Dodger teaching Oliver to sign was as central as teaching him to pick pockets. Bill Sykes is one of the most terrifying characters in literature and drama, and the effect is only heightened by him not speaking. Also up was a really different take on 'Pride and Prejudice' with an all female cast giving us the sweary version that one must assume Jane Austen would have written were it not for all those boring nuances of etiquette in place at the time. I won't write a review (read this one if you're interested),  but it was just brilliant and laugh out loud funny all the way through.

Film: Jane Austen popped up in the cinema as well, with the current take on Emma being well worth watching. I thought that they managed to capture the essence of the characterisations - notably Mr Woodhouse's hypochondria - without reams of exposition. I mentioned it above, but 'Parasite' is obviously rather good, in an Alfred Hitchcock sort of way. Whether it's the best film of the last year or so is less clear. I also caught up with 'Rocketman' and thought it was great. It's fascinating that it and 'Bohemian Rhapsody' tell stories with some similarities of narrative and theme in such different ways.

Let's finish with some music to cheer us up. This is Townes Van Zandt and 'Waiting Around to Die':

Hey, nonny, nonny

And so to the opera. Having seen a theatrical production of 'Much Ado About Nothing' earlier this year I have now been to see Charles Villiers Stanford's rarely performed opera based on the play. You might be starting to think that there are an awful lot of rarely performed operas being, well, performed; and you would be right. The summer is full of festivals whose main purpose seems to be to seek out obscure operas and stage them. In addition these things go in cycles; Handel for example was out of favour, in terms of his operas, until the 1990s and now they're everywhere.

As usual when I see something rarely done I thought it was perfectly good, and couldn't tell you why no one performs it any more. It's one of Shakespeare's more ridiculous plots and so lends itself to operatic treatment quite nicely. There's a balcony scene and the director placed Hero's traitorous maid on the actual balcony of the hall, but sadly chose not to have Borachio climbing a ladder up from the stalls to reach her. Professor Dibble, the world's foremost authority on Stanford no less, said before the performance that the composer was at his best in comic opera. Despite that I am sad to report that the whole Dogberry routine wasn't any funnier for being put to music than it is in the play. Perhaps that's what the Manchester Guardian had in mind when they wrote at the time of its first  performance: "Not even in the Falstaff of Arrigo Boito and Giuseppe Verdi have the characteristic charm, the ripe and pungent individuality of the original comedy been more sedulously preserved."

I can't tell you much about Stanford (1852-1924); the only book about him (by Professor Dibble naturally) is out of print and copies change hands for around £500, which speaking as an accountant suggests it might be worth reprinting. He taught composition to students who went on to be more well-known such as Holst and Vaughan Williams, plus others who no doubt would have gone on to great things had they not been killed in the Great War. He is undergoing a bit of a revival at the moment - if I understood Officer, sorry, Professor Dibble properly there are plans to stage another of his operas at Wexford - and there is plenty of his large output available on CD or indeed Youtube. I rather like this short setting of a poem by Mary Coleridge:

Mary Coleridge was of course related to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, but she wasn't in any way related to Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. To bring things full circle the latter studied under Stanford, who conducted the premiere of his pupil's most famous work 'The Song of Hiawatha'.

Incidentally, the librettist of 'Much Ado About Nothing', Julian Sturgis, also performed the same function for Sir Arthur Sullivan's single serious opera 'Ivanhoe'. However, perhaps what makes him unique amongst opera composers or librettists is that he also played in two FA Cup Finals. It was a different world in those days.

Pot74pouri

Has anyone else received an email from Google purporting to explain how effectively or otherwise one's blog is dealt with by their search engine? I didn't really understand it and, let's be honest, I don't care anyway, but one thing did rather leap out from their analysis. Virtually everyone who gets Discourses on Wargaming's url displayed in their search results is actually looking for gay porn. Your bloggist has lost 8 kg in weight over the last year and is looking pretty buff, even if he says so himself; so on balance, well done Google. However, further investigation also points to a single post from almost five years ago about an opera I went to see, Handel's misleadingly titled 'Joshua' (It's really about Othniel - yes, that Othniel), as the source of the traffic. So, today's post should start it all off again; perhaps I should get get some advertising on the site to monetise the upcoming surge in visitors.

Anyway, while I'm here let me bring you up to date on events in January that I have neglected to mention so far:

Opera: I saw Opera North's revival of 'Madama Butterfly' which was as good as I remembered. Anne Sophie Duprels was wonderful in the title role and appropriately enough kept her clothes on this time. I also saw the Royal Opera House live transmission of 'Rigoletto' which proved once again that closeups can sometimes not work to the advantage of sopranos playing much younger parts. Just to avoid charges of sexism, Michael Fabiano may also have been favoured by watching from further away. He was physically a very unconvincing starving poet in last year's 'La Boheme' and here he appeared to be wearing a costume two sizes too small. I have a good mind to email him with my own proven tips for losing weight (1).

Theatre: Speaking of broadcasts I also caught up with an encore of 'Young Marx' from the new Bridge Theatre in London. I nearly didn't bother because it had mixed reviews, but I enjoyed it and can report that it made me laugh. As did Alan Ayckbourn's 'Role Play' which easily delivered its quota of laugh out loud moments and featured some fairly authentic sounding East London accents. Less convincing was 'You're Only Young Twice' which, whilst well performed and mildly amusing in places, seemed to have very little connection to real life or real people.

Gigs: I've written about a couple of these already. The other one that I will mention is Henry Parker, a very good localish (Bingley I think) guitarist in the Davey Graham fingerstyle mode. I'd seen him before and on this occasion was able to buy a live album of a performance at which I was present in the audience; the third such that I own.

I didn't get to ride on the cherry picker and the roof still leaks, albeit not as badly as before.


(1) Diet and exercise; controversial I know, but there it is.

See The Conquering Hero Comes

And so to the theatre. I attended the opening night of Opera North's new production of Handel's oratorio Joshua. Unusually this is costumed and staged; the ban on the appearance of biblical figures on the stage in Britain having apparently been removed about a hundred years ago. I wasn't familiar with the work before although there is one well-known and rousing chorus. As today's little known fact I can exclusively reveal that the original conquering hero about whom the chorus 'songs of triumph sing' is neither Judas Maccabeus - in whose oratorio it reappeared later - nor Joshua. It is in fact Othniel. Yes, that Othniel.

I'm in the mood for smiting

It was an excellent production. The design theme was, at the beginning, second world war displaced Jews morphing through resistance chic into guerrillas/terrorists fighting to found the state of Israel. The highlight of the show was the counter-tenor playing Othniel, who sang beautifully whilst whenever possible taking his shirt off to show off his torso. In this he was joined by Joshua, who at one point wore a couple of bullet belts slung across a bare chest, looking for all the world as if the Village People had decided to add a Mexican bandido to their line-up. Other design elements seemed to be based on Arthurian legend, the Wizard of Oz and the A-Team, but it all hung together in a remarkably coherent way.

The chorus of Opera North

The chorus paid homage to the work's origins by holding scores at certain points regardless of the staging, but they also spent a fair amount of time singing while brandishing AK-47s at the audience. Other elements that might have not been in Handel's first draft included rather a lot of simulated sex, the previously alluded to gay porn references, and a travelling wardrobe.

Thoroughly recommended.