What does one perform with Vaughan Williams’s seldom heard one act tragedy about a mother who has lost her last surviving son somewhere off the west coast of Ireland? Drawn from J.M. Synge’s doom-laden play set on the Aran Islandsand premiered by students at the Royal College of Music in 1937, Riders to the Sea has occasionally been partnered by Holst’s Savitra and even more infrequently with rarities such as Darius Milhaud’s Le Pauvre Matelot and Lennox Berkeley’s A Dinner Engagement. At its English National Opera premiere in 2008 ‘Riders’ was prefaced by Sibelius’s Luonnotar, a tone poem for soprano and orchestra derived from Finnish mythology relating to the world’s beginning by an air spirit trapped in the sea. Whether this idea prompted Michael Betteridge for his specially commissioned prologue is unknown, but The Last Bit of the Moon (in collaboration with Antosh Wocjik and a group of Solent writers) is an inspired companion piece to a new, shrink-wrapped version of the Vaughan Williams to create a double bill lasting just over an hour.
Both works were presented in Studio 2 at the Mast, Southampton. It’s an intimate space (with seating for around 120 people) and ideal for the handful of young professionals attached to OperaUpClose – an enterprising national touring company. Most obvious in the staging of these operatic miniatures is the immediacy of the storytelling, and with absolutely nothing lost in the chamber scoring of ‘Riders’ reduced here to accordion (Ilona Suoamalainen), oboe/cor anglais (Bryony Middleton) and clarinet/ bass clarinet (Emily Wilson). If anything, the plangent sonorities seem tailor-made for the text and could provide ‘Riders’ with many more performance opportunities.
Similarly scored and no less haunting is its shadowy prequel, The Last Bit of the Moon, which reshapes Synge’s tale as a series of painful memories for Bartley (a minor figure in ‘Riders’, and here much expanded) as he laments the death of his brother Michael, drowned at sea. The Moon of the title (superbly sung by countertenor Tom Lilburn) offers him a chance to come to terms with his loss and make sense of his grief. Providing solace and a warning are words, obligingly displayed as surtitles, sung by a pre-recorded community chorus, drawn variously from Hull, Bournemouth and Southampton, who periodically chant “The tide provides, the tide takes”, its fatalistic message implicit. On opening night Neil Balfour, as Bartley, lost his voice, but his speech-inflected lines were heard via a recording with him lip-synching his light baritone – a feat of concentration only compromised by some expressionless delivery. Piquant harmonies from the three instrumentalists wafted through a gauze curtain, while video projections added poignant childhood recollections, the whole sympathetically overseen by Flora McIntosh in her directorial debut.
Both operas explore the belief that traumatic memory can be reconciled. Nowhere is this more intensely felt than in the cathartic final monologue of Riders to the Sea where the grieving Maurya (Lauren Young in lead photo) achieves a sort of fierce dignity following the death of her last remaining son, a scene even more harrowing for her determined smile. And in music of rapt, transcendental beauty Vaughan Williams suggests a stoic inner peace can be attained. Young overcomes the role’s emotional challenges to bring all the necessary pathos culminating in her acceptance that “No man at all can be living for ever, and we must be satisfied”. Susie Buckle and Julia Mariko (Maura’s daughters Nora and Cathleen) are well drawn and sing their quasi-recitative-like phrases with clear, ardent voices, while also hiding their grief from a mother who refuses to give her blessing when the resolute Bartley insists on taking horses across to Galway Fair and consequently to his grave.
Just as the score is a masterpiece of compression, so too is the basic set: a cramped kitchen in an impoverished fisherman’s cottage, with just a few props to draw the eye. Keeping alive the memory of her lost sons are a child’s bicycle and a photo album Maurya carries around with her obsessively. This is all that’s needed to convey the sense of quiet resolve of a family’s losing battle with the sea. And in these intense portrayals all have excelled in extracting the maximum emotional impact from the minimum of means. OperaUpClose has reached new heights of artistic expression.
David Truslove
Music: The Last Bit of the Moon by Michael Betteridge with a text compiled by
ArtfulScribe’s Community Sirens Collective led by Antosh Wojcik. Riders to the Sea by Ralph Vaughan Williams setting words by J.M Synge. Cast and Production staff: Bartley – Neil Balfour; Maurya – Lauren Young; Nora – Susie Buckle; Cathleen – Julia Mariko, Moon – Tom Lilburn; Accordion – Ilona Suoamalainen; Oboe/cor anglais – Bryony Middleton; Clarinet / Bass Clarinet– Emily Wilson; Male voices – The Sunday Boys, Hull Freedom Chorus, Bournemouth Male Voice Choir; Children’s voices – St Monica’s Primary, St Partick’s Catholic School & Weston Shore Primary. Artistic Director – Flora McIntosh; Design/Lighting/Projection – Cheng Keng; Musical Supervisor – Robin Wallington; Costume Designer and Supervisor – Robin Simon.
Studio 2, The Mast, Southampton, 30 January 2025
Photos: © Rich Southgate