The re-build itself necessitated some inventive venue re-allocation, the Dun Mhuire Hall housing a reduced festival in 2006; while the logistics of transporting artists, punters, caterers et al. to St Johnston’s Castle for the June festival in 2007 must have caused a few headaches. Still, the giant space-age balloon in which that
summer festival was — surprisingly successfully — housed, and the other
difficulties, inconveniences and conundrums along the way, could all presumably be borne
because of the light at the end of the tunnel: the stunning new opera house ingeniously
constructed on the site of the old. However, just one year after its justly celebrated
re-opening, Wexford found itself in the press for less appealing reasons — rumours of a
proposed merger with Dublin-based Opera Ireland and the touring Opera Theatre Company (now, it
seems, put aside, however temporarily). The problem: the global credit crunch and bankrupt
Irish bankers. The result: a festival reduced to just 12 days, with one of Agler’s most
successful innovations — the one-act matinÈes — abandoned or re-deployed as
‘replacements’ for previously proposed main works.
In the event, despite the gloom-laden reports in the weeks leading up to the 2009 festival,
opera and music were still at the fore, and standards — of singing, playing and
conducting — were pleasingly high, although this year’s three operas offered
strikingly different theatrical experiences.
The festival opened with John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles, a
co-production with Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, one which is hoped to be the first of many in
an ongoing artistic relationship with the American opera house. Commissioned in 1980,
completed in 1987, and first performed with a starry cast at the Metropolitan Opera House, New
York in 1991, Corigliano’s gargantuan opera spans three worlds: the historical milieu of
the French Revolution, the spirit world of those executed in its aftermath and who now haunt
Versailles, and the theatrical domain of the third play in Beaumarchais’ Figaro trilogy,
La MËre coupable, staged to entertain the ghosts. In this liminal hinterland,
Beaumarchais re-writes ‘real’ and fictional history in order to spare
Marie-Antoinette her bloody fate — and satisfy his own love for the tragic queen —
only for her ultimately to acknowledge his love, refuse his aid and accept her destiny.
Confused? The antics of Susanna and Figaro as they seek to thwart the machinations of the
political conniver BÈgearss, the pantomime baddie, while retaining their own revolutionary
integrity, interweave with the restaging of Marie Antoinette’s trial; indeed, Dr
Who’s time-travelling antics seem rather tame in comparison. Theatrical and literary
conceits abound, narrative frames accumulate, and when even Beaumarchais feels impelled to
abandon his authorial rights, to enter his own story and manipulate events from within, we
wonder just who is in the driving seat? Fortunately, James Robinson’s staging, with
imaginative designs by Allen Moyer and James Schuette, brought some dramatic clarity where it
seemed lacking in the libretto.
George van Bergin as Beaumarchais, was the dramatic mainstay of this performance. With a
confident stage presence, sure sense of pace and timing, and assertive baritone which
projected well, he kept the show on the road. Baritone Christopher Feigum enjoyed himself as
Figaro, but was vocally a little underwhelming. The role of Marie Antoinette is an exhausting
sing and Maria Kanyova acquitted herself well, in an often touching and always committed
portrayal. A tender moment of reprieve from the melodrama was supplied by the beautiful duet
for Cherubino (Irish mezzo-soprano Paula Murrihy) and Rosina (Sri Lankan soprano Kishani
Jayasinghe).
Purporting to be a ‘grand opera bouffe’ — a first hint of genre
dysfunction, perhaps — The Ghosts of Versailles is an eclectic pick-and-mix
encompassing a multitude of dramatic modes: comedy and tragedy, melodrama and farce, satire
and sentimentality. Corigliano has adopted a similarly diverse range of musical styles —
are they intended to complement the action, or simply to demonstrate his own facile imitative
skills? There are snatches of pseudo Mozart, Rossini, Donizetti, Wagner, Barber, Britten
… and, as the programme reveals, ‘Gregorian chant, North African Arabic
traditions, the late eighteenth-century alla turca operas, French grand opera,
Broadway and serialism’. In short, there is just too much on offer for the eye and ear.
Though cleverly assembled, this is a musical hotch-potch. Parodies and pastiche wear
irritatingly thin; in particular, the burlesque Turkish finale to Act I, originally written as
a vehicle for Marilyn Horne, was repetitive, ridiculous and dramatically superfluous. What of
Corigliano’s own music? There are a few modernist twists and clichÈs, some atmospheric
orchestral interludes poignantly suggestive of the ghosts’ spiritual terrain, but on the
whole the writing is repetitive and bland. Synthesiser does not sit happily alongside
harpsichord. By turns intriguing and imaginative, perplexing and irksome, this was certainly a
committed, intelligent and engaging staging of a work which ultimately fails to convince.
The double-bill, Une education manquÈ by Emmanuel Chabrier and La Cambiale di
matrimonio by Rossini, offered an opportunity to hear two seldom performed but richly
deserving works. Originally planned as one-act matinÈes in the Short Works programme, the
scrapping of the latter saw the works placed on the main stage. Theatrically slight but
musically neat, there is no reason why this double-bill, sharing themes of sex and marriage,
should not succeed, but it needs a surer hand than director Roberto Recchio was able to
offer.
The Chabrier in particular has a charming score, and conductor Christopher Frankin made the
colours sparkle to match the glitter and glamour of Lorenzo Cutuli’s stylish set and
Claudia Pernigotti’s elaborate period costumes. And we were once more treated to the
sweet blend of Kishani Jayasinghe and Paula Murrihy, as Gontran and HÈlËne, the innocent
newly-weds who are uncertain as to what should happen on their wedding night. Jayasinghe
enjoyed the trouser role of Gontran, and as Master Pausanias, the tipsy tutor who has
neglected to instruct his charge in the essential matters of life, bass baritone Luca
Dall’Amico blustered and bluffed suitably. The attractive staging owed no small debt to
Rosenkavalier but, despite some pleasant singing, the characters themselves lacked
genuine sympathetic qualities. The lifeless, wooden acting murdered any hint of sexual frisson
or sophistication in Chabrier’s score. Moreover, the diction was dreadfully poor —
it was hard to determine the language let alone particular words — which makes one
wonder why French singers were not engaged.
If Recchio’s Chabrier was direction-less, his account of Rossini’s one-act farce
La Cambiale di matrimonio suffered from a surfeit of directorial manhandling, much
of it totally unfathomable. Rossini sets out to ridicule the commercial motives underpinning
the nineteenth-century bourgeois marriage. The blank matrimonial bill of the title is sent to
the English merchant, Tobias Mill, by an eccentric Canadian businessman, Mr Slook. Mill tries
to marry off his daughter, against her wishes; her penniless lover, Edoardo, endeavours to
thwart the plans, while Slook gets increasingly fed up with the European way of doing things.
It’s a case of the Old World versus the New; but this doesn’t explain
Recchio’s decision to update the action to 2049, flashing quotations from
Miranda’s ‘Brave New World’ speech from The Tempest and snippets
from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World across the backdrop and plastering the
singers’ foreheads with barcodes. Everything and everyone is presumably ‘up for
sale’; but who would buy these ugly, garish specimens, with their ghastly metallic
costumes and clunky robotic movements. The muddled ensembles suggested that the singers
didn’t understand what it was all about either. The singing was pretty poor too. As
Fanny, Pervin Chakar shouted at full volume throughout, while Vittorio Prato’s Slook
could hardly be heard. The genetic modification of this opera produced a real monster.
Thank goodness, then, for the last of Wexford’s productions, Donizetti’s late
opera Maria Padilla, which confirmed what previous Wexford Festivals have suggested:
that this composer can always be relied upon to provide the goods when an ‘unjustly
neglected master-piece’ is required.
The opera tells the tragedy of Maria Padilla, seduced by the cruel Don Pedro of Castile, to
the despair of her father, Don Ruiz, whose complaints about his daughter’s loss of
honour earn him a bloody beating by the royal henchmen. Maligned by the King’s
courtiers, Maria is finally betrayed by the regent himself, when he marries a French princess
in order to meet the popular demand for a more politically acceptable union.
The singing was uniformly superb, but in the title role, the American soprano Barbara
Quintiliani earned every superlative. Quintiliani needed all the resources of her formidable
technique for this incredibly demanding role; and she positively relished the fiendish
coloratura, while descending easily into a dark chest register. Her varied palette was
equalled by a full emotional range. Indeed, she seemed totally at ease throughout, spinning a
stream of golden sound, effortlessly negotiating leaps and extremes, and demonstrating
superhuman stamina and breath control. Quintiliani deserves superstar status: unfortunately
her physical size may not endear her to a media which prefers their sopranos more svelte and
photo-shoot-friendly, but such a talent can surely not be kept in the shadows for long. She
was admirably partnered here by mezzo-soprano Ketevan Kemokldize, singing the role of Ines,
Maria’s sister, and the accomplishments of the ladies were matched by the two male
leads, Italian baritone Marco Caria as Don Pedro and Welsh tenor Adriano Grazini as Don Ruiz,
whose idiomatic bel canto singing was stylish and assured, if a little unvaried. The role of
Ruiz is an interesting role, for it is surely one of the few for an elderly tenor in this
repertoire. Grazini excelled in Act 3, in a powerful and affecting scene where Maria futilely
attempts to comfort him in the madness which has followed his punishment and humiliation.
Sadly the director, Marco Gandini, seemed determined to dilute the emotional power and
dramatic intensity of the work. The set designs of Mauro Tinti cluttered the set, first with a
mountain of masonry and debris, then with endless rows of chairs and finally in Act 3 with
some bizarre floating corpses … all of which necessitated much obstacle-climbing and
prop-shifting, weakening the dramatic focus and momentum.
The staging of the ending was equally perplexing. The programme tells us that when Maria
confronts Don Pedro in the final scene he renounces his French princess, only for Maria to
fall ‘lifeless at his feet’. Not here though. Gandini obviously thought he knew
better than composer and librettist: he decided that it was Pedro’s new queen, Bianca,
who should die — presumably in shock at the sight of Maria — thereby enabling a
fairy-tale reconciliation and ‘happy-ever-after’ resolution, an incongruous
conclusion accompanied by music which speaks of menace, despair and death. Fortunately, the
conductor had the measure of the work. This was controlled, confident conducting from David
Agler, who demonstrated impressive command of both the whole dramatic shape and the musical
details. It was by far the most musically satisfying offering of this year’s
festival.
The Short Works may have fallen by the wayside but there was plenty of other musical fare on
offer — including the daily lunchtime recitals in St. Iberius’ Church. Kishani
Jayasinghe enjoyed her opportunity to entertain the locals, revealing a dusky lower register
in Britten’s song cycle On This Island and, despite some problems with diction,
an instinctive feeling for the syncopated, jazz-inspired rhythms. She indulged her vivacious
sense of fun with idiomatic renditions of the lighter end of the repertoire, ‘Somebody
Loves Me’ and ‘I’ve Got Rhythm’ being well-received.
During their shared recital, Irish singers Owen Gilhooly (baritone) and Paula Murrily
(mezzo-soprano) delivered outstanding renditions of songs by Brahms and Duparc, before
inviting the audience to join them in some more homespun melodies — fortunately for
Gilhooly, the amateurs knew the words better than he did!
There were some innovations too. A ‘Postcard from America’ was one of three such
location-inspired entertainments (Prague and Italy being the other geographical hotspots)
performed in the upper gallery at Greenacres, the local wine emporium/art gallery. This was an
impressive venue for a superbly compiled sequence, put together by Curt Pajer (Head of the
Music Staff of Wexford, Opera Theatre of St. Louis and Toledo Opera), which gave many of the
young singers a chance to indulge their more smoochy, glitzy sides — we were treated to
a string of hits from Bernstein, Weill, Gershwin, and wowed with the impassioned final chorus
from Candide, a fittingly triumphant end which raised the roof of Greenacres.
With announcements that next season’s festival will be similarly curtailed, it’s
worth remembering that such ‘small-scale’ music-making is the heart, and often the
best, of Wexford — local enthusiasts, young talent, everyone obviously relishing the
music-making Long may it continue!
Claire Seymour
Click here for a gallery of productions.
image=http://www.operatoday.com/Maria_Kanyova_Wexford2009.png
image_description=Maria Kanyova in Ghosts of Versailles, Wexford Festival Opera 2009 [Photo by Patrick Redmond courtesy of Wexford Festival]
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product_title=58th Wexford Festival Opera, 21 October — 1 November 2009
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product_id=Above: Maria Kanyova in Ghosts of Versailles, Wexford Festival Opera 2009 [Photo by Patrick Redmond courtesy of Wexford Festival]