Tag Archives: macmillan theatre

Haydn’s Orfeo at the MacMillan Theatre

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orfeoposterLast night saw the first of two performances of Haydn’s rarely performed 1791 work Orfeo: L’anima del filosofo.  I know how much effort and indeed passion went into creating this production and the singing is pretty good.  I wish I could say I enjoyed it but I can’t.  There were just too many issues.

Let’s start with the opera itself.  Maybe it was never completely finished as it was shut down by the authorities during rehearsals in London.  Maybe that’s why it feels horribly unbalanced.  The first half (two acts) tell us of Eurydice being betrothed, against her will, to her father, King Creonte’s, rival Arideo.  She runs off into the forest where she is about to be devoured by beasts when the news is brought to Orfeo who then sings at length before “rushing” off to rescue Euridice.

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It was the best of times…

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UoT Opera Division’s production of Arthur Benjamin’s A Tale of Two Cities, currently playing at the MacMillan Theatre, is really rather good.  Its partly the work itself which surely deserves to be better known.  It’s a 1950 work to a libretto by Cedric Cliffe.  It was written for the Festival of Britain and was considered a success at the time.  It is in many ways typical of mid 20th century English opera (though Benjamin was a peripatetic Australian rather than a Brit).  It’s colourful and uses a large orchestra with lots of brass and percussion and combines lyricism with some fairly heavy dissonance.  It also includes a few good arias, notably one for Lucie Manette, the romantic female interest.

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Dr. Manette (Burak Yaman), Lucie Manette (Emily Rocha)

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Trilogy

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This year’s fall offering from UoT Opera is three short comic operas presented at the MacMillan Theatre in productions by Michael Patrick Albano.  The first is Paul Hindemith’s Hin und Züruck; a twelve minute musical joke which manages to send up a lot of operatic conventions in a very short time.  It’s a musical and dramatic palindrome.  A man discovers his wife has a lover and shoots her.  The paramedics arrive and attempt to revive her.  In this staging this includes a giant syringe and no prizes for guessing where that goes. The remorseful husband shoots himself.  An angel (Ben Done) appears and explains that the usual laws of physics don’t apply in opera and the entire plot and score is replayed backwards.  It was played effectively deadpan by Cassandra Amorim and Lyndon Ladeur while Jordana Goddard, as the elderly deaf aunt, sat through the whole thing entirely oblivious.  Good fun.

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Mansfield Park

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Jonathan Dove’s Mansfield Park opened last night at UoT Opera in a production by Tim Albery.  It’s a really interesting show that builds up in “layers” to a very satisfying whole.  The Austen  novel, of course, is very self consciously a novel.  There’s no pretence at “immersion”.  The author is both telling the story and commenting on it for the benefit of you, the reader.  Librettist Alasdair Middleton both builds on this and does a quite brilliant job of compression to bring in a condensed, and only slightly simplified, version of the story in under two hours.

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Marriage of Figaro at UoT

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UoT Opera’s fall production is Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro which opened last night at the MacMillan Theatre. It’s a period production directed by Michael Patrick Albano set in the “Opera 18th Century”; more Chatsworth than palace near Seville, but it looks pretty, the action is skilfully composed and the physical comedy works.

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UoT’s La finta giardiniera

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I don’t think I’m ever going to love Mozart’s La finta giardiniera.  It has some pleasing music, though oddly the two principal characters don’t get much of it, but the plot is ridiculous and it really outstays its welcome.  That said, Michael Patrick Albano’s production for UoT Opera in the MacMillan Theatre at least makes the complexity clear.  We never lose sight of who is who; even if the other characters do, and what logic there is in the plot comes through clearly enough.  Albano sets it entirely realistically in 18th century dress with set elements efficiently dropped in from the fly loft or carried around by a small band of liveried servants.  There’s a fair bit of “park and bark” but then there’s a lot of prosy explaining going on.

Cairns Finta

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Energetic Street Scene

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This year’s fall production by UoT Opera is Kurt Weill’s Street Scene.  It’s a tricky piece in many ways.  It’s part opera, part Broadway musical.  The moods range from light comedy to something very much darker and lurking treacherously at its core is a sentimental streak that can easily overwhelm its merits.  Michael Patrick Albano’s production, coupled with Anna Theodosakis’ energetic and varied choreography, managed to keep the focus on the strengths of the piece and deliver a very satisfying evening at the theatre.

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Of Thee I Sing

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There are some pretty silly opera plots.  Donizetti’s Emilia di Liverpool comes to mind but the Gershwin’s Of Thee I Sing probably tops even the thundering torrents of the Mersey as it descends from the Cheshire Alps for silliness.  Basically one John P. Wintergreen is a candidate for POTUS.  His campaign gimmick is that he will marry whoever wins a beauty contest, held naturally enough, in Noo Joysy.  Unfortunately(?) he falls in love with the homelier corn muffin maven Mary Turner and marries her instead.  He duly gets elected but diplomatic complications with the French follow when it is revealed that the pageant winner; Diana Devereaux of Louisiana is the “illegitimate daughter of the illegitimate son of the illegitimate nephew of Napoleon”.  Impeachment proceedings follow but, of course, there’s a happy ending.  Along the way almost every US institution and region gets gently pilloried and the jokes are even funnier because what might have seemed risque in 1930 seems “business as usual” now, as when three White House interns sing about how the Presidential Mansion is the safest place in America for a young girl…

Cairns cast Chorus Act 1

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UoT’s Imeneo

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Imeneo is one of Handel’s less well known operas; perhaps deservedly so.  The plot and the libretto are weak and the music pretty variable.  Charles Jennens, the librettist for Messiah, descibed it as “the worst of all Handel’s compositions”.  It does have the merit of being short.  Most recent recordings come in around two hours and this UoT Opera production, rearranged and cut by Tim Albery, comes in at 100 minutes spread over two acts.

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UoT Opera’s Orpheus in the Underworld

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Brittany Cann

French operetta is notoriously difficult to get right.  The genre treacherously combines a kind of humour that doesn’t always translate well in time or language, difficult music to sing and a need to be as “naughty” as the original seemed without being crass.  It’s a huge credit to Michael Patrick Albano and his student cast that they pretty much pulled off all of that last night with their new production of Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld.  One could nit pick details (I shall) but overall it was a well paced show with some good singing and acting and it was genuinely funny.  Unsurprisingly the audience lapped it up.  Continue reading →