Last night at Tete a Tete Opera Festival 2012

I'm a glutton for pleasure and so I went to the Tete a Tete Opera Festival 2012 four times altogether finishing with consecutive nights. That made it eleven operas in all and six in two days. Nothing wrong with that.

Mermaid of Zennor was my first choice of the evening.

We entered in to a darkened Studio 2 to find a man unconscious on the stage. The ropes, nets, blue hues (and the title of the opera) tell us that he has washed up on the shore.

He slowly recovers and in-between his waking and dreaming he is visited in turn by a mermaid and a tourist walking the coastal path.

The music is slow and haunting as the three figures take it in turns to describe what they see without interacting with each other or even being particularly aware of each other's existence. The only reality is the view of the tourist and all she can see is the man.

The music was surprisingly playful and while it is a new piece it reminded me of Walton's Facade in its jauntiness and the way it played with pitch.

It's a sad story but the mood of the myth triumphs over that and the lasting memory is of mystery not the outcome.

The Yellow Dress was had a surprisingly similar musical feel to it and also featured a drowning (or two) but it was a completely different kettle of fish.

We meet an old woman in a care home. She has fleeting memories of the past most of which involve fondness for the sea which we could see playing out on the screen behind her.

Her daughter comes to visit and this is clearly a duty rather than a love, though there is affection there.

As they sing to each other we learn more about them and their past. After setting the steadily setting the scene and just when you think you know where the story is going it goes somewhere else.

First we learn the mystery of the yellow dress and the young girl who was wearing it. Then the daughter's lover arrives in a similar dress. The lover comes up with a simple plan to free the daughter from the mother and the opera ends as she puts this plan in to action.

This is a very operatic story and leaves you with a very satisfied if disturbed feeling.

Amerika ended the evening on a light note.

It adapts the first part of Franz Kafka's story of the same name about a young man sent to 1920's America to escape personal troubles in Europe.

He goes through a series of episodes in a carefree manner meeting people who try to help and hinder him along the way.

The opera stood out immediately because of the purity of the singing from the two male leads.

I sat in the second row for most of the operas (and scowled when somebody took "my seat") and even from there some of the voices in some of the operas were a little hard to follow, there were no surtitles here. I had no objection to that, I did not expect Glyndebourne singers at £6 a pop, but it was always nice to find a clear voice and here we had two.

The humour was played nicely mostly thanks to the acting and this was reinforced by the scrolling backdrop that carried sketches related to the scene, e.g. the story opens with a picture of a liner to tell us that we are on a ship.

The post-performance questionnaire suggested that this opera might also be extended, presumably to cover the whole book, and while I am not against that idea I think that it would only work if the various episodes had some mood changes. The slapstick humour worked well for an hour but I am not sure that it would stretch beyond that.

My last day of the festival was rich and rewarding taking me sweetly through myth, murder and mirth. All three operas played their parts well telling different stories differently.

And all that means that I will be going to the Tete a Tete Opera Festival 2013 (hoping there is one) quite a few times.

An operatic evening in three parts

The hardest thing about the Tete a Tete Opera Festival 2012 was deciding which operas to see. Each of the operas is on only once or twice and there are two operas on at the same time (in studios 2 and 3 at the Riverside) which means that to see everything then you have to go every night.

The operas are only £6 each (i.e. it's £18 a night) so money is not a problem but time is. Especially when you are working in another country (Wales) during the week. That is why this year I was only able to get there on four evenings to see a total of eleven operas.

The third night was the best so far.

The Shadow of the Wave was a well crafted one-act opera.

Two sisters and their two husbands meet up in a country retreat, the wrong sister goes after the wrong husband, madness and deaths ensue.

Musically it was lyrical and well sung. The acting made the opera and while it is easy to highlight the mad bad people all four characters played their parts.

The wicked sister, in an appropriate bright red dress, is scheming and feisty, the other sister is a quiet contented wife, the contested husband is a troubled artist and the husband nobody wants seethes in his frustration.

This is all very traditional opera condensed in to a manageable portion and served with menace. A wonderful start to the evening.

A Voice of One Delight changed the tone completely.

The performance was delivered by a lone singer, Clare McCaldin,accompanied by a pianist who surprised me by turning pages of music when it seemed unlikely that the random twinkles had been composed.

The vocals were pretty strange too mixing speech and song with the occasional use of a microphone.

The set was as simple as you would expect for a modern opera but there were some nice touches such as the projection of words on to the cardboard boxes and the use of a blue tablecloth to represent the sea.

There was not a story as such, or if there was I missed it. Percy Bysshe Shelley had died (one of the many drownings in the festival) and been cremated on an Italian beach. We then witness the aftermath of this as his works and life are reassessed and represented.

If that all sounds a little weird that is because it was. But I like weird and this was the sort of weird that I like. It was undoubtedly "challenging" and that was welcome but it did mean that A Voice of One Delight was hard to digest on a single sitting and I would like to see it again.

All to Play For closed the evening and was the surprise hit of the day.

To be honest, an opera about football seemed rather trivial and I only went to it as I was there anyway for the other two operas.

We entered the studio to see a man stalking the stage while restlessly watching a football game. A late goal clinches it for his team.

The team enter in celebration and we learn that he is the manager. They have won the semi-final of the Champions League and are now one game away from glory.

The team swig champagne as they sing their joy but elsewhere things are less happy. The manager complains that when the team wins the players get the credit but when they lose he gets the blame, and he is under pressure to win the final. His assistant feels overlooked and underused and has a secret offer from somebody else. One of the WAGS delights in the extra publicity for her that the victory will bring while another wife regrets the same.

There is a lot going on in the story and that is reflected in the music. We have the manager's solo, the team's chorus and the WAGS duet.

The opera ends brilliantly with all the story loose ends clearly exposed and none of them resolved. There was a suggestion in the feedback form that the opera might be finished which I think would be a mistake as the non-end works just fine as an ending.

These were three very different pieces and each was very good in their own way. And that made it an ideal evening of opera that entertained, challenged and surprised.

A curate's egg from Tete a Tete

Throwing myself heavily in to the season's Tete a Tete Opera Festival produced a Friday night of mixed blessings.

The Magic Mirror/One Small Step was on first and proved to be a mixed bag within a mixed bag.

We had a long explanation of what Momo will be and then two songs from it. In the first Momo, a young girl, sings alone in a strange language and in the second she sang a duet with a young man strumming a guitar.

The second song was rather lovely and I would have liked to hear more from Momo.

Instead I got One Small Step where a couple sing about the joys of their child's first steps, their hopes that this might make them tired and sleep more and realisation that more things will now have to be put out of reach. It was a nice enough song but had nothing to do with Momo.

And that was it. Just three songs. Not a great start.

Next up was The Trial of Jean Rhys, a proper opera. The trial is Jean Rhys' hard life rather than anything criminal and we see this through flash-backs. This was not that obvious at the time and it took a quick scan of the Jean Rhys article in Wikipedia to confirm this.

The story may have been a little confusing (because of my lack of pre-research and refusal to buy a programme) but it was still a story and that makes it an opera in my mind.

The scenes flowed smoothly and the reasonably large cast played their parts well enough though I learnt in the bar later that most of them were students.

I did like the opera but, a few days later, I am struggling to remember much about it,

The third and final show was The Sandman, and this was completely different again.

We had the familiar story of one friend fooling another in to drinking weed killer which puts her in to a dream-like state where strange things happen.

In that context having the orchestra in their pyjamas is quite appropriate.

The dream, if it is a dream, is suitably weird with weird characters doing weird things. Like the centuries old cow singing about the moon.

From that you will probably guess that it was a story thick with humour though a dark edge stopped it from being frivolous.

The music was sharply modern with screeches and scratches that I loved.

Of the three pieces The Sandman had the most complete vision and delivered it more completely. The other two had their moments too and considered as a package it was another challenging and rewarding evening.  Not all challenges work but then they would not be challenges if they did.

Two operatic views of Miss Havisham

I missed most of the Tete a Tete Opera Festival late last year due to holidays so I am trying to make the most of it this year. When the programme was first announced I booked eight operas on three evenings. Not bad.

Then I found that I had a Sunday free that I was not expecting and a quick look at the schedule revealed two more operas that looked worth a try. As with everything at Tete a Tete it is all freakishly new so there is no pedigree to work with and every booking is a game of chance.

One of the appeal of these operas was that they both included Miss Havisham, famously jilted at the altar in Great Expectations.

The Lady of Satis House told Miss Havisham's story from her perspective.

We find her in her wedding dress at a table still set for a wedding that was meant to happen years ago. The mice have been busy with the cake and the spiders have laid their webs everywhere.

Miss Havisham tells us how she feels, and she is not happy. In fact she is bitter and plans to get her revenge by passing her pain on to Pip.

The rest of the story we know and we follow it all the way through to its fiery end.

Miss Havisham is the only character in the opera, we see Pip and Estella as dolls only, so a lot is down to the soloist musically and dramatically. And she was very good. Able support came from the string quartet.

The music was modern without being acerbically so and in many ways this was a normal short-form opera. I love string quartet music and I loved this. High marks all round.

Jilted was quite different.

Here we saw an imaginary meeting between the jilted Miss Havisham and the abandoned first Mrs Dickens.

Despite the double woe, the story is told with humour and wit. Miss Havisham is sparkly and mischievous while Mrs Dickens is homely and resigned. They made an unusual Laurel and Hardy.

They complain to each other about they have been treated, and they have some justification in this, but they are more concerned to out-score the other in the sympathy stakes than to heap anger on the men responsible for their plight.

At one point their contest becomes physical and they play a sort of top-trumps card game. At one point Mrs Dickens plays the "ten children" card only to have it trumped by Miss Havisham's "no children".

They sing without any instruments to guide them or to detract from them and that gives a simplicity and purity of sound that is just right for the story that they are telling us.

I enjoyed both operas immensely and they were made a little better by being offered together on the same day. I expect the Riverside to provide interesting theatre like this and they are to be congratulated for teaming up with Tete a Tete to extend their franchise in to opera.