The Invited at the Arcola Theatre was beautiful, haunting and tragic

I only discovered the Grimeborn opera festival at the Arcola Theatre a few years ago and then it was a companion to the Tete-a-Tete festival with both showcasing new operas and sometimes sharing works. More recently Grimeborn has got a little more mainstream with more established works and so I have been going less often.

I might have missed Grimeborn 2015 altogether if not for The Invited.

I first came across the team behind The Invited, the Opera Room, at Tete-a-Tete when they presented the delightful All to Play For, an opera about football, and through that managed to get to see The Invited at one of its first performances in St Paul's Church, Covent Garden in November 2013.

I had seen more Opera Room productions since then, such as the fabulous Flat Pack, and had the opportunity to speak to composer Richard Knight, librettist Norman Welch and stage director Neil Smith a few times and at some length. Most of these conversations were me struggling to explain why I liked their operas so much when I lacked the musical knowledge and vocabulary to do so.

When I learned that The Invited was being performed at Grimeborn 2015 then the only question was which of the two performances would I go to and as the first clashed with a Glyndebourne date I had booked that was a question soon answered.

I chose to make something of a journey to the Arcola and did some exploring in Hoxton, Haggerston and Dalston. I did that as I was hoping to help Howard to buy a flat there. I'll tell that tale once it is safe to do so but at the moment I am trying to keep vendor and estate agent happy. It was nice to have an opera to look forward to in the evening.

Falstaff was playing in Studio 1 upstairs while we were in the basement Studio 2. I've been there often enough to know how that works and so I got my preferred seat in the centre of the front row.

The Invited is a slow brooding piece in which lots of things are suspected but little is certain. The setting, a world at war, is real but are there really Greek gods in the trees?, is one of the sisters pregnant?, is the ex-housekeeper a witch?

These possibilities were explored in a series of long conversations. These were mostly between the two sisters with the ex-housekeeper forcing her way in sometimes. The conversations were intense and passionate which made the music intense and passionate too. There was always something interesting happening musically as it kept changing pace and melody. Within that the music kept to the constant tone of despair, loss and misery that the story demanded, punctuated with a few moments of hope that the gods will return and make things better again.

It is the memory of the mood that persists with me. It was not unlike Tristan und Isolde in that respect, not much actually happens but it happens beautifully. The exception was the ending which was dramatic, It answered some of the questions but tantalisingly left many of them still as questions.

A story about passions needs passionate performers who can both sing and act their emotions convincingly and poetically. All three performers, Emma Häll, Sarah Minns and Miriam Sharrad, were excellent.

Again my lack of musical knowledge and vocabulary mean that I struggle to describe just how good The Invited was. What I can say with absolute certainty is that I loved it again and I loved it even more than I did the first time I saw it.

Wonderful evening at Tête-à-Tête Opera Festival 2014 Day Three

I had arranged to work in our Kings Place office on this Thursday to facilitate my third visit to Tête-à-Tête Opera Festival 2014 which was being held the other side of the road and canal in Central Saint Martin.

The new location impressed me. Not only were the three formal performing spaces better but the other spaces, such as the bar and the area just outside of the entrance, were better too.

The outside area was ideal for the short pop-up operas that decorated the festival and I arrived in good time to grab a beer before catching the first one. The food stall that had been there in the first week was sadly absent so my evening meal was a packet of peanuts, something I am quite used to when seeing evening shows.

I had planned a fairly busy evening seeing three pieces and it was something of a whirl moving between performing spaces with brief trips to the bar for refills and some moments to speak to creatives.

Spirit Harbour was the first opera that I saw. This was staged in the main Platform Theatre where I easily got a seat in my favoured front row. As is often the case these days one of the performers was already on stage as we entered. I argued to myself that this was not part of the formal performance so I allowed myself to take my usual view-from-my-seat picture with her in it.

Spirit Harbour was a story within a story. A victim of the 2011 tsunami recalled a Noh play she had seen and retold it to us. Other characters appeared, some good and some bad, and their singing was complimented by the carefully designed movements across the stage while the orchestra played hidden on the right of the stage.

It was all very pretty and nicely done. A good start to the evening.

Flat Pack was one of the operas that I was really keen to see as I had seen some of The Opera Room's work before. This was in the White Lab which, as you can see, was very white.

I was told on going in that we were meant to stand and you can see from the angle of the picture that I did. It tended to be the younger people who chose to sit. I think that they missed something by doing so.

The simplistic summary says that there was just one singer (baritone Peter Brathwaite), two instruments (viola and bassoon) and the story was about a man's attempt to construct a flat pack drinks cabinet. But there was much more to it than that.

Firstly the musical was delightful and was far more than simple accompaniment and secondly the story was more complex with the man facing difficult challenges in his relationship and career, challenges he hopes that his new drinks cabinet can help him through.

Flat Pack was a fully formed micro-opera (their term) and I absolutely loved it.

Tonseisha – The Man Who Abandoned the World was the third and final opera that I had booked that night and it was decidedly odd, in a good way. I think.

It was odd because it crammed so much in, including tapes, videos and the clatter of an old typewriter. At times I felt that it was verging on pretension but it never quite got there and it remained entertaining, if challenging, all the way through.

The opera was inspired by the works of Richard Brautigan who I had never heard of but reading about him now explains something of the fragmented nature of the piece and the confluence of Japan and Middle America.

Not the easiest opera to enjoy but I did.

My final opera of the evening was another pop-up (i.e. it was free) but this time we were led into the main campus. This is indoors and is a public space just behind the main entrance. By public I mean that there is no physical barrier to entry, to venture in to the main parts of the building you need a swipe card.

Sweeper of Dreams: The Calling was a cute little opera that told the story of a young woman applying for the job of Sweeper of Dreams, a job that had been seen as being a man's job. The people interviewing her were all women dressed as men. It was a fun and refreshing way to end the evening.

It is for days like this that I go to Tête-à-Tête Opera festivals as often as I can. I saw several very different pieces, all with a very modern take, all of which entertained. I would gladly see all of them again.

The Invited (opera) at St Paul's Church, Covent Garden

I was incredibly lucky and very fortunate to get to see The Invited, a magnificent new opera.

The Invited came from Opera Room Productions, the team behind the work-in-progress opera All to Play For that I loved so much at the Riverside last year.

The review that I wrote then got me an offer of a free ticket for The Invited. The problems were I had other things booked for both performance nights and I wanted two tickets. I managed to solve them by rebooking a clashing theatre date (the Orange Tree were very helpful) and buying two tickets for The Invited. It was something that I wanted to see and I like to support the people behind the things that I like so buying tickets made more sense that accepting a free one.

The venue was a bit special too, it was St Paul's Church on Covent Garden. I got there in good time to secure a good set, i.e. one in the front row/pew. Being a church there was a wide aisle down the centre and I took a seat just to the left of that.

This was the view that I had of the stage and of the orchestra on the left.

The Invited told the story of two young sisters left alone in a secluded country house in Suffolk during the height of the First World War. The only other person that we met was a woman from the nearby village.

The younger sister, Violet, was out in a storm the night before the opera began and claimed that she had been with Zeus and that he and the other old gods would come back to collect her in another storm on the following night. The older sister, Emily, was worried about her and tried to convince her that it was not true but Violet is convinced that the old gods are needed to fix the world that has been broken by war.

The story developed slowly and carefully from there becoming more haunting, mysterious and tragic as it did so. It was a very fitting story for an opera and it reminded me of Turn of The Screw in terms of mood and pace. And that's a big compliment.

The three singers did very well, especially the two sisters who did most of the work. Emma Hall as the elder Emily had the richest voice (my view) and I was surprised that Sarah Minns as the younger Violet could sing at all given that she spent most of the evening in her skimpy nightwear in a cold church.

The music, by Richard Knight, was as evocative as the story and to my uneducated ear it had the feel of the early c20 English music by the likes of Walton and Williams.

The small band of musicians, all dressed in WWI uniforms, did the music justice.

The libretto by Norman Welch, from his own story, told the tale with little fuss and much imagination. There was clarity and poetry in the prose that made the story easy to follow despite its weirdness and lack of surtitles.

I loved everything about The Invited and I am sure that I would love it even more if it were to be performed in a concert venue.Talking to the creators afterwards that is a possibility. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

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.