Blown away by Tête à Tête's Crime and Punishment at the Royal College of Music

Tête à Tête is a company committed to exploring the future of opera. I came across them at a festival of new operas that they ran at the Riverside in Hammersmith in 2011 and I have been back to their festivals every year since in which time I have seen a lot of operas, and other musical works. covering a myriad of themes in a myriad of styles and I have become a firm fan.

That alone would have made it an easy decision to see a series of six short operas inspired by Dostoevsky's classic book (which I had read and vaguely remembered). Taking the decision from easy to no-brainer was the location as the Britten Theatre at the Royal College of Music (RCM) is a little gem of an opera house, small on scale but large on atmosphere.

Finally the tickets were a derisory £8 (Dress Circle seat A28). I presume that was because the operas were created by RCM composers and performed by RCM singers and so the costs were somewhat less than for most commercial operas. Even so, on reflection the price was at least £10 below where it should have been.

My loose connection to Tête à Tête gained by writing nice things about them (fully deserved) and talking to them at events got me invited to their pre-concert drinks and nibbles, which was nice.

But first I had to get there which was less nice as my new workplace is in Teddington which has two slow trains an hour to Richmond and two slow trains an hour the other way to Kingston. It took me about an hour and a quarter to get from Teddington to South Kensington and that was with nothing going wrong. I'm going to have to work on my travel options for other events.

There were six operas each of fifteen minutes with a break for more drinks and more talking in the middle.

Stream of Consciousness, Sea of Blood by Benjamien Lycke (music) and Mien Bogaert (words) took us into the world of politics as a President looks to Dostoevsky for inspiration as he makes the most difficult decision of his life. I liked the tension in this as he wrestled with the possibility of being responsible for the deaths of many of his citizens.

76 Days by Kenichi Ikuno Sekiguchi (music and words) told the gripping story of a real-life kidnapping. This was dark and I like dark. I liked the way that we could see the wife at home and her captured husband with his captors at the same time. The lounged menacingly while she was struggling with her first whisky of the day. The husband's brother took a more pragmatic view.

Bel and the Dragon by Alex Paxton (music and words) was a retelling of a story from the Apocrypha. That story must also be elsewhere as it was one that I knew, in it a statue of the cow god Bel was though to come to life to eat the food each night but Daniel, he who liked lions, proved that it was the priests stealing it. Despite the seriousness of the accusations and of the penalties inflicted this was a humorous piece that ended the first half on a light note.

At the interval it felt like a typical evening at a Tête à Tête festival with three very different pieces each with their separate merits. I grabbed a beer from the bar and then found some Tête à Tête people to have that conversation with. It was a short interval and I took the rest of my beer in with me when the bell rang for the second half.

The Two Sisters by Algirdas Kraunaitis (music) and Grace Lee-Khoo (words) gave us more darkness and some humour in a quirkily gruesome Scottish folk-tale retold. One of the two sisters killed the other but said that she had gone away with a boy. Sometime later a stranger visits the house and produces a device which sounds like the dead sister which brings things to a head. I loved the story and the way that it was told.

Der Eisenhut by Amy Bryce (music) and Roland Bryce (words) was a tale of revenge in post-war Germany and was another successful dark tale, though this time with no magic, just ordinary mushrooms. Another simple tale well told and, in my opinion, the best singing of the evening from the two female leads.

The evening ended with Killer Graphics by Sam Hall (music) and Darren Rapier (words) was typical Tête à Tête fare with reality blurred between video games (GTA) and real life. This was an interesting story with lots of fun violence and a little bit of fun sex delivered by a large cast. It was a wonderful end to the evening.

At half-time I was happy and at the end I was ecstatic. I loved the second half operas even more that I had those in the first half and that made it an astonishingly good evening overall. It was a fantastic advertisement for modern opera, the students, teaching and facilities of the RCM and the format devised by Tête à Tête.

Crime and Punishment was a ridiculously good evening and I was delighted that Tête à Tête were being even more innovative and were live streaming it the following night (Saturday) so that I could watch it all again.

The video of the evening is now online on YouTube so you can see for yourself just how good it was. I'll be watching it again too.

A jolly Albert Herring at the Royal College of Music

The hardest part about going out to cultural things regularly is that they all take time and there is far more good stuff around than the time available (by a long long way) so there is always a lot of prioritisation that goes on. I've missed a lot of shows that I really wanted to see but that's life.

In the prioritisation game, seeing Albert Herring staged in the Royal College of Music's Britten Theatre was an easy winner. I had seen Albert Herring before, at Glyndebourne, and had been to the Britten Theatre before, to see Hogarth's Stages, so I was keen to see them come together.

My favourite vantage point for opera is from up a bit and so I went for a seat in the front row of the Upper Circle (A23 for £30.00). It was a good choice.

Albert Herring has a fairly slight plot (no girls are good enough to be May Queen so they choose a boy, Albert Herring, instead only for him to go seriously off the rails after his crowning party) so it was up to the production to expand on this to give the opera more substance and it did this very well. Three little examples make the point.

In the opening meeting to discuss the possible May Queens, each one was rejected by referring to large books suggesting that everybody in the little village was being monitored and recorded all the time. During the opening speeches in the village hall, one of the small boys watching caricatured the speakers with exaggerated gestures. A young man in a leather jacket is seen loitering for a while outside of the Herring shop before Albert disappears and when Albert returned he was wearing that jacket, adding a gay overtone that was not in the original story (it would not have been tolerated in 1947) but which was relevant to Britten's life.

There was much more about the production to enjoy and it was a joy from beginning to end. The singing was sweet and crystal clear too which meant that I could easily follow the story despite the lack of surtitles (admittedly it was sung in English!), and all the cast over-acted their parts to just the right level to make their characters amusing but not ridiculous.

Everything about the evening was thoroughly enjoyable and it was a jolly treat to be there.

Hogarth's Stages at the Royal College of Music

Tête à Tête is stretching its wings this year in its mission to promote new opera with other projects alongside its main festival. I went to the first of these additional events, Hogarth's Stages, a set of five short operas inspired by Hogarth’s life and works.

The venue was new to me, the Britten Theatre at the Royal College of Music, hidden just behind the Royal Albert Hall. This is traditional opera house in shape and design but reduced in space to fit within the larger building of the Royal College that houses it. It is also buried quite low in the ground and is reached by several flights of stairs down from the street.

There was a little bar there too and having arrived there straight from another event I had my familiar evening meal of a packet of peanuts washed down with a bottle of beer, Peroni in this case.

The on-line booking system had lied to me slightly and my seat Stalls Circle A14 was not as close to the middle as I expected (the couple next to me were confused too) but it was still very good. And it only cost me £8.

On False Perspective was the first piece. This hovered between magic and quantum mechanics as people slid between worlds and used mathematics to attract women. It was clever and engaging.

The Bet was next. In this one man bet another that he could prove how poor human character is by starting a dispute between strangers. He won the bet by offering to give away money and people fought each other for the right to get it.

It was all good natured though and for wining the bet the man took his friend out to lunch. The story was neat and self-contained and the man making the bet impressed with his clear and strong singing.

Now closed the first half. Set in a strife-torn area, possible a refugee camp, five people sing of their hopes before joining together to sing the simple chorus "Now". The harsh subject matter deftly contrasted with the simple beauty of the chorus to make something both eerie and approachable.

Hogarth’s Bastards was set back stage at a rehearsal of Don Giovanni where the cast squabbled and belittled each other. It helped to know the opera but I am sure that everybody there did. The range of voices was the highlight of this piece and the one that grabbed me the most was the bass of Il Commendatore.

Serpentine closed this show. This was may favourite piece because it was so weird. It was set in a nightclub, Serpentine, which was packed with dancers. There was some of the other-worldliness of the first piece with an Architect and his assistant responsible for the realm. The assistant tried to make friends with a young woman and as they sang we learnt something of their artificial world. She stepped outside at one point but was enticed back in.

There was a lot going on but it was all a little weird (that's a compliment) and I was not taking notes so most of it has slipped away from me. I'd like to see it again both to fill in the gaps but also because it was great.

Overall it was a very impressive show. It is hard, and unfair, to compare such different pieces but none of them disappointed, I would happily see any of them again, and a couple I would like to see developed further.

If this is the sort of thing that Tête à Tête has lined up for the festival then I am in for a good time.