Glare at the Linbury Studio Theatre was as strange as I expected, and hoped

I am starting to love the programme of new opera at the Linbury Studio Theatre. That is mostly because it is edgy but it also helps that the theatre is excellent (comfortable seating with good views and acoustics) and that it is reasonably priced.

This is in stark contrast to the Royal Opera House upstairs which I think of as safe, old and prohibitively expensive. Yes, Glyndebourne is expensive too but going there is an event not just a concert.

That means that I am tempted to take a punt on something that I do not know, as was the case with Glare. I chose a seat in Row M again (M16) which set me back a miserly £25.

Getting to the theatre on time proved to be something of a challenge and ended with me walking out of Tuttons, the brasserie across the road, without paying my bill. This was because having failed to deliver all of the food in time then they failed to deliver the bill at all despite several desperate attempts to get one from various members of staff. Finally, having stood by the door in my coat for a few minutes I simply walked out.

The next curious incident was inside the theatre where an odd looking contraption was occupying a seat near me. Questioning revealed that it was a collection of sensors (volume, heat, humidity, etc.) used to assess the audience's environment.

Following all that the opera was almost normal.

Well, as normal as any opera that begins with a man dumping a body into a dumpster could be.

The story revolved around a young man and his passionate relationships with women, he had recently left one for another.

A twist comes when a friend suggests that he could try an android and we are asked to think whether his previous girlfriend was one and that was a machine that we saw being dumped. Later his friend suggested that androids were still some years away making us think again about what we had witnessed. We also met the old girl friend so who or what was that in the dumpster? It was all nicely ambiguous.

Despite the inherent uncertainty in the plot there was a coherence that propelled it forward through a series of strong scenes, many of which were set in his bedroom (front-left of the stage) and were quite raunchy. These scenes let us explore the in-the-now aspects of relationships while the twisting story showed how quickly and confusingly these nows can change, and how little influence we usually have over them.

The music was surprisingly traditional with a layer of unusual sounds on top, rather like the way Hawkwind use electronics to turn Rock into Space Rock. The songs were mostly conversations so there were a lot of duets. I liked all of the voices too. One one listening I am struggling to describe the music, and lack the formal vocabulary to do so, but what I can say is it was melodic and was structured as a series of reasonably long pieces; that is what I meant by traditional.

Glare was a very strong opera that entertained gloriously. More like that please.

Philip Glass' The Trial at the Linbury Studio Theatre

Performances of Philip Glass operas are not as common as I would like so it is with hints of desperation that I go when they do appear.

The notable occasion this time was the World Premier of his latest opera, The Trial, based on the book of the same name by Franz Kafka.This was the same combination that brought me In the Penal Colony earlier in the year.

The venue this time was the Linbury Studio Theatre, that is the nice modern one hidden below the Royal Opera House. I much prefer modern theatres, Glyndebourne is another excellent example, because we know so much more about designing them now that the sound is better, the seats are more comfortable and the stage can be seen clearly.

Being at the Linbury also gave me the excuse to eat in Tuttons, just the other side of Russell Street, beforehand. Tuttons was something of a treat and I can only justify it if I am going to the opera afterwards.

The Royal Opera House is not brilliant at publicity and, despite being on their emailing list, I was a little late to find out about the show and had a limited choice when I went to book. I opted for Arena Right M-14 for £40.00. Everything about the choice was turned out just right, as the picture taken from my seat shows.

The Trial was one the many books that I probably should have read at some point but had failed to do so and my knowledge of it was very limited.

The form of the opera and the production style were similar to that of In the Penal Colony, though the story was quite different.

The story progressed through a series of short scenes on a spare stage. The music varied with each scene while the singing style was mostly recitative, that is it was sung speech. It was sung in English with unnecessary English surtitles, which I found a little distracting as I found myself reading them even though I could hear all of the words perfectly clearly.

In the story the central character was arrested for some unspecified crime and while continually protesting his innocence he fought against the legal system only to discover that it moved on whims and favours and so his efforts had little effect.

There were some nice scenes along the way and in one of the more memorable ones the man visited a famous painter who knew some of the judges to ask for his help. The painter told the man about the judges, the way that the system worked and the role that he, the painter, was forced to play in this. All the while a gaggle of female fans were trying to get in to the studio to see the painter through the various doors and windows. We also learnt that part of the court ran past the studio and that the courts were everywhere.

As story was Kafkaesque, it did not end well. It was fun watching it get there though with nice, if somewhat unremarkable, music and good singing. I also liked the simplicity of the production and the clean way that the stage did the things that it had to do.

The Trial was very much Kafka's story with Glass providing the backing music, a combination that worked well.

Faustian Pack: The Crackle at the Linbury Studio Theatre

My original plan was to see the two Faustian Pack spin-off operas on consecutive nights but a minor confusion with the Royal Opera House website (all my fault) meant that I booked to go on Friday evening and then on Saturday afternoon.

At least I got the seating right and I was back in the Upper Gallery, in seat R9.

Public transport was not kind to me and the slow bus to Richmond lost me time that I never pulled back but I had allowed some contingency in my timings and I got to the theatre a couple of minutes before the opera started. That was just enough time to grab the special instructions sheet and to start to set up my iPhone. The Crackle used Chirp to send text and pictures to the audience, much like a fax used tones to send messages over telephone lines (remember faxes?). We had to install the app and leave it running.

Several times during the opera chirping sounds were produced and messages appeared on our phones. Most of these were disconcerting, which I guess was the point, but none more so that the devil himself, David Cameron.

The Crackle stuck fairly close to the Faustian myth though the details were very different.

The man making the deadly pack was a music teacher who was threatened with the loss of his department because of cut-backs. A way to save everything was to win a singing competition as that would show the value of the department and a mysterious voice said that they could so that.

The teacher was a little geeky and there was a funny scene early on when the mother of one of the students came to see him for diner and he was not expecting her and was in the bath. The flat was nothing like ready for a female visitor and for dinner they had a pot-noodle each.

This was a nice bit of light relief in what we suspected was going to be a story with an unhappy ending.

The mysterious benefactor provided a wonderful musical instrument, that is it on the stage, and the competition was duly won. And then the price was paid.

Musically The Crackle was structured traditionally with well defined songs that you could hum along to, if that were allowed.

It started off sounding a little like Philip Glass and while repetition was used a few times times it felt nothing like a Glass opera overall. The music modern but tuneful, if that makes sense. They probably said the same thing about Britten at the time.

The singing was a nice mix of solos, duets and choruses with the chorus being the teacher's young students. Most of it was lively and uplifting, as befitted the move of the story until the cruel end.

The Crackle was a neatly formed chamber opera with a dramatic operatic story (it ended badly as all the best opera do), fine music and plenty of good singing. And that is all you can ask an opera to do.

Faustian Pack: Through His Teeth at the Linbury Studio Theatre

The main theatre at the Royal Opera House was showing Faust and it was running other events under the label Faustian Pack to compliment this.

Through His Teeth was a new opera inspired by the story of Faust which was performed at the modern Linbury Studio Theatre on the lower level.

I got to the opera house just as the crowd for Faust was going in which meant that the Floral Hall was all but empty and was the ideal place to have a leisurely drink. I had thought about going to one of the Covent Garden pubs but they were all frighteningly busy.

I had been to the Linbury a few times before but this was my first time in the Upper Gallery, in seat R9. The view was perfect from there, which was just as well as I had already booked the same seat for the next day.

Through His Teeth got its name from the phrase "lying through his teeth" and it told the story of a man who psychologically manipulated women to give up their lives, and their money, and to follow him with almost messianic devotion that defied even the most obvious truths.

One woman escaped due to the efforts of her sister but she was still not free of him and other women were still ensnared.

The story was told as a sung narrative, almost recitative but a little more musical than that. The music was dramatically modern and devoid of the sort of tune that you can hum along to. I liked the impact of the music and it worked well, much like a good film soundtrack helps to signal the mood.

The story was the main feature of the opera and it was a good story well told. It was genuinely at times and all three singers played their part/s well, despite one of them complaining of a cold.

It was a gripping opera and I could ask for no more.

Vivienne at Linbury Studio Theatre

This was the third time that I had seen Vivienne and every time she had got better. The differences this time were mostly down to the Linbury Studio Theatre and it was a delight to see Vivienne performed in a venue designed for operatic performance.

The basic set was the same. Vivienne told the story of her life from the confines of a white square. The differences were the size of the stage and the lighting.

The larger stage meant that Libby Burgess' piano could be hidden in a dark corner. I presume that this was very deliberate as the corner was kept unnecessarily dark and Libby wore black and so was almost invisible. In contrast, Clare McCaldin performed on a white stage under bright lights and wore white.

I discovered more about Vivienne on each hearing because the libretto by Andy Rashleigh was so rich. Each listening was like the first time with most of the words coming as unexpected surprises.

Of course, for Vivienne to work at all required a good score and Stephen McNeff's music was wonderful. The story was told through six songs with different moods but the same grounding in music hall. This made all of the songs approachable but it would be wrong to think of any of them as simple.

Vivienne was a one woman show and Clare McCaldin was fantastic (again). Without the video evidence to prove it, it is hard to say how/if her performance was different this time but I think that her growing confidence in the role and the chance to perform on a "proper" stage gave Clare the impetus to put even more in to her acting than before. For example, I thought that she was raunchier than previously in the scenes where she told us about her seductions by TS Eliot and Bertram Russell.

Vivienne is a marvellous production and it deserved to get this opportunity to shine on the big stage, and shine it did.

The Wasp Factory at Linbury Studio Theatre

The Wasp Factory is one of the most extraordinary performances that I have ever seen and any casual reader of this blog will know that I am not unaccustomed to going to unusual shows.

And I only saw this by accident, somebody else was attracted to the opera via the Iain Banks book and I tagged along for the ride knowing nothing of the book or of this adaptation.

Several things combined to make it extraordinary and while some of these had resonances with some other shows that I had seen  other elements were new and the result of putting them all together was decidedly so.

The music was partially electronic and partially acoustic with a small band on the stage battling with some relentless rhythmic sounds. There were touches of Glass' 1000 Airplanes on the Roof here in the dark musical onslaught.

The set was lit by low lights on each side of the stage to produce sharp contrast. That was not unusual but what the stage did was. It started as the island flat and covered with soil before tilting in stages until it was vertical and became a burning house.

The story (I think it was a story) was delivered by three singers who did everything from crawl in the earth to climb the structure with safety harnesses on. And they sung beautifully. There were no surtitles and none were needed.

The Wasp Factory remained dark and threatening throughout and was not cheapened by an interval.

I've only touched lightly on some of the key elements but everything about the production had clearly been thought through in some detail and with great care. Every part was perfect and the way that they came together was better still.
 
The Wasp Factory was one of those extraordinary performances that does so much that it defies categorisation; yes it was an opera but it was also much more than that. It was also so stunning that my first reaction was that I wanted to see it again immediately.

The Wasp Factory was simply one of the best things that I have ever had the privilege to witness.

Written on Skin at the Royal Opera House

It was a late decision to see Written on Skin at the Royal Opera House that was prompted by good reviews on Twitter and supported by a description that promised something different, I like different.

The day was complicated by a date at the Arcola Theatre in the afternoon and the important Wales v England rugby match in the early evening.

Luckily it all worked out and I had a pre-opera dinner at Tuttons, just across the road, while watching the game on my iPhone. This was my first time in Tuttons and I'd go again. It's very much in the Browns/Cote mode, which is fine. Those two are better placed for ENO at the Coliseum and Tuttons is ideal for the Royal Opera House.

The other options would have been to eat at the Royal Opera House itself but other people had thought of that and it was fully booked. I am tempted to try and eat there in the future but not for the food or convenience, it's the architecture that appeals.

Sadly that impressive architecture is confined to the bar/restaurant area and the main house is as old-fashioned as always.

I spend more time in theatres watching the performances than I do easting and drinking so I find it odd that so many have refurbished the waiting areas and left the auditoriums untouched. The Lyric Hammersmith is much the same.

The proper way to do it is to rebuild everything as Glyndebourne and Saddlers Wells have done.

I did not want to take a risk with expensive tickets for an unknown opera so I headed for the amphitheatre. This stretches further back than seems sensible or comfortable but Row D in the central section was fine.

I was hoping for different and I got different.

The main difference was the very modern music that did its best to avoid anything approaching a tune. Instead we were served with a collection of disconnected musical sounds. I've made that sound worse than it was as I actually liked the music because of its weirdness. It just wasn't something that you could hum afterwards.

The staging was different too and I never really worked out what was going on. Of course I could have bought a programme or something but that would be against my basic principles, you should not have to be told how a performance works to enjoy it. In this case I enjoyed it without understanding it.

The stage was set on two levels with two or three sections on each (they moved). The main story, set in period, took place on the lower level while at the side of them people living in today got their costumes and props ready and on the upper level people walked through an office very slowly. It was all very weird but also engaging.

The short story told long was an old one featuring a warlord/king, his wife and an author, he who writes on skin. The wife and the author have inappropriate relationships and things end badly. Typical opera, and nothing wrong with that. Telling the story slowly allowed all the emotions to be displayed carefully one after the other.

The music may have been dissonant but the singing on top of it was lovely. The music popped, fizzed and banged in short bursts while the singing was steady, slow and sweet. The contrast worked and the sheer quality of the singing banished any lingering doubts about the music.

It ran for about 90 minutes without a break (increasingly fashionable, I'm pleased to say) and pulled me along with it nicely. There were no arias to speak of and the music was much the same all the way through so I cannot recall any specific highlights as such. Instead it was the steadiness of the atmosphere that I loved, exemplified by the slow walkers on the upper level.

Written on Skin was rather beautiful and I would certainly go to see it again, but I would prefer to do so at somewhere more modern, somewhere like Glyndebourne.

La Traviata at the Royal Opera House

Once upon a time I had season tickets for the ballet at the Royal Opera House but that was about twenty five years ago and the Royal Opera House has rarely featured in my plans since then.

The last time I was tempted out to Covent Garden was to see The Bartered Bride (because of it's Czech/Slovak origins) and that was before this blog started, which makes it more than six years ago.

It is not that I have been especially avoiding the place, more that it has not done quite enough to attract me, whereas the likes of Glyndebourne and the English National Opera have.

What finally overcame my reluctance was an offer, through work, to see that most quintessential of operas, La Traviata.

As with other work offers, the tickets were on the cheap side, a mere £32, and that meant being several levels up and back in row K.

The seat was in the central section so the height was not much of an issue, like it's not at Glyndebourne either, and I could see the whole stage.

That said, row K is probably about as far as I would want to push my luck and those further back in the even cheaper seats, it climbs up as far as row W somehow, must have struggled to see parts of the stage even if they had the excellent eyesight required to cope with the extra distance.

La Traviata has a simple poignant story and who would not be swayed by the tale of boy meets girl, they live happily together, they split up for noble reasons, they are eventually reconciled and confirm their undying love for each other. Then she dies.

The split is manufactured by the boy's father, a mistake that he too regrets at the end.

The opera rotates around the three lead roles of the girl (La Traviata), boy's father and boy, in that order, with at least one of them on stage at all times and usually carrying the main singing duties.

There are some other notable roles, such as the boy's rival for the girl's attention, but these are much lesser parts and were delivered with less bravado. To be honest, the story and the opera would have worked without them.

The chorus too played its part in the two party scenes but it seemed a little timid at the first time of asking and only rose to the occasion at the second. Indeed the support singing was so weak at the start that I had to strain to hear it, something that I have never had to do at Glydebourne.

The opera improved quickly when the main soloists were given a chance to show off and either the support got better or I got more forgiving of it.

Hell is other people, as they say, and the other people in the cheap seats tried to live up to this with their whispering, drinking, rustling, unrestrained coughing and incessant clapping whenever the music paused for breath.

At times it felt more like being at a musical, or even a circus, than at a major opera in what would like to think of itself as the country's premier opera house.

But the best efforts of the inexperienced audience did little to diminish the beautiful music radiating from the orchestra pit and stage and their distractions were easily ignored.

La Traviata was delivered considerately and professionally leaving the music to tell the story and to convey the considerable emotion that defines the opera. There may have been nothing specific to mark the performance out as exceptional but neither was there anything specifically wrong with it and that left us with a good opera well presented.