Akram Khan's Gisele at London Coliseum

This was another show that crept under my radar, even though I subscribe to a vast number of arts emails (the volume may be part of the problem1), and it was a late decision to go, prompted by good reviews.

I was lucky with returns and got seat Upper Circle: A5 for a no-brainer £67.

I had seen Giselle many years before as a traditional ballet but this version promised "mesmerising choreography blends ballet with classical Indian dance kathak and contemporary movement, harnessing groups of dancers to dial up the intensity in every scene" which sounded very interesting, and I like interesting.

This version of Gisele combined so many things that I love including industrial music, low lighting, large groups of dancers, a simple set and unusual movements. The mix of dancing styles was obvious and worked very well.

My lasting image of the performance is the workers moving synchronously to the dark repetitive music as they did their task, which is why I chose the image above from the several available.

There was a story in there too but frankly I cared little for it and made no attempt to follow it, this was a dance of moods and movement and those did not need a narrative to justify them,

There were only a few performances at London Coliseum but a show this good must reappear somewhere before too long and I will gladly travel to anywhere (sensible) in the country to see it again.

Akram Khan's Gisele at London Coliseum was the best dance show I have ever seen.

Akhnaten at ENO (2023)

I have often been remiss in keeping this blog up to date so I am not certain how many times I have seen Akhnaten but I have certainly seen every production at ENO. 

My online calendar is more help and that tells me that I have seen this production at ENO three times, on screen at Barbican once and online from the MET in New York once, and that my Akhnaten journey started in Ghent in 2015.

As always for Akhnaten I booked a seat in the front row of Dress Circle (A51) which cost me a perfectly reasonable £110. I booked it in July 2022 as soon as booking opened.

 

I try to find a regular place to eat for all of my regular theatres and for Coliseum, and other Central London venues, it is Govinda’s vegetarian restaurant just off Soho Square. There the standard thali is a ridiculously low £6.95 and it is very tasty too.

Having seen this production five times (or more) I knew what to expect, and that is what I got.

Akhnaten keeps coming back and keeps being completely sold out because it is a phenomenal work.

Obviously that starts with the music by Philip Glass and it builds from there. The playing and the singing are excellent and the staging adds so much tension and drama with lots of slow graceful movement and also a prodigious amount to juggling to compliment the Glass motif rhythms.

The only negative was that ENO is under threat due to funding cuts and so this may well be the last time that I get to see this Akhnaten. I hope their fight to stay is successful because while there are other places that do operas in London none of them has ENO's repertoire. Yes, places outside of London should have companies like ENO too but that does not mean that London should lose its.

The Pirates of Penzance at ENO was delightful despite the poor view

I had largely managed to avoid Gilbert and Sullivan and was only persuaded to see The Pirates of Penzance by other people.

Having decided to go on a Saturday I made something of a day of it by popping into the V&A on the way and then into Govinda's where a Large Thali had morphed into an Unlimited one, not that I went back for seconds.

Being relatively slow off the mark for Pirates I failed to get my usual front row seat upstairs and instead had to settle for Upper Circle  B25 at £‬40.

A reasonable price for the seat until two tall people sat in front of me and limited my view to the middle third of the stage. That is ridiculous for a seat at that price and has vastly reduced the chances that I will go back to The Coliseum except for mandatory events, e.g. Philip Glass operas.

Luckily most of the action happened in the middle third of the stage.

That stage was simply constructed and boldly coloured, like a young child's toy. The opera opened with a large blue screen through which a bright orange ship emerged. This was, of course, the pirates' ship on which Frederic had just reached 21 and with that completed his indenture to the pirates. Freed of his bond he was leaving them to start a new life. Leaving with him was a maid who was responsible for his indenture to the pirate originally and in mistake.

What followed was a jolly romp with pretty young ladies, their Major-General father and a group of not so bold policeman. What also followed was lots of jolly songs. I knew I am the very model of a modern Major-General and A Policeman's Lot Is Not A Happy One and they were fairly typical of the feast of around thirty songs. There was a lot of humour in there and the tunes were pleasant too.

The story was helped a lot by some strong acting both by the principle characters and the large supporting cast. One high point was the increasing timidity of the policemen as others remarked on their valour in doing battle with the pirates where they faced certain death,

I left the singing to last because it had been a problem at my previous exposure to Gilbert and Sullivan it had been bit of a problem and so I was delighted that the singing was good this time. Again that included both the principles, there were several, and the supporting cast.

The story ended happily and the journey there was a lot of fun. I had a delightful evening and was able to forgive the poor view.

The Perfect American at ENO (sparkling)

Sadly there are not that many chances to go to Philip Glass operas and whenever one comes along I jump at the opportunity. This usually means visiting the ENO at the Coliseum, as it did when I went to see The Perfect American.

The American in question was Walt Disney and the opera explored the motivations of the man behind the empire.

Disney are one of the World's most enthusiastic litigants so this meant telling the story of Mickey Mouse's creator with only the barest hint at the famous iconography.

The Perfect American is Glass' latest opera so musically it is more melodic and less relentlessly rhythmic than his earlier works. This is an evolution in styles and it is still instantly recognisable as Glass. Which is good, because I love glass.

The staging had some of the same elements as Satyagraha (staged at ENO in 2007 and 2010, and it will be again in 2013) with fluttering papers, projections and flowing cloth but the impact was quite different. Satyagraha is almost a fantasy and the imagery reinforced that whereas The Perfect American is firmly set in the real worlds of Small Town America and Disney's workshop in Hollywood.

The opera covered Walt's last days with him in hospital remembering, justifying and trying to secure his legacy.

The main other character was his brother Roy, a constant companion. Other people drifted in an out of his life, such as a disgruntled artist from the Disney studios and a terminally ill boy in the hospital.

Nothing particularly dramatic happens but through Walt's reminiscences and those of others we learn more about the legend. The end result was that Walt came across as an unpleasant man if not a nasty one. I am not sure if a prejudice was intended or whether it was just mine.

A recurring theme, echoed in the music, was Walt's past in Marceline, Missouri (population, not a lot) and one of the highlights was when the full chorus representing the townspeople were on stage singing.

Both lead singers sang beautifully, clearly and eloquently. That combined with Glass' music was enough to make this a good opera. Add the other voices and the staging and it was superb.

The Perfect American was another excellent night at the opera with Philip Glass. I can only hope that there are many more to come.

The Passenger at the ENO

The English National Opera (ENO) features rarely in my cultural calendar because I find most of its repertoire dull and I'd rather hear the words sung in their natural language. A new and unusual opera got me back there.

The Coliseum is a nice quaint venue too. I do prefer modern theatres (Glyndebourne is the obvious example here) but I am getting used to London's Victorian theatres with their rich decoration, waves of boxes and soft red velvet seats.

The lounge areas are reasonable to and I was able to get a Czech Budvar and a chair to sit in while drinking it before the show.

But the beer and the theatre were not what had pulled me there, it was the prospect of an opera tackling the difficult theme of the holocaust. This is not light opera but then I don't really do light opera. What attracts me to opera, and also plays, are words like dark, disturbing and difficult.

The simple premise of the story is that a woman sailing with her husband to start a new life in Brazil things she recognises a former prisoner from Auschwitz from her time as a guard there some fifteen years earlier. This leads her to think back to those days,

This set does this cleverly with the upper layers, in white, representing the cruise ship and the dark lower level representing the camp.

The story starts with the possible encounter on the ship but once the scene is set most of the story happens below and in the past. Not surprisingly some of this is quite harrowing. There is little direct cruelty on show but we do see some of the inmates being taken away and ashes being shovelled out of the furnaces.

Amidst this horror we get a little love story and also some camaraderie amongst the captives that leads to some singing of traditional folk songs and even a birthday celebration.

The story returns to the cruise ship and we get an uncomfortable chorus about never forgiving the Germans for what they have done. That might have been reasonable in 1959 when the original story was written but now it's an uncomfortable message that jars against the progress we have made in Europe over the last sixty six years.

Musically the opera is a little thin. It's only in sections of the second half that we get some memorable singing. Most of the time the music is slight and the singing little more than recitative.

Without the music to focus on our full attention is on the story and while I did not agree with some of the sentiments it is a powerful story that draws you in with awe and horror.

Somehow that is not enough though.

The Passenger is different and it is challenging and it does make for a rewarding night out but it lacks the spark that makes you want to repeat the experience.

L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato by Mark Morris

If there's a weakness in my cultural life it's that there is not enough dance in it.

The theatre features most months and opera gets a healthy does every Summer at Glyndebourne but dance flits in and out only once a year or so.

But when it does flit in it does so with panache, exuberance and passion. Just as it did at The Coliseum for Mark Morris' L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato.

The Coliseum is not my favourite venue, mainly because the auditorium is cramped and old fashioned, but it has its good points and the newish extension is one of them. Not only does it make more communal (bar!) space but it also provides views of the old part of the building and across Trafalgar Square.

The setting for the dance was a simple white stage with multiple openings at the sides to allow the dances to enter and exit from multiple points to make complex and entrancing patterns.

The only effects or props used where some coloured screens and veils that dropped at times to divide the stage and give a ghostly appearance to the dancers at the back.

The music was simple baroque, including Handel's pastoral ode set to the poetry of John Milton, and while it was pleasant verging on gorgeous it's main role was to provide the subtly landscape for the dance and to be almost unnoticed itself.

The dancing was sumptuous producing mesmerizing and almost chaotic patterns in the individual figures, couples, small groups and full ensemble; and often in many of these at the same time.

One enchanting scene had all the dancers making Busby Berkleyesque shapes as they paraded around the stage, but the normal pattern was for each dancer to be slightly off-step with the others, sort of dancing apart together.

This simple technique was very effective as when all the dancers are doing the same thing at the same time then you only need to look at one of them (or all of them as one whole) to see what is going on but if they are all doing different things then there is a lot more to see and savour and you have to try and look everywhere at the same time to catch the richness of the moment.

My favourite scene had three lines of dancers moving slowly across the stage, as if on parallel conveyor belts, with translucent screens between them. These lines stopped frequently freezing all of the dancers briefly in exotic poses before they restarted their journeys in unison. Here the simplicity of the parallel lines combined wonderfully with the individual moves of each dancer to produce an compelling tableau that I could have watched for ages.

Scholars will have noticed that the new dance stories that I have included here over the last 3 to 4 years have featured choreography by Matthew Bourne or Mark Morris and while they are undoubted masters of their art there is other great dance out there. So, not only do I need to see more dance, I also need to see more variety. That sounds like a plan.

Satyagraha back at the ENO (it was great!)

Either somebody has been playing around with my blog postings or it really is three years since I last saw Philip Glass' Satyagraha at the ENO.

I said then that a Philip Glass opera was unmissable and it still is and so I didn't!

The production was the same, and not much has happened to the theatre either, I also suspect that I sat in the Dress Circle last time too, but a second visit did offer more than the first.

The ENO itself impressed more than the first time (perhaps I was in a better seat after all) and I had little to complain about regarding the facilities. Finding Czech beer was good.

This was followed by finding a Czech couple who I know from the BCSA who provided some intellectual conversation prior to the performance.

The seating was better than I reported last time, the view was excellent and the audience where not the rowdy crowd that blighted Aida at ENO a little while ago. Good omens then.

The programme describes Satyagraha as a meditation upon Mahatma Gandhi’s early years in South Africa and it presents a series of images and scenes rather than a story. A musical tableau if you like.

With no story to detract you (and therefore no sur titles either) you can concentrate on the musical and visual feast played out before you.

As before, some of the scenes made little sense (not that this mattered and sense may not have been the intention either) and I still have no idea what the cellophane was all about!

The feast was served in three courses, each comprising a few dishes chosen to complement each other. These were linked by some common themes, notably newspaper, and by the hypnotic music. All these delights were spread out over a leisurely and luxurious three hours.

Some of my favourite treats were the ensemble singing with coats floating in the air at the end of the first course, the opening of the second course with the gentlemen having the shoes shined while singing some familiar Glass non-words, and the haunting close with just the soloists.

It was a juicy, bouncy, creamy evening with plenty to enjoy and absolutely nothing to detract from the pleasure. I just hope that it is not another three year wait before the next Philip Glass opera.

An average Aida at ENO

My only previous visits to the ENO had been to see rarely performed operas (Nixon in China and Satyagraha) but I was tempted to take the family to see Aida at the ENO because it was some months since the Glyndebourne season ended (I went three times this year), even longer since we had all gone to the opera together (The Bartered Bride at ROH in 2005) and I was intrigued by the prospect of Zandra Rhodes’ designs.

In the best tradition of beauty contests, I’ll comment on the various aspects of the production in reverse order.

Easily the worst part of the evening was the audience which was inconsiderate, noisy and rude. Around me people spoke during the performance, frequently unwrapped sweets, clapped during the music, left a mobile phone on and ran for the exit as soon as the performance ended.

It’s hard to image a worse audience at an opera so that gets a score of 0/5.

The theatre itself does little to enhance the evening. It was too warm throughout, there is less legroom than on a budget airline, the seats are uncomfortable and the pitch between the rows is insufficient for the height people are today. (2/5)

The solo singing was mixed at best. We were warned beforehand that several of the cast were suffering from seasonal ailments but if they were not well enough to perform then understudies should have been used or the performance cancelled. Deliberately offering up below par singing is unforgiveable. Some of the soloists seemed uninflected by the dreaded lurgy and the Ethiopian king and the High Priest gave commanding performances. (2/5)

The direction was limited and very formal. For a love story set during a war there was very little emotion on stage. The soloists were stationary for most of the time and usually singing directly to the audience rather than to the objects of their passion. (2/5)

The ensemble scenes were much much better. Whether it was the priests singing at the trial or the triumphal procession after the initial skirmish with Ethiopia, the stage was full of singing and movement.

I am not sure that we needed the acrobats but they did no harm and the scene they were in was the liveliest and helped to kick momentum in to an otherwise fairly flat performance. (4/5)

But easily the best part of the performance was the Zandra Rhodes designs. The sets were fairly simple but brightly decorated with Egyptian symbols in turquoise and orange. The same colours were used in the costumers and in, er, the elephant! I especially liked the Anubis headdresses worn at the celebration and the large Eye of Horus symbol on the prison bars. (5/5)

On balance, the ensemble singing and the designs saved what could have been a poor evening and made it one that was worth going out for (3/5).

However, I already know that I will be going to Glyndebourne several times next year but I am unlikely to be going back to the ENO in a hurry.

Philip Glass' Satyagraha at ENO

I could not miss the rare opportunity to hear a Philip Glass opera and so tonight I went to the English National Opera to see Satyagraha.

The performance was excellent and the staging was interesting if somewhat confusing at times ~ I have no idea what the purpose of all that cellophane was! Overall though, it worked very very well and even the critics agree with this. For the best part of three hours I was mesmerised by the music and the singing which, in the absence of anything you might reasonably call a plot, is the essence of the opera.

That's my second visit to ENO in recent months, the last time was for John Adams' Nixon in China. It's good to see somebody doing modern classics like that and not just the usual repertoire of Tosca, Madam Butterfly et al.

As a venue, however, ENO is rather old fashioned and leaves a little to be desired by modern standards, but not as much as the disastrous Royal Opera House. If you want to see what an opera house should look like these days then go to Glydebourne.