Charlotte Richardson / Umsagnir

Scotland's The Herald review of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland's Le nozze de Figaro

As I sat in the bar at Manchester’s Royal Northern College of Music sipping my pre-opera gin, my eye was drawn to a stunning vision of a young Parisian woman in a revealing corset, fishnet tights and courtesan ankle boots. With my other eye not far behind, she sauntered past me with a street-walker swagger and speed. As my mind wandered, it took me a few seconds to realise that she was part of the cast of RNCM’s end of year production of Offenbach’s operetta La Vie Parisienne. In fact, I began to notice more of these spirits of Paris dotted among the throng. A nice prelude to an evening full of delicious possibilities. Offenbach’s two-act operetta was first performed 150 years ago when Paris was the cultural centre of the modern world. This performance has been moved to the 1930s and is sung in English, giving it the sartorial elegance of the jazz age and more than something of its sexual freedom. It opens appropriately in that cathedral to French modernism, the railway station. We meet Raoul de Cardefeu (David McCaffrey) and Bobinet (Edward Robinson), replete with bouquets, awaiting the same woman, Metella (Fiona Finsbury) who arrives with another man. Our two young men are distraught. While Bobinet declares that being a bon viveur is very difficult and forswears women altogether, de Cardefeu, after a chance and funny meeting with Antoine (Robert Brooks), a hotel guide, takes his place in order to meet women of high quality. So begins our romantic and comic journey through la vie parisienne. His intended guests are Lord and Lady Ellington (John Ieuan Jones and Charlotte Richardson) who are in Paris to sample its’ baser delights, certainly implied by Lady Ellington’s shameless handling of the pink Tour Eiffel. While Lord Ellington has his eye on just about anyone in French frilly knickers, Lady Ellington has hers on de Cardefeu’s tower as much as he has on her Eurotunnel. W.H. Auden declared that ‘no opera plot can be sensible’ and this one relied heavily on innuendo and high farce where timing is god. I have to say that some of the verbal exchanges between the principles were a little creaky but I put that down to first night nerves. Furthermore, I was here for the singing – and brilliant it was too. While the plot energetically moved on with all the saucy irrelevance of a Carry On movie, the level of the musical performances by the company in its totality, from the chorus to the sexy spirits of Paris to the main characters supported by a well-drilled orchestra was extraordinary. Performances by Frick (Matthew Palfreyman), Urbain (Edwin Kaye), Leonie (Charlotte Badham) and her assistants, Clara and Louise (Juliet Montgomery and Emma Wheeler) and a great Brazilian (Matt Mears) all added to a winning night. I was particularly taken with Gabrielle (Charlotte Trepess) whose voice and slinky, voluptuous nature brought the house down. And there was the Can Can! I arrived a man almost broken by work and life, tired and down, but I left revived, enlivened and happy by La Vie Parisienne and all those spirits who live there. Merci.

Massenet is still mainly remembered for his version of the Manon story (1884) and Werther (1892). Whilst his music seemed to fit the Paris of the period that followed the dramatic collapse of the ‘Second Empire’, the ‘Siege of Paris and the burnings’, there were intellectual elements in France who were derogatory, referring to the composer as grossly inferior to Gounod. Paris itself, with its new boulevards, became the cultural and elegant glory of Europe until its untimely demise following the advent, and literal decimation of France’s manhood, along with its cultural core, in World War I. Add the evolving musical directions and tastes in Europe and Massenet’s near sentimental melodic music never really recovered, despite the transient popularity of Esclarmonde (1889), promoted by Joan Sutherland and Thais (1894) by Renée Fleming. Cendrillon also suffered by the comparison, in some eyes at least, to Rossini’s La Cenerentola. More recently the shared production of Cendrillon seen and filmed at Covent Garden (review), New York’s Metropolitan Opera as well as Gran Teatre de Liceu, Barcelona, Théâtre de la Monnaie, Brussels and Opera de Lille has significantly altered that previous jaundiced view. This splendid staging and performance at Manchester’s Royal Northern College of Music should further enhance that view. The stage set for the first two acts was a simple two-sided affair, one mirrored, that gave illusions of size, whilst that for Acts III and IV involved the mirror as a room separator, very effective albeit I was not fond of the pseudo hospital treatment involving an intra-venous drip that followed Cendrillon’s attempt to take her own life. The lighting effects involving, at one point, the lowering of chandeliers was pleasingly apt at all times, not always so in some opera performances I see. The costumes were outstanding, especially that for Cendrillon to go to the ball. In summary, the whole set and direction produced a cohesive framework for the evolution of the story with its mixture of sleep experiences and domestic cruelty, albeit Massenett and its dream sequences underplays the later in comparison to Rossini’s opera. If I found the staging and production satisfactory, it was as nothing compared to the quality of singing and acting to be seen and heard. Matters started well with John Ieuan Jones sonorous tones and good acting as Pandolfe, Cedrillon’s father. As the heroine herself, Fiona Finsbury’s acted assumption was outstanding. Her singing perhaps needed a little tempering at the top of the voice to avoid a little flutter, but she has that indefinable attribute of stage presence. This latter quality was also evident in the portrayal of Madame de la Haltière, Cendrillon’s stepmother, well sung and acted by Rebecca Barry with plenty of verve and facial expression. Daniella Sicari as La Fée as well as Eliza Boom and Lucy Vallis as her daughters came over well in acted portrayal and their sung contributions. Of the men I was most taken by the French tenor style of Michael Gibson as Le Prince Charmant. Promoted from the second cast his voice seemed to be ideally French in timbre even if his intonation failed a couple of times. If the RNCM has another tenor of that quality in Kamil Bień, who he replaced, they have riches indeed. The other male roles were well sung and acted. Elsewhere my evening was satiated to the full by the chorus of vibrant young voices, so vigorous and obviously involved and enjoying themselves. On the rostrum Matin André paced the work to perfection whilst also bringing out the French character of the music. A word also about the use of the original language, very welcome here and as always in French opera in particular. The quality spoke well for the coaching in French of all the participants, soloists and choristers alike. The only hiccup of the evening was that the titles, in English, were barely visible to the discomfort of many of the audience who did not know this version of the famous story reasonably well or had not had time to read their programme synopsis.

Marooning a random set of people in an enclosed space and forcing them to confront themselves is a well-proven successful theatrical premise, as characters have back-stories to get out and emerge changed by the experience. Trapping his cast in the pressure cooker of an airport shut by the weather overnight, composer Jonathan Dove and librettist April De Angelis gently turn up the tension as an electrical storm rages. The RSAMD opera students in Glasgow gave Flight its Scottish Premiere in 2006, so it was fascinating to return to see what the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland cast and crew would make of this now firmly established modern classic, recently performed by Scottish Opera in 2018 in a run which was, oh the irony, plagued by closed airports and roads in its transfer to Edinburgh. Even the background to this show has its own story. Originally scheduled for 2020, RCS approached Dove asking him to apply his orchestral reduction skills to his own work for just the 19 players who could legally fit into the pit. A new score arrived within a month. Changing rules cancelled that performance, but happily this new version was able to be performed by 32 players with RCS inviting singers back who missed out on performing full live shows during their studies, with five roles double cast here for the short run. Composed in 1998, the opera was inspired by the true tale of protestor Mehran Karimi Nasseri who spent years in limbo, permitted to live in Charles de Gaulle Airport but legally prevented from leaving the building. Dove’s Refugee is the central character stalking designer Tom Paris’ stunning, architecturally utilitarian airport set, its ugly concrete Y-shaped beams softened by some curved walls, basic lounge seating with an angular opaque back wall bending the perspective, all overseen by the Controller’s eerie, full of flashing old-school electronics. Lighting designer Rob Casey created exciting dramatic set pieces yet sensitively highlighted individuals and vignettes as the moods changed. The appeal of Flight is the mix of every-day characters, juxtaposing comedy with the slow shift to a much darker place, immediately resonant as refugees currently pour across Europe. Dove’s energetic music is a heady brew of minimalism, bright rhythms and astonishingly sensitive lyrical moments which the orchestra under conductor Matthew Kofi Waldren tackled with committed verve. The reduced forces were only occasionally noticeable, but still produced the visceral walls of sound required at high dramatic points, the three percussion players (Dove refused to compromise here) adding to the physical energy. Bright celesta, silver-stringed harp and sharp woodwind pointed up and coloured the score, Waldren driving the tempos along briskly, never letting the energy dim for a moment in the pit. Joining the Refugee, we meet Tina and Bill off on holiday looking to rejuvenate their marriage, the diplomat Minskman and his very pregnant wife heading out to a new posting in Belarus, an older woman stood up by her fiancée and a couple of amorous cabin crew with airport smiles looking for a quiet place to get cosy. High up in the control room, the controller enjoys the complete authority over the action a bit too much and an Immigration Officer pursues the Refugee. The singers were uniformly strong, each one a match for their technically difficult music, with Rosalind Dobson’s Controller perfectly sky high in her coloratura using glockenspiel chimes to precede her announcements. Claudia Haussmann and Cameron Mitchell were comically down-to-earth as the characterfully bickering couple Tina and Bill, Jonathan Forbes Kennedy and Charlotte Richardson playfully amorous as the Steward and Stewardess. Polish mezzo Wiktoria Wizner as the Older Woman had some of the wittiest lines and a lovely rich voice. Toki Hamano’s Minskman was a smooth comforting baritone for Lindsay Grace Johnson’s ripe mezzo, her Minskwoman declining to accompany her husband on the plane. Director James Bonas judged the mix of ‘wrong trousers’ high comedy with the real drama of the violence and childbirth scenes perfectly. Matt Paine’s clear countertenor as the Refugee was a highlight, wheedling food from the travellers at first, dismissed by everyone as a nuisance. He produced pebbles of fortune and charmed the women who aggressively turned against him when they perceived a trick. His is the final and most terrible story as he awaits his brother, one which finally moves everyone to rally in his defence to Eoin Foran’s officious Immigration Officer. With a raucous surging score to sing over and a busy libretto to get across, the singers worked hard but sometimes the words were hard to pick up. What stayed with me were the intense individual stories and the powerful ensemble pieces which thrillingly had us pinned to our seats. This special production is a credit to the three-year group of students on stage, off-stage and in the pit. On opening night, Dove’s smile on taking his bow said it all. Bachtrack