Report: Glasthule Opera

The Glasthule Opera shows in Dún Laoghaire’s Pavilion Theatre last week were as good as you could expect them to be, given the fact that the venue is far from ideal, the lack of funding, and consequent limits on rehearsal time.  Marketed as a professional season and reviewed as such (you can see Michael Dervan’s reviews from the Irish Times here and here), this was really more a pair of DIT Conservatory of Music graduate shows, strangely complementing OTC’s current employment of RIAM undergraduates in Acis and Galatea.  Like the late Bernadette Greevy’s Anna Livia Dublin International Opera Festival, Glasthule is the brainchild of DIT’s Anne Marie O’Sullivan, and as it was with Greevy and her festival, Glasthule’s existence owes a great deal to O’Sullivan’s own personal investment, as well as the great loyalty of her current and past pupils.  Sensibly, though, O’Sullivan and Glasthule Opera have avoided the pitfalls of attempting full productions, instead keeping it local and small-scale.  While this approach caused problems for La bohème (Puccini) – the production relying a bit too much on the work’s popularity -  it suited the one-act double bill of The Wandering Scholar (Holst) and Riders to the Sea (Vaughan Williams) very well.

Puccini likes to make you take risks as a performer, as he knew it makes for a more exciting performance if everyone is just a little bit on edge… the sparring between Rodolfo and Marcello (on all levels – narrative, theatrical, musical…) is a good example, not to mention the seemingly random cascades of entries from different principals, choruses etc in the street scenes of Act II.  You need verve, imagination and unflappability to manage all that, qualities you couldn’t expect from Glasthule’s creative team, so the overall effect was more rehearsal than performance, with everything unevenly cut down to fit into a small space.  There is no pit in the Pavilion for starters, so the (small) orchestra had to be squeezed into stage left.  Corners were inevitably cut elsewhere as well.  If I’m being tough it’s only because the piece itself demands it.  For all its drawbacks, though, it was a more enjoyable Bohème than some I’ve seen, and there were some really good moments, which were well-applauded.

For the Holst and Vaughan Williams, on the other hand, this mismatch of scale was less of an issue, and they also benefited from stronger casts.  Seeing Doreen Curran’s Mauyra in particular was a rare privilege, and it’s made me want to write more about Riders, which I’ll do in a separate post.  It was preceded in good classical fashion by a satyr-play of sorts, with Holst’s wonderfully farcical Wandering Scholar, with John Molloy as the predatory priest (how topical is that?) after his slice of Sarah Power’s Alison.  The piece made me want to re-read Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale, and I couldn’t help wondering how it went down with the headmistress at St Paul’s Girls’ School, where Holst held down his day job as a music teacher!

Glasthule Opera – June 23-27

It’s good to be able to confirm that the Glasthule Opera season I mentioned in the last post is going ahead as planned on June 23-27, and I gather rehearsals have begun.  Taking place in the Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire, the season alternates between three performances of La Bohème [Puccini] on June 23, 25 & 27 and a double-bill of Riders to the Sea [Vaughan Williams] and The Wandering Scholar [Holst] on June 24 & 26.  Matching Riders to the Sea (c. 40 minutes) with something to fill out an average-length evening programme seems to be part of the challenge of producing this piece nowadays.  Last year’s memorable ENO production picked up on the sea imagery and used Jan Sibelius’ solo cantata Luonnatar as an atmospheric prelude of sorts, while here the connection is more literary and localised, with both Riders and The Wandering Scholar being adaptations of texts by Irish writers (J.M Synge and Helen Waddell respectively).  Indeed, it’s strange there aren’t more Synge-related performances happening this year, since it’s the centenary of his death – maybe producers think we’re Synged out after the DruidSynge cycle of 2004-06, and the Abbey’s new version of Playboy, or else it’s just the recession?  Whatever – Riders to the Sea as an opera combines the talents of two greatly underrated artists in both Synge and Vaughan Williams, so it’s always good to have the piece revived profesionally, rather than its usual fate as fodder for student productions.  I’m also looking forward to the Holst, simply because I don’t know it (!), and it will be nice to see an intimate staging of Bohème, performed by some of the best of Irelend’s emerging singers.

Opera in the summertime….

Kilkenny Castle

It seems perverse to be thinking of summer just as we’re tentatively daring to enjoy this chilly spring, but plans for the Irish summer festivals are already appearing… and showing inevitable signs of recession fever.  While the enjoyable late winter offerings from OTC and OI had already been budgeted for, and so were safe from the moneymen, now we begin to see signs of the cutbacks already well-reported from opera companies overseas (especially in Italy and the US).  And the result is that we’re seeing a mix of some fairly shrewd moves, along with a bit of retrenchment – so nothing to worry about just yet, perhaps (apart from Cork’s Opera 2005, which had all its funding cut this year).  Opera Ireland is keeping tight-lipped and not announcing anything, so its autumn season remains a mystery, while Wexford Festival Opera has recently announced a reduction in its upcoming season.

In the more delicately-poised world of country-house opera, survival by adaptation seems to be the order of the day.  The Arts Council always likes it when production companies make ‘strategic partnerships’, and in the southeast Blackstairs Opera, after its coup last year in linking with Opera Fringe, is this year teaming up with Opera Theatre Company and the Office of Public Works (along with support from Fáilte Ireland and Kilkenny 400) to present a double-bill of OTC’s touring productions of Handel’s Acis & Galatea and Mozart’s early hit Bastien und Bastienne, in Kilkenny Castle on July 3 & 4.  Blackstairs Opera are even promising a second summer offering at Russborough House in early September, but details are still to be announced, apart from the dates (Sept 4-6).

In previous years, Blackstairs would share the touring productions of the UK-based Opera à la Carte with Loughcrew House in Co. Meath, but with the move to Irish-based production companies they are going their separate ways.  This year sees Loughcrew teaming up with Opera Ireland to create a new company, Loughcrew Opera.  Managed by the ex-Celtic Tenor Niall Morris, they are offering more standard fare in the shape of Puccini’s La Bohème on May 30 & 31, with a cast that includes Irish singers Michelle Sheridan, Claudia Boyle and Simon Morgan.  As part of a new departure for opera funding, they are saying that “a percentage of box office income from this production will be donated to the Opera Ireland Foundation, securing the future of Opera in Ireland through access, education and development initiatives.”

Back in Co. Dublin, Glasthule Opera is yet to announce its upcoming season, but from what I can gather it will be taking place at the Pavilion Theatre in Dún Laoghaire during the last week of June, with Puccini’s La Bohème alternating with an intriguing double bill of Vaughan Williams’ Riders to the Sea and Gustav Holst’s rarely-produced work The Wandering Scholar.  Nothing of this has been confirmed as yet, though, so best to wait before bombarding the Pavilion with enquiries.