Festured image: Lucy Shaufer is Marie Curie in Stephen McNeff’s ‘The Daughter of the Elements’. Photograph: Claire Shovelton. Courtesy of Tête á Tête.
Since 2007 Tête á Tête have been hosting a festival showcasing new and small scale operas from the experimental to the innovatively succinct. This year sees the fifth incarnation of the festival. We round up of a small sample of the performances from the festival which covered three weeks earlier this August.
Daughters of the Elements
Rating: ***
This opera, with music by Stephen McNeff, is essentially a cycle of six songs exploring the life of scientist Marie Curie (Lucy Shaufer) and the life and relationship she had with her daughters, Éve (Katherine Bond) and Irène (MaryPlazas). The libretto is taken from various documents such as personal letters written by Marie and her daughters, as well as other pieces such as newspaper articles.
What’s particularly striking about the piece is how subtle the music is. Though it sounded decidedly contemporary, it is incredibly delicate with hints of neo-classicalism. McNeff’s orchestration never draws focus away from the performers, but instead gives only light touches of timbre to merely support the voices, libretto, and narrative. Indeed the scoring and the character’s parts are so well written that Bill Bankes-Jones only need employ simple direction, thus allowing the piece to carry itself.
Shaufer’s gave a strong and controlled performance as Marie, her eyes wistfully drifting with her thoughts as she muses about moments in her life, all sung with a lilting lyricism. Both Bond and Plazas perform well Marie’s mismatched daughters, playing on a real sense of kinship throughout their performances. At points they also take on the roles of Mademoiselle Langevin, with whose estranged husband Marie had an affair after the death of her own, and Mademoiselle Bourgois who fuelled the right-wing press with lies about Marie’s having a Jewish heritage, both turning their docile personas into spitefully scratching at Marie’s scandal.
One criticism is that some scenes seem more like a chemistry lecture than an opera. But the main gripe is that though well thought out and expertly presented, its brevity and shallow exploration of themes makes it feel a little unfulfilling in the sense that a more comprehensive execution would have easily been just as enjoyable, if not more. But despite this it is worth watching for the touching and heartfelt moments that there are, especially the finale where Marie recounts the moment when she first saw her husband’s freshly lifeless body. All in all this is a poignant and rich opera, filled with some great musical writing.
Vulnavia Vaniety as The Protagonist in Ergo Phizmiz's adaptation of Flann O'Brien's 'The Third Policeman'. Photograph: Claire Shovelton. Courtesy of Tête á Tête.
The Third Policeman
Rating: ***
Composer Ergo Phizmiz and The Gang of Rogues present this ‘neur-opera’ adaptation of Flann O’Brien’s bombastically bewildering novel, The Third Policeman. In the same spirit that O’Brien mashes together genres, from comedy to thriller to science fiction, The Gang of Rogues splice into the opera puppetry, animation, and paper mache!
It’s very difficult to actually summarise what happens in this opera, except by saying it’s a psychedelic misadventure of murder, bicycles, and atomic theory. But what Phizmiz and the company do well is really capture the unhinged and unrelenting sense of O’Brien’s crazed imagination. Indeed, the absurdity and energy of the execution is its charm, and the miscellany of theatrical tricks is just a product of it all, rather than being anything abstract or profound.
The music itself is just as radical, mixing together many samples and sound effects to create an extravagantly fractured electronic score, but one that is nonetheless catchy and engaging. While its style confidently embodies a dizzying sense of absurdism, it also has a wonderful sense of underlying menace, making the protagonist’s out-of-the-ordinary mishaps seem less than benevolent.
What lets it down is that it’s probably just a little bit too wily. Parts of it feel quite juvenile, coming across more like the machinations of a hyperactive child rather than a wilfully bizarre adult adaptation. And the fact that all the music is pre-recorded, including many of the vocal parts, means that the timing of everything has to be very precise leaving little room for the spontaneity that the piece begs for.
Besides these niggles this piece is a lot of fun and is incredibly quirky, making for some delightful and mind-warping opera.
Telling Tales of Our Time
Rating: *****
Composer Errollyn Wallen presents a master class exploring her own opera writing techniques and approach.
Opening with a performance of the ethereally haunting Guru from the song cycle Are You Worried About The Rising Cost of Funerals?, she meticulously took the audience through her process of how she approaches a new work, from its conception, to working on libretto either by herself or in collaboration with another writer, to staging it and working with the performers.
Errollyn Wallen takes us through the process of writing an opera. Photograph: Claire Shovelton. Courtesy of Tête á Tête.
It goes without saying that Wallen is not only incredibly charismatic, but also charmingly down to earth. Totally devoid of any grandiose ego she is unmistakably a person who is not only passionate about her art, but also excited by it. Indeed, her engrossing personality means that her dissection of her craft never becomes dry; it is truly fascinating, offering an unprecedented and raw insight into process.
There were also some wonderful illustrations of her work through recorded sounds and video, but also live performance. She was joined by Omar Ebrahim and Natalie Raybould who at one point gave a stunning rendition of a movement from her work for children, Cautionary Tales. Author Bonnie Greer also performed a snippet from the upcoming opera, Yes, based around her infamous appearance on Question Time in 2009, for which Greer herself was the librettist. There was also a bit of audience participation where Wallen taught the crowd to sing a chorus from the work.
This was a brilliant opportunity to get up close and personal with a real pioneer of contemporary opera, and also a teaser of what looks like some great works to come.
Tête á Tête: The Opera Festival ran from 4-21 August 2011 at the Riverside Studios, London, W6 9RL. To find out more about the festival and upcoming projects by Tête á Tête, visit www.tete-a-tete.org.uk.
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