Alfio (Simon Thorpe) with the men’s chorus in Cavalleria rusticana
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‘A stupendous young chorus with a chorus director of fabulous authority…’ Roderic Dunnett Opera Now
‘A venti-tre ore…’ the Dorset Opera chorus in full voice Pagliacci
Lola (Katharina Peetz) and Turiddu
(John Hudson)
Turridu (John Hudson) Cavalleria rusticana
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Brief Synopsis
“Easter was late that year. The village, nestling in the lee of the looming Rocca Busambra, was already suffering the sweltering heat of the long Sicilian summer. Grapes withered on the vine. Water became scarce. Lovers took to the fields with promises they did not intend to keep. Even after sunset, there was little respite from that heavy, relentless heat. Tragedy struck twice that year: a year that none of us would forget…
Turiddu returned from the army to find that, his girlfriend Lola, unwilling to wait for him, had married his rival Alfio. In a fit of pique, he had torrid relationship with another village girl, Santuzza. She became pregnant by him and as a result, was excommunicated. When the irate Alfio discovered that Turiddu was still ‘visiting’ his wife, events took a nasty turn. In Sicily, in the villages within the shadow of the majestic Rocca Busambra, you don’t have an affair and get away with it. By late July/early August, the atmosphere – already claustrophobic and full of foreboding – had turned unbearably stifling. That was when Fate brought a troupe of commedia dell-arte travelling players to the village. Goaded by jealousy, intrigue, infidelity and misunderstanding, the second tragedy of the year played itself out literally before our eyes…”
Piero Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana (loosely translated as Rustic Chivalry) launched the verismo school of opera: everyday stories about ordinary people, set in contemporary times. He was just 26 years old when his composition won a music publisher’s competition, gaining him overnight fame. Pagliacci (Players or Clowns) is the sole work of Ruggero Leoncavallo to remain in the regular operatic repertoire. He penned the score after hearing Cavalleria rusticana in 1890. It became an immediate success after the première in 1892. The two works played together for the first time in 1893, and thereafter became seemingly inseparable.
Opera Now
Dorset Opera is the only provincial ensemble apart from Buxton’s to produce results consistently on a par with the UK’s five main companies, including Welsh National Opera and English National Opera.
It is blessed with all the key requirements: a splendidly-run administration with a music professional as its general and artistic director (baritone Roderick Kennedy, veteran of ENO, Covent Garden, Glyndebourne, San Francisco, Chicago and the Met); invariably first-rate standards and top-class imagination from stage director William Relton and designer Cordelia Chisholm; a stupendous young chorus with a chorus director of fabulous authority (Nicolas Mansfield of the Netherlands’ Nationale Reisopera) at its helm; and brisk energised conducting from Opera St Gallen’s Jeremy Carnall.
It’s a formula for excellence, as Dorset recently proved with Hérodiade, whose forceful Herod, Franco Pomponi, returned to shine in Pagliacci as the equally headstrong Silvio; and with their British premiere under Carnall of Turandot with the Berio ending, in which Opera Dortmund’s Christine Groeneveld was stupendous, returning to deliver an equally magnificent, if staid, Santuzza opposite John Hudson’s phenomenally strong Turiddu, where they were joined (at short notice) by last year’s Zurga from The Pearl Fishers, baritone Simon Thorpe, as an aggressive Alfio.
Dorset’s calling card is its committed (and this year, 65-strong) chorus, as much a joy to behold in action in Relton’s leave-nothing-to-chance, beautifully finessed productions (one thinks of Phyllida Lloyd’s) as it is to hear in full voice. These are young singers, some with professional careers in view, who return to participate in a two- to three-week (sic) masterclass in vocal delivery and stage performance.
The church processions, the chorus’s full-throated interaction with Alfio and then Turiddu, the unostentatious intelligence and artistry of their moves as Mexican Luis Chapa’s mellifluous, stupendously-powerful young Pagliaccio dissolves to dust before their eyes (especially with Paul Need’s ideally judged lighting combining with Chisholm’s subtle and sharp ideas about colouring, all of which specifically worked, and the costume department working wonders) ensured a gripping and galvanised double show under Carnall’s ample yet fiery beat. Dorset’s orchestra sounded really spot on: no concessions now needed.
Dorset’s other strength, to which it devotes time, trouble and money, is its casting of principals. Not just Pomponi’s Silvio but Indian tenor Anando Mukerjee’s lithely attractive Beppe/Arlecchino and Claudio Otelli’s quite superbly loathsome Tonio contributed much to Pagliacci. Annelies Lamm’s rich-hued Mamma Lucia was stolid, staunch and empathetic; there were some nice brief solo touches from the chorus.
This was provincial opera to national standards. That’s what makes Dorset so great and unique.
©Roderic Dunnett: Nov/Dec 2009 issue
The Daily Telegraph
Opera singing is not just for professionals. Having a go yourself is the best way to prove that opera isn’t elitist, says Rupert Christiansen.
Quite aside from the dismally familiar notion that opera is an elitist art form (a pretentious way of expressing the notion that its audiences are snobbish), there’s is an even more ingrained idea that it’s something that only highly trained professionals can adequately perform. At many levels, this is true – the prospect of an amateur production of the Ring is not something to be countenanced. Opera is often a difficult and a complex business, requiring a sensitive integration of music and drama, pit and stage, libretto and score, and getting the articulation right is something that not even seasoned professionals often achieve…
But that’s no reason to mystify the thing, and at the very least, it’s profoundly educational to have a go and see what’s involved. Welsh National Opera used an amateur chorus until the 1970s, and for a recent production of Aida swelled its professional ranks for the Triumph Scene with local choirs to stunning effect; Birmingham Opera Company has gone further, and put community groups at the heart of productions of La traviata and Idomeneo, rigorously directed by Graham Vick…
But perhaps the most venerable and heroic of these pro-am organisations is Dorset Opera, founded in 1974 by Patrick Shelley. Every summer, currently in the 600-seater theatre of Bryanston School, it presents a run of fully staged perfomances in the original language. Over the years the repertory has embraced the British stage premieres of Puccini’s Edgar, Verdi’s Un Giorno di regno, Donizetti’s Maria Padilla and Erkel’s Hunyadi Laszlo, as well as large-scale works such as Verdi’s Don Carlos and Puccini’s Turandot (in both Berio and Alfano’s editions).
The whole show is put together in a two-week residential summer school, and it attracts student singers as well as amateurs from all over Europe, with a concentration on 16-25 year olds, many of whom plan to pursue music as a career.
Last week I visited Dorset Opera for the first time and relished the spirited productions of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, sensibly directed by William Relton and sturdily conducted by Jeremy Carnall… But what shone throughout was the excellence of the chorus, trained by Nicolas Mansfield, on leave from the Nationale Reisopera in the Netherlands. Somehow he had managed to build a totally ad hoc body of singers of all ages, shapes and sizes into a chorus that not only sang with unity and precision but also acted their roles as Italian peasants with a conviction that full-time choruses in major opera companies don’t always match. They reminded me that the truly ‘elitist snobbery’ pinned to opera is the assumption that professionals are always better than amateurs.
©Rupert Christiansen |
Opera Magazine
Cav and Pag are ideal works for Dorset Opera. The chorus is focal to both, and Dorset fields an excellent example that is 65 singers strong. This summer the company introduced a chorus master capable of encouraging them to still greater heights: Nicolas Mansfield, whose 20-year experience with the Netherlands Radio Choir and Nationale Reisopera has honed his gifts for motivating a young choir to deliver with precision.
The director William Relton has upgraded Dorset’s latest productions into kaleidoscopes of thoughtfully-contrived stagework; the designer, Cordelia Chisholm, should have larger companies queuing. Wardrobe and Lighting (Jane O’Donnell, Paul Need) were in broadly the same class. But prime credit for this double bill lay with the committed young Rotterdam-based conductor Jeremy Carnall.
Amid a bevy of first-rate principals, Claudio Otelli as a beastly Tonio in Pagliacci and John Hudson’s expressive Turiddu in Cavalleria rusticana stood out. The Mascagni provided gripping moments galore: the village bustled, the candlelit procession was thrilling, and Santuzza’s exchange with Mamma Lucia (Annelies Lamm) was shattering. Christine Groeneveld was an impressive Santuzza. Simon Thorpe was strong, too, as Alfio, mastering the role at short notice when Christopher Robertson was inexplicably denied a visa. In Pagliacci, the Mexican Luis Chapa offered an unnervingly dominant, impressively sung Canio; Marie Vassiliou was at times a rich-sounding Nedda. Franco Pomponi was well cast as Silvio, and along with Otelli’s death-dealing villain, I enjoyed the Indian tenor Anando Mukerjee’s Arlecchino.
©Roderic Dunnett, October 2009 edition
Blackmore Vale Magazine
Cav and Pag, the most famous operatic double bill, both centre on jealousy and murder in the Mediterranean heat of Sicily and Calabria. They were performed by Dorset Opera in the very untorrid heat of the Coade Theatre at Bryanston near Blandford last week – Pagliacci making its company debut and Cav chosen for the first time in 29 years. And the productions, though with the same director, performed on the same set with the same excellent chorus, were as different as marble and gorgonzola.
With the best will in the world and accepting that theatre is about suspension of disbelief, it was impossible to accept the statuesque and Nordic Christine Groeneveld (so impressive as Turandot), as a passionate Italian peasant. And Santuzza is the centre of this tale of betrayal and jealousy. Mascagni’s music includes the popular Intermezzo, familiar to all listeners to Classic FM.
Simon Thorpe, who sang Zurga to great acclaim in last year’s DO Pearl Fishers, came in at late notice to sing the role of Alfio, but you would not have guessed how short his rehearsal period had been. John Hudson was in fine voice as Turiddu and Annelies Lamm made the most of the only sympathetic character, Turiddu’s mother. Katharina Peetz (whose real-life husband Claudio Otelli, sang the black-hearted Tonio in Pagliacci) was Lola, perhaps the least likeable of the characters in this short opera, which depends on a sweltering atmosphere to engage a modern audience.
Director William Relton had slightly altered one of the women’s stories – for obvious reasons. Usually it is Santuzza who is pregnant by Turiddu, but here Nedda (Marie Vassiliou) in Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci was also an expectant mother, and it made perfect and additionally moving sense of the story. It starts with the very impressive Mr Otelli as Tonio, the Fool in a troupe of travelling players, confidingly warning the audience that clowns have feelings too.
The citizens rush out to welcome the players back to town, but passions are simmering to boiling point. Leading actor Canio is married to the pregnant Nedda, who rejects the unwelcome advances of the hunchback Tonio. Furious, he tells Canio that Nedda is having an affair with a villager, Silvio. But the show must go on and revenge is inevitable in the sultry heat of the late afternoon.
The audience was glad to welcome back Franco Pomponi in the role of Silvio. This American singer - who heads the website www.barihunks.com as the sexiest baritone in the world (truly!) - made a great impression in Hérodiade. Marie Vassiliou’s beautifully judged Nedda and the heartrending Canio of Luis Chapa (her real-life husband) were among the highlights of this terrific production. Guest chorus master Nicolas Mansfield ensured that this predominantly young chorus would have graced any of the major opera houses. And once again, Jeremy Carnall’s incisive conducting not only brought out the best in this scratch professional orchestra, but showed the interested members of the audience, all the intricacies and moods of his job.
©Gay Pirrie-Weir
Dorset Echo
Double act quite an occasion
OPERA'S most notable double act, namely Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci provides a challenge for every company but Dorset Opera rose to the occasion with great style in this fully staged modern dress production which emulates the Glyndebourne atmosphere of wining and dining before the performance and during the long interval. With a professional orchestra as well as leading solo singers, the standard can always be relied upon to be extremely high and both operas were well cast and satisfyingly presented, not least with their large cast of around 40 young chorus members, all of them having studied their roles during an intensive two week summer school. Both works were performed in Italian with English surtitles as passion, revenge and retribution swirled around the stage in true operatic fashion with complex plots worthy of a Mafia conspiracy movie.
Starry performances were delivered by baritone Simon Thorpe as the wronged husband in Cavalleria and by Marie Vassiliou as the doomed wife in Pagliacci while Luis Chapa scored a hit in the role as the tragic eponymous hero with his rendering of On With the Motley. The orchestra of Dorset Opera is always of the highest quality and under the baton of Jeremy Carnall, this year proved to be no exception in a classy production.
©Marion Cox |
