Nymphs and shepherds were the order of the day in the Guinness Storehouse this evening as Opera Theatre Company presented Handel’s Acis & Galatea as a part of the 2009 Dublin Handel Festival. The performance took place in the Atrium space in the storehouse to a relatively small sell-out audience of approx. 130 people. The space was surprisingly well-suited to the performance with ringing acoustics aiding the unamplified voices. This was particularly discernible during the chorus in the latter part of the performance as the instrument parts died off to reveal the natural reverb in the vocal parts. The huge block lettering of the signs on the walls of the atrium and the overwhelming size of the storehouse in general (beginning with the towering buildings overhanging Market Street on the walk in) was a successful match with the larger-than-life theatrics of the performance including large foam mountains forming the set.
The orchestra opened with a clean, light overture which resolved into the introduction to the nymphs and shepherds of the chorus. An initial imbalance between the volume of the louder orchestra and the chorus resolved for Nicola Mulligan’s first solo as Galatea. From the outset Mulligan was a sweet and delighted Galatea, even more so when her lover Acis (sung by Dean Power) appeared on the scene. At times during the evening the emotions felt forced and unconvincing but not so for the love scenes between Acis and Galatea. Power and Mulligan brought sincerity and an intense intimacy to their duets that was moving towards discomfort when they broke off with a glint in their eyes after a prolonged kiss.
At the introduction of the ogre Polyphemus (Gavan Ring) the lightness of the opening arias and chorus was replaced by a sinister tone reflected in the heavier rhythms of the orchestral parts. Ring’s voice was occasionally lost in the chorus but this was remedied in his solos as Polyphemus and he was exposed as a strong young voice in Irish opera. The puppet used to portray Polyphemus in the far distance drew a chuckle from the audience although the mood of the performance was decidedly serious until the death of Acis towards the end of the performance.
The original scoring by Handel only included one female part (in addition to three tenors and a bass) which would have been a shame in tonight’s rendition as one of the strongest performances came from chorus member Aoife O’Connell singing the part of a Nymph. O’Connell stood out from the outset as the strongest in the chorus and seemed to engage more readily than her fellow performers with both the material and the audience. I was surprised to discover after the performance that she’s only 20 years old, as her vocal range and confidence on stage equalled that of a seasoned performer.
Those of us (myself included) who didn’t know the details of the opera were left slightly bewildered by the ending as one of the mountains separated to display a dazzling, but unexplained, lights display. Listening closely to the words provided no clue and it wasn’t until reading the text later that I discovered the light display was the body of Acis transformed and immortalisted by Galatea using her demi-god abilities… Oh…
The experience as a whole was that of a pleasant evening’s entertainment, made sweeter by a free pint of Guinness in the Gravity Bar following the performance. As Opera Theatre Company’s CEO Kirsty Harris mentioned before the performance, the young voices heard tonight herald a promising future for Irish singing.
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I made it to Lausanne, Switzerland on Thursday last to see “I went to the house but did not enter”, the most recent work by German composer Heiner Goebbels. The production features the internationally acclaimed Hilliard Ensemble performing music set to texts by T.S. Eliot, Maurice Blanchot, Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett against the backdrop of the most spectacular set I have seen since Vestuport Theatre’s production of Metamorphosis in the Dublin Theatre Festival last year.
The first scene was a treatment of the T.S. Eliot work The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock; the four voices singing in close harmonies with occasional solo sections. The muted pastel greys of the set were accentuated with lighting designs by Klaus Grunberg*, Goebbel’s set and lighting designer. The lighting changed so gradually it almost went unnoticed until a moment when it appears the entire set had changed in composition without any changes to props or performers. This use of one of the often unexploited elements of theatre is typical of Goebbels fanatic attention to detail that permeates all of his work.
Another of these elements is the deliberate decision to allow the audience witness set changes. Following the first scene the curtain was lowered and immediately raised again to reveal the stagehands rolling in the colossal faux house used for the next scene. Apart from the sheer size of the sets, the incorporation of the stagehands and their vocal calls to each other when moving the set was striking and felt like a continuation of the Hilliard’s performance. Allowing the audience access into the workings behind the scenes of the production perfectly reflected the access granted into the mind of a troubled individual through Goebbel’s choice of texts and the vocal scoring.
The move in texts from Eliot to Blanchot was firmly established by both the visual change in set and the change in behaviour of the ensemble. The Blanchot’s text The Madness of the Day (from which comes the title line “I went to the house but did not enter”) is unsettling in its exploration of the inner workings of the mind of a temporarily blinded man. The ensemble spoke the words of this text, often overlapping and speaking over each other, all seemingly oblivious to the distress of the other characters while speaking directly to them. There were occasional lighter moments in the scene – banging on the ceiling with a broom to bring a halt to the noise upstairs – which only served to highlight the anxious despair present in the text.
Kafka’s Excursion into the Mountains provides a short lighter break between scenes, although the Sound-of-Music-like sweeping melodic line “It’s a wonder that we don’t burst into song” belies the emptiness behind the notion of an excursion with a “pack of nobodies”.
While the Eliot text explores the seemingly calm exterior, the Blanchot delves into the frantic internal chaos which eventually resolves into Beckett’s Worstward Ho. This is the most inaccessible of the four texts featuring fragmentation and repetition of words and phrases. This was beautifully considered by Goebbels with the vocal part focusing on short phrases of repeated rhythms in very close intervals. Unlike the other three texts there were no subtitles for Worstward Ho which allowed the audience to focus their entire attention on the voices. The definition of characters in the final scene is complex as the text. Initially it seemed as though the four performers were each one separate aspect in one character’s day but their eventual interaction with each other complicated that version of events. This intelligent handling of Beckett’s text brought the audience to the edge of the character’s (be it one character or four) internal struggle and left the performance unresolved and the audience with the words “Fail Again. Fail better”, “Fail worse again”.
Although this is only my second time seeing a Goebbels production live (I was fortunate enough to catch Stifters Dinge in 2008) this production was typical of Goebbels work. His combination of many elements is almost overwhelming - lighting, sound, set design and stage management. It’s a huge shame the production is not coming to Ireland but there are still dates remaining in Europe and I would urge everyone to see one of the seminal works of 21st century contemporary theatre during its first run.
*[Edit to the text - The Set Design and Lighting is the work of Klaus Gruenberg not Erich Wonder as I had originally thought]
Thursday was the 8th night of a run of ten performances in Theatre Vidy, one of the coproducers in the production. Given the tendency towards lighter audiences for contemporary music productions in Ireland I was amazed to discover an almost full 400 seat theatre for this challenging work. I was informed that this was the case for every night of the ten night run despite the fact that Lausanne is a city of only approx 130,000 people. I didn’t get a chance to talk to anyone in the theatre on my short trip but that would be a very interesting conversation on audience development.
The performance was a departure for the Hilliard Ensemble who are unused to movement during performance, however Goebbels worked in collaboration with the ensemble to develop the work and the results were obvious. The comfort with which they walked through the visually striking set was apparent from the outset. (Read their take on the complexities of this new experience here.)
I thought about not blogging this because I’m going to book it as a surprise for someone (and if you think you might be that someone please stop reading now!) but it’s too good not to share.
Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart are now starring in Sean Mathias’ production of Waiting for Godot in London. It’s showing from now until mid-July and I’m definitely going to try to make it to London to see it. It doesn’t give the later production dates on the official site but you can book tickets for post-April dates by clicking on Book Later in the Royal Haymarket Theatre site.
