The new culture secretary Lisa Nandy was making encouraging noises about arts funding in an interview last week, pledging to get state cash to every community. Her comments appeared two days after my colleague Fiona Maddocks reviewed Northern Ireland Opera’s heroic production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, staged with paltry state funding, in a province that under the last government saw spending on the arts fall to just £5.07 per head. Over the border in the EU-member Republic of Ireland, the figure is £21.68. Clearly, Nandy needs to get cracking.
Switch now to another new production of Eugene Onegin, this time at the Royal Opera House, a body that receives £22.3m annually from Arts Council England (cut from £25.2m in 2023). Northern Ireland triumphed with a homegrown, shoestring show. Strange, then, that the upholstered ROH should stage an Onegin that looks even sparser; indeed, eschews scenery altogether. US director Ted Huffman, making his main stage debut, wants the audience to imagine things that are not physically represented on stage; probably a difficult concept for those who have paid large sums to enjoy a spectacle.
Huffman sees Tchaikovsky’s most popular opera as experimental, with jumps of time and place that resist a literal interpretation (and therefore, presumably, any consistency in Astrid Klein’s costumes). To Huffman, the piece feels more like a series of memories playing out in the characters’ heads. Without the distractions of scenery and lavish clothes we should concentrate entirely on those young people and their relationships with one another.
And here this production really works, bringing in some truly fresh ideas. Sisters Tatyana and Olga are far closer than in other interpretations, to the extent that Olga (dark-toned mezzo Avery Amereau, making her ROH debut) is employed as an encouraging stenographer when Tatyana writes her doomed declaration of love to Onegin. Unusually, Olga (who is not above going further than mere flirtation with Onegin) is with her sister right to the end, a favourite aunt to Tatyana’s children (another innovation). That all makes perfect sense. What doesn’t make sense is the most radical reinterpretation of the duel scene (which I won’t spoil here). Regrettably, the dances are all over the place, ignoring their relevance as social indicators in Tchaikovsky’s rigidly class-conscious pre-Revolution Russia.
Onegin is sung by Canadian Gordon Bintner with majestic aloofness. His is a warm, round baritone, in danger of being lost in the cavernous spaces of an empty stage, and with conductor Henrik Nánási too often allowing the red-hot orchestra free rein. Russian soprano Kristina Mkhitaryan is a completely charming Tatyana, growing through the role from tender teenager to gracious princess, but she also sometimes comes close to being swamped by the orchestra. Only Armenian tenor Liparit Avetisyan, as the anguished poet Lensky, really cuts through.
“We’re committed to ensuring that everyone, everywhere, and at all stages of their life, has the opportunity to engage in high quality experiences,” hymns Arts Council England’s pious website. Why then does energetic Blackheath Halls Opera, a community company that involves more than 150 local people of all ages, abilities and backgrounds (including 32 children), not qualify for any public funding?
Blackheath has a proud record of quality productions mounted with the help of myriad donations, but this year it would seem the economic gloom is taking its toll. Instead of a full-length opera, it is staging Mascagni’s concise Cavalleria rusticana on a sparse set with simple costumes, a paucity that in no way reflects the production’s ambition and commitment. The mostly amateur orchestra positively blazes under the sure direction of conductor Chris Stark and the professional principals are all impressive singers.
In many ways this highly dramatic tale of love, betrayal and loss is ideally suited to a community company because the chorus plays a fundamental role in virtually every scene. It’s a bit of a mystery, then, why director Harry Fehr didn’t give his cheerful volunteers more activity. Surely these Sicilian villagers would be busy with their hands, making Easter Day preparations? No matter: I defy anyone not to get a lump in their throat when they launch with such fervour into the central Easter Hymn.
For all its difficulties, Blackheath attracts top talent among its principals. The two-timing Turiddu is powerfully sung by tenor Oliver Johnston; his distracted mother, Lucia, is the always compelling Janis Kelly; and Idunnu Münch makes an ideal teasing lover, Lola, who must avoid the wrath of her husband, Alfio (Michel de Souza). Watching Turiddu’s affair unfold with increasing despair is Santuzza, given an outstanding, anguished portrayal by soprano Katherine Broderick.
One organisation that rightly receives Arts Council funding is Tête à Tête, an endlessly inventive powerhouse, producing opera, often in miniature, in Cornwall and the north-east. I caught up with the tail-end of the company’s annual London festival in which it staged 22 new operas, sometimes four a night, some as brief as 15 minutes. With such a turnaround, the quality of music and performance was always going to be varied, but the night I was there two pieces stood out.
The Acts of Brízida Vaz was a darkly humorous tale of a procuress (soprano Margarida Vaz Neto) trying – and failing – to get into heaven. Composer Margarida Gonçalves’s beguiling vocal lines were underpinned by a richly sonorous 14-piece orchestra, conducted by Leif Tse; a stylish, witty and instantly likable piece, played on a stage littered with underwear. You Can’t Kill the Spirit, put together by composer Josh Kaye with co-creators and performers Hestor Dart, Amy Kearsley, Emily Beech and Juliet Wallace, proved the hit of the evening. Drawn from interviews with activists, it gave a snapshot of life in the 1980s peace camp at Greenham Common airbase, when thousands of women demanded the removal of American nuclear missiles. The cast layered their songs of protest in a movingly hazy, unaccompanied counterpoint, a poignant and powerful reminder of less supine times.
Star ratings (out of five)
Eugene Onegin ★★★
Cavalleria rusticana ★★★
The Acts of Brizida Vaz ★★★
You Can’t Kill the Spirit ★★★★
