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Three 20th Century operas are presented in great style at the London conservatoire
The Royal College of Music’s Francis Melville, Peng Tian, Anastasia Koorn, Daniel Barrett, Georgia Melville and Ross Fettes in L’heure espagnol | Photograph: Chris Christodoulou
Take one opera and two song-cycles, all in French, and create a coherent connecting narrative. This was the challenge of the Royal College of Music Opera Studio’s most recent triple bill, brilliantly directed by Ella Marchment, which presented (in this order) Britten’s luminous Les Illuminations (1940), Weill’s Chansons des Quais (1934) and Ravel’s exquisite L’heure espagnole (1911).
Connecting the pieces is a female protagonist based on the mononymous Mistinguett (Jeanne Florentine Bourgeois), who co-directed the Moulin Rouge after its 1915 fire, herself a famous cabaret performer. Time works backwards here, as in Les Illuminations we see Mistinguett looking backwards over her life and love(r)s. She appears as an entertainer, a close relative to the Animal Tamer of Berg’s Lulu, perhaps?
Instead of presenting a parade of incidents, Weill’s Chansons des Quais (Songs of the Waterfront) is a complete memory of a performance that brought Mistinguett stardom set in the 1930s, the music and (loosely) the action from the play Maria Galante. Finally, post-interval (there is a case for no interval, surely?) Ravel’s L’heure espagnole, now taking us back to the 1920s, when Mistinguett’s strong femininity was at its height.
And so it is that we begin, as Marchment puts it, through the prism of ‘the weird and wonderful world of a woman’s mind at the end of her life’. Soprano Georgia Melville, was in commanding form for Les Illuminations; projecting a protagonist’s confidence hewn by life experience, her entrance perfectly prepared by conductor Michael Rosewell. Melville’s voice cuts to perfection; just her lowest range lacks full strength. Perhaps inter-song contrasts could have been a touch more pronounced; but a final word of praise to the strings for their luminosity in ’Being Beauteous’.
Charlotte Jane Kennedy, centre, with Francis Melville, Peng Tian, Daniel Barrett and Ross Fettes, in Kurt Weill’s Chanson des Quais | Photograph: Chris Christodoulou
The Weill holds soprano and four male singers, these last taking an active role (they need to be ‘wound up,’ perhaps a nod to Hoffmann, but more likely to Ravel’s clocks). They are ‘machines’ that, over the course of the tableau, take on a life of their own (AI-based fear, anyone?). Mezzo Cecilia Zhang as Younge Mistinguett relished every moment. The orchestra and staging conjured a tangy 1930s Berlin, the four males (Marcus Swietlicki, Benedict Munden, tenors; Sam Hind, Edward Birchinall, basses) superb in ‘Les Filles de Bordeaux’. Weill’s music has a dark shadow, as does the tale; eventually, the clockwork, drag-artist males turn violent. Harrowing.
Then, ‘Younger Mistinguett’ becomes ’Young Mistinguett,’ Concepción in Ravel’s L’heure espagnole, a tale of sculduggerous adultery. Marchment’s staging is ingenious and brilliantly realised by designer Cordelia Chisholm and lighting designer Kevin Treacy: the men really can hide inside clocks and be ‘encouraged’ to move, their legs sticking out underneath. It is both beautiful and fantastical. This is the 1920s when, as Marchment points out, ‘opera funding was abundant’; a combination of surrealism and English farce, the staging works superbly. Alexandria Moon as Concepción has great comic timing plus a light, agile voice. Benedict Mason is her buttoned-up husband, Torquemade. The voices of Gonzalve (Marcus Swietlicki), Ramiro (Sam Hird) and Don Iñigo Gomez (Edward Birchinall) are perfectly differentiated.
Throughout, Chisholm’s designs made much of few props, completely supporting Marchment’s inspired ideas. A triumph.
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