Sweeney Todd - Royal Opera House

My New Year’s Day treat for 2004 was a trip to the Royal Opera House to see Sweeney Todd. I love going into London to see a show on either Boxing Day or New Year’s Day. The city is practically empty because everyone is sleeping off a hangover from the night before, and almost all the shops are closed. Covent Garden was full of tourists with nothing better to do than wander around window shopping, but the tube was blissfully quiet.

I was curious to see how the venerable ROH would cope with a ‘low-brow’ production like Sweeney Todd. Previously, I had only Sondheim I had seen was a student production of Into the Woods so I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect musically. What I did know was that the singers would be amplified, and I was a bit concerned about how they would cope with this. Opera singers are used to projecting to the back wall of the house: singing into a mike is quite a different business.

The music exceeded my expectation on the whole. There is enough complexity in the orchestra to hold the listener’s interest, certainly the first time each individual number is sung. The piece was written in 1979 and it sounded like true late-twentieth century music. Act One was the most interesting and had some of the best numbers, including Sweeney Todd and Mrs Lovett’s baking song - 'A little priest' - at the very end of the Act, which is superbly witty. Act Two contains several reprises of numbers that have already been heard in Act One in one form or another, but without much musical development (as far as I could hear, but maybe my ear isn’t attuned to Sondheim yet).

The amplification was a mixed success. Some singers made excellent use of it (Felicity Palmer and Wiliam Dazeley in particular) but Thomas Allen seemed very uncomfortable. I’m not entirely surprised that he didn’t take to it that easily. He must have had to hold back a lot vocally, and given that he was singing a lot during the evening, that must have become rather uncomfortable. I also think that the part was too low for his vocal range. His vocal discomfort leaked into his whole performance, and I wasn’t entirely convinced by his interpretation of Sweeney Todd as a rather muddled man who is strongly led by Mrs Lovett. Of course he is led by her, but an equal partnership would be more convincing – this Sweeney Todd had no undercurrent of evil.

Felicity Palmer was the real star of the show. Mrs Lovett is an absolute gift of a part, with bags of attitude and true wickedness. Palmer grabbed the opportunity with both hands and looked like she was having the time of her life on stage. She made the most of the vocal amplification to put more energy into her acting and movement.

William Dazely was the young sailor Anthony who falls in love with Sweeney Todd’s daughter. He has a sweet baritone voice that came across better than Allen’s in some of their duets. Sadly, Robert Tear was unwell, but Paul Arden-Griffith was a very good replacement as the ineffectual Beadle. There aren’t many tenor characters – Sondheim seems mainly to write for baritones/basses, possibly because these are the most available voices for musicals – but the two in Sweeney Todd, Beadle and Pirelli, are both comic.

So does Sondheim fit into the ROH’s repertoire? I wasn’t completely won over. The set was very basic – a few grimy curtains and Sweeney’s chair were the most memorable items – and I suspect that a glitzy West End or Broadway production would go to town more on the set designs. And the singers were performing outside their usual experience in many cases. I don’t have a problem with the ROH performing Sondheim on quality grounds – the music is just as interesting as many of the Italian confections that are part of its standard repertoire – but the ROH just doesn’t do it as well as a professional theatre production with musical singers.

Orlando - The Royal Opera, Covent Garden

I caught the last night of this new production on the 23rd October. I was slightly concerned beforehand about the poor reviews I had seen in all the British press: complaints about the quality of the singers, doubts about whether the trouser-role of Orlando was set too low in Alice Coote's voice, and the most biting criticism of Anthony Baker's set designs. For the first ten minutes or so of the show, I was prepared to believe the reviews, as I sat through a dull and unsparkling first aria from Jonathan Lemalu (Zoroastro) and a very wobbly first recitative from Alice Coote (her voice took quite a while to 'settle' into the right range).
But things soon improved with the appearance of Camilla Tilling as the charming but slightly hopeless shepherdess, Dorinda, and Bejun Mehta as Medoro. As I sat and listened to aria after aria, each more splendid, virtuosic, moving or original than the last, the overwhelming impression was of attending a true spectacle. I left after three hours feeling uplifted.

Alice Coote was amazing. I had never heard her sing before (I missed her now famously over-acted recital at the Edinburgh Festival this summer), and at times I could not tell, either from her deportment on stage, or from her voice, whether she was male or female. She was just a stunning performer - to the point where eventually I stopped wondering about the gender thing and just concentrated on the musical and vocal expertise on display. Her most virtuoso aria, the bellicose 'Fammi combattere', brought the house down. One reviewer had worried about her voice carrying to the back of the hall - there was no such problem on the night I was in the audience - I was sat in the amphitheatre and Coote's voice carried perfectly; indeed, I would say better than any of the other singers', including Jonathan Lemalu, who is a dry-but-fruity bass. Impressive. Some of the more complex moments later on in Act 3 were slightly less impressive, but the 'Sleep' aria was very moving.

Barbara Bonney was less impressive overall, although there were some moments of the perfect phrasing that I would have expected from her. She seemed uncomfortable to be on the stage - fumbling the props - and had very little presence (despite the huge width of her skirts). She did sing in tune most of the time, however.

The same cannot be said of Camilla Tilling. I quite honestly don't know how to sum up her performance, except with a list of pros and cons:

Pro:
Acting: she has great stage presence, tons of enthusiasm and energy, and brightens up the stage simply by being on it.
Voice: charming, you can forgive her a lot for the consistent sweetness - it's just perfect for this shepherdess role (also for Pamina, earlier on in the year). And a good portion of her performance was stunning (e.g. the nightingale aria at the beginning of Act 2).

Con:
Pitch: in about half of her arias, she sang consistently sharp to the pitch of the orchestra. I can't imagine that she has problems with the baroque pitch, so to me, this permanent sharpness speaks of poor vocal technique and a distinct lack of musicality.

Fluffs: she nearly caused the first act to grind to a halt twice, firstly by coming too early in the recit after Bonney's first Aria (coincidentally robbing Bonney of the opportunity to take applause), and then by losing it completely in her second aria. I think there may have been a problem with the rotating set, which ground to a halt with an unhealthy sounding noise, but Tilling clearly did not know what she was singing, and the orchestra were so confused that they almost stopped playing. Fortunately Harry Bicket managed to get things going again.

I was also quite won over by Bejun Mehta, who is a bit of a star in his own right (he has also performed the title role of Orlando). One Aria in Act 2 (two hearts always intertwined, sung to Angelica) provoked a similar response in me to my first hearing of Tristan und Isolde: tears and shivers down the spine. I was amazed to find myself so moved by Handel, and I think the praise for this is due equally to Handel and to Mehta.

This was the first time that the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment had performed at the Royal Opera. It very different to the usual Opera House band - much smaller, the whole orchestra fitting into the portion of the pit that is not blcked from view by the stage. The Opera House is really too large for an authentic 18th century orchestra, and the orchestra are too far removed from the singers on stage to achieve true intimacy, but within these limitations I found it a new and satisfying experience. Ths crispness of Bicket's phrasing was a welcome change from the usual sloppiness heard in this House, and the small ensemble pieces (arias accompanied by two viola d'amore or recorders) worked very well, all things considered. Best of all, the orchestra stayed after the final curtain had fallen to take a bow - and were rewarded with the loudest applause of all from the audience. It makes such a difference when the band doesn't disappear down the pub the minute that the curtain falls.

But Handel's music deserves the starring role in any discussion of this performance. I had never heard any Handel opera before - I have sung endless Messiahs and have heard quite a few oratorios - and what amazed me was the realness of the emotions behind many of the arias, but particularly Dorinda's. Although the structure of opera seria is highly constraining, Handel is constantly pushing at the boundaries and doing the unexpected (I found Andrew Jones' excellent program notes to be very helpful for a novice such as myself). The trio where Angelica and Medoro console Dorinda is a perfect example.

I can only think that the performances have improved since all the reviews were writen at the beginning of the run. No doubt the singers have become more comfortable with the fiendish demands of the music. There was definitely an air of the 'last night'about the evening, and I felt that each of the five singers were giving their all to te performance with no holding back (except possibly Barbara Bonney, who hadn't managed to find top form). I will go back again when this production is inevitably revived, and will take my husband with me. Maybe next time Bejun Mehta will take the role of Orland? That's something I would like to hear.

Madam Butterfly, The Royal Opera, Covent Garden, 2 October 2003

This only counts as half an attendance because I did the unforgivable: yes, I walked out half way through (all right, I left at the interval and didn't come back, not quite that melodramatic. Anyway, in the amphitheatre at the opera house it is simply not possible to leave without causing a gross disturbance to the people sitting around you, there isn't much space.)

Why did I only stay for the first act? Mostly not down to the performance at all - I wasn't feeling well and wanted to go home and get some sleep. But I didn't enjoy the first act - if I had been gripped by the performance, I am sure that I would have soldiered on and stayed.

I have to admit that I don't really know Madama Butterfly as an opera at all. Puccini isn't my home ground, and part of the reason for buying the ticket in the first place was to start educating myself and see if I like him as a composer (recent experiments with Verdi had proved successful).

I was disappointed with the first act on so many levels. The characters have no depth - the libretto stays with the Japanese/American stereotypes and I couldn't find anything in the music to take me beyond that. Quite frankly, I think that the Mikado gives more insight into Japanese culture than Madama Butterfly.

I also find the language of the production to be a problem. Normally I am more than happy with the Covent Garden set-up - original language productions with well-timed and non-intrusive surtitles. However, this opera was written in Italian for an Italian-speaking audience, yet we know that the characters are either speaking English (the Americans), Japanese (the Japanese exclusively I would guess, unless any of the Americans have bothered to learn the local lingo) or pidgin English (the Japanese again, if they are trying to communicate with the Americans). And then we have the odd toast to America in sung in English, just to confuse the issue further. For the benefit of the audience in London, we have the Covent Garden surtitles - in English, of course. I found I spent a fair amount of brain processing power trying to work out what language the characters were meant to be singing in at any given time. I know opera is never realistic, that's not the point - I just ended up feeling rather sea sick because of the multi-layered translation problem.

Most of the singers' performances seemed acceptable, if not very exciting. However, Madama Butterfly - Chinese soprano Li Ping Zang - didn't seem to be on top form, and to my ear sang persistently a quarter tone under the note. I know I am fussy about such things, but it did spoil many of her passages. I suspect that it was a symptom of her voice not being in great shape that night - I thought she was reaching for some of the higher notes.

So anyway, I still haven't converted myself to Puccini. I will try again - since Wagner respected him alone from all the Italians, I should be able to get something out of it - but maybe when I, and hopefully the cast, are on better form. And I'm sure that it would help to hear the whole of the opera - maybe all the good bits are in the second act?