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Industrial strength
opera
The Ice Break
Birmingham Opera
B12 Warehouse
***** (A
live webcast (free live stream) of Birmingham Opera’s
The Ice Break
can be seen online at 8.00 p.m. on Thursday 9 April – stream opens 7.30
pm - at
https://ice.eventapp.eu/
)
IT’S easy to imagine that Sir Michael Tippett
would have loved this production of one of his least-known operas. Graham
Vick has made it his speciality to present opera in extraordinary,
cavernous venues across Birmingham – disused warehouses, studios,
factories – where the very ambience suggests failing fortunes, a sense
of uselessness, darkened corners – where there is ample room for ladders
and long raised slopes and claustrophic stages dotted around to suggest
the hopes and desolation of central characters. So it was with the so-called
B12 Warehouse here. The Ice Break is Tippett’s shortest opera,
and perhaps the least performed. What the power of this production,
played from the fabulous, explosive introduction by the City of
Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under the skilfully understated conducting
of Andrew Gourlay, revealed is just what a superbly crafted score it is,
and how well the disparate characters are painted. A large yellow imitation
Airport flight timetable, and other airport advertising (plane images,
‘Welcome to Birmingham’) greets the eye as you enter. A conversation is
going on between mother (Nadia) and son (Yuri) who are awaiting the
return of the long-imprisoned father, just released from a prison camp. It is during this first scene
that two or three things become obvious: the singing, not just of these
two (Nadine Benjamin, the Royal Academy’s Ross Ramgobin) but of the
entire brilliantly chosen cast proved top-notch. The characterisation was vital
and believable. And the enunciation was such that – remarkable in so
large a venue, but crucial for such a wordy opera (the composer’s own
libretto) –
The absorbing intensity
continues when Yuri’s girlfriend, Gayle (Stephanie Corley) arrives:
strong, vigorous, lucid singing, before an unfortunate new arrival,
Olympion, the athletic ‘champion of the world’ turns up (a highly
effective, outrageously drawn-out, gradual entry devised by Graham Vick
to match Tippett’s spaciousness) and lures Gayle away – pronouncing
confidently his black credentials (most of this immensely strong cast is
ethnic origin), bigoted and self-satisfied; a sort of modern Escamillo. They will both come croppers:
for now a fight breaks out amongst the magnificently and carefully-marshalled
chorus, supported by a smaller high-quality vocal chorus, trained by
Jonathan Laird: the latter utterly professional in sound and delivery,
its proclamations always one of the high points.
During these outbursts and
marches and banner-waving and all-out fighting, with police and
yellow-clad minders and paramedics, one might argue that from opera to
opera the Vick treatment gets a little repetitive; rather like a parody
of himself. Yet the impact is always terrific: somehow they nearly
always work. Some of the chorus were black (or black and yellow) masked,
as Tippett specifies. You never quite know what they’re complaining
about; but you always sort of know, and invariably they win your
interest and sympathy. We are awaiting the arrival of
the released Lev (Andrew Slater) and he does not disappoint. Slater is
one of the most congenial figures on the UK opera stage; he deploys not
a domineering voice, but one of the most pleasant baritone sounds to be
heard in especially provincial companies England-wide. He also, always,
brings an attractive personality to bear. Vick varies the repertoire
from classical (Idomeneo, Don Giovanni, Fidelio,
Il ritorno d’Ulysse) to imaginative modern repertoire; one of those
(along with Britten’s Curlew River, or Stephen Oliver’s Beauty
and the Beast) was Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, in which
Slater’s appearance as the tutor, Dr. Pangloss, was one of the
highlights. Lev’s long delayed
reconciliation with Nadia is tender, warm and moving, especially Nadine
Benjamin’s rapturous response and welcome: you sense she really has not
seen him for the 20 years he’s been cooped up in the gulag - a prison
camp. Just as mesmerising is Nadia’s later solo piece – aching, yearning
and intensely beautiful No less impressive is Chrystal
E. Williams, who sings Gayle’s friend, the empathetic nurse, Hannah. An
essential feature of The Ice Break is that Tippett provides
almost each singer with at least one soliloquy; possibly more: a long,
expressive aria in which their personal anxieties or hopes are allowed
to unfold, or their particular dilemma is explored. Williams’s Hannah, prised away
from her fondness for boisterous Olympion by the hyperactive and
judgmental chorus, treats us to some of the most tender and touching
moments, not least in her profound yearnings before tragedy strikes. The
sound is wonderful. It’s a lovely, deep, resonant mezzo voice to listen
to; she was certainly one of the highlights of the evening. But if Williams’s gorgeous,
beguiling virtual contralto timbres move one to the core, the two tenors
were a revelation too. Ta’u Pupu’a, a Polynesian from Tonga, was heard
in the United States by Kiri te Kanawa, who was the driving force behind
him earning a scholarship to the Juilliard School in New York. His career has blossomed since
that lucky chance. He’s a big presence, muscular, strong, dominant, a
driving personality that proved just perfect for this strutting peacock
of a character, showing off his wares in a fiery-coloured cloak like a
Shakespeare comedian, as the amorous Olympion. The sound is a
The other tenor, a really appealing one, is Luke, a doctor whose medical contribution comes late on. John-Colyn Gyeantey is a British tenor with an especially gorgeous high tessitura. At the opposite end of the scale, he exudes lyricism, and produces a sound that is both natural and hugely expressive. He has a handsome portfolio of roles in Italian opera behind him, and has understudied for ENO and WNO and taken leads for ENO and ETO. Nadine Benjamin as Lev's delightful wife, Nadia, remembers the past Gyeantey acts attractively and
empathetically, so the expressive nature of the medic and his
attentiveness were beautifully characterised. From one of the smaller
parts, amiably directed by Vick, he generates one of the most
sympathetic characters of all. He too was also a pleasure every time he
sang: a beautiful sound. It’s in the nature of a
Tippett opera (New Year or The Knot Garden, for instance)
that the plot may appear complex and elusive, the changing situation
testing or problematic, and the characters’ thoughts and elusive
reflections difficult to follow. It’s a credit to this well-managed
production – and the quality of delivery - that as much, with certain
meandering exceptions, came across lucidly. Partly the soliloquies
contributed here – by definition an aria or solo recitative is more
followable, the narrative clearer: you got the gist and could trace
quite easily the doubts and the Angsts of the cast, just as you
could, last year, with the vigorously declaimed politicised characters
of BOC’s Mussorgsky opera, Khovanshchina.
That that should be true of
the big ensembles – lead roles intermingled with chorus, or chorus alone
– speaks reams for Vick’s team management, and to that of his (and
Laird’s) hardworking charges. There is always something traditionally
frenetic about a Vick staging, which makes them huge fun, often
cascading across wide spaces, yet also, catching you unexpectedly,
sometimes the reverse – intimate and compacted in some secreted corner -
with non-singing chorus hurtling here and there, in one session fleeing
armed with a welter of suitcases, and inevitably gathering up the
audience in its wake. It happens when Ramgobin’s
Yuri, magnificently, incites them to riot. The result is that if you’re
observing, you are thoroughly wrapped up and involved: the action, or
some of it, is going on all around you; a wonderful, full-scale
Bacchanale, at one point; but as important, the atmosphere is impinging
too; the desperation, the anxiety, the rebelliousness imprint themselves
and gather you in their wake. The effort this drum beat-driven chorus
puts into following instructions and getting it just right is,
invariably, a marvel to behold. It doesn’t take long in a
Tippett opera – or any Tippett work - for the spirit of the dance to
make itself felt. This explodes around us after Nadia’s splendid first
aria: there is a kind of electricity unique to Tippett, fired up in
orchestral works or string quartets by his additive rhythms; here in
Ice Break not quite so much, yet it here still achieves that quality
of ‘swing’ he was so keen (along with blues) to express himself by.
There are also delicious hints, here and there, of orientalism in the
orchestra. The orchestral detail of a
Tippett score always induces wonder; and with a full-sized CBSO here it
- 40 strings, plus 34 other players, a complement of 74 - all comes
through. An extraordinary wafting of bass clarinet, peering through the
entire vocal chorus; some spectacular use of low utterance in all
departments – strings, woodwind and latterly brass, yet carefully
restrained by Gourlay, and so beautifully subtle and haunting. The brass
in full flair is indeed almost Wagnerian; but often used unexpectedly.
There are several interludes, some of them brief: one for violin solo
and oboe, for instance, strikingly plaintive. The low strings are especially
expressive, including one scintillating passage for the four double
basses, ushering in Nadia, again hugely expressive; and a cello
solo from leader Eduardo Vassallo spoke reams. The tuned percussion
worked overtime, bringing insistent, proclamatory (rather than
subliminal) sounds to bear, endlessly varied, perfectly calibrated. At
one particular surge the entire orchestra captured the flavour of a
Bach-like chorus, quite distinct from the choral passages that surround
it, an element of parody Tippett can kind of switch on benignly at will. The closing stages were
particularly good: the harp-accompanied sad lament of Slater’s Lev; his
appeal to Nadia to ‘wait for me in Paradise’, which forms a separate
section of the opera; the ministrations of the doctor and of Hannah, now
clearly a nurse; the self-stripping and cleansing of Yuri, Ross Ramgobin
here superbly passionate in the role. Why we are faced with three
orange-clad figures awaiting Isis-type beheadings at the end is a bit
baffling; it felt fractionally gratuitous. The whole opera was played out
on a typical Vick-type set of blazoned adverts, movable platforms with a
team of efficient attendants, and precariously ascendable slopes. One
result is that parts of the opera is sung roughly at an angle, creating
a kind of surreal effect. Stuart Nunn, the designer, not only caught the
dramatic flavour and impact of all this, but served up some finely
judged costumes – the grey attire for Nadia being one of the most
effective, and those for Yuri and Olympion especially fertile in
catching the imagination. The younger girls’ outfits were more plain:
perhaps they needed more flair – though Hannah could scarcely be dressed
in anything other than nurses’ ward green. What makes Graham Vick’s
Birmingham Opera Company productions so vital, almost exhaustingly
explosive, and different, apart from the quality of every department –
direction, orchestra, performers – is the venue itself. Performing in a vast, gaping
industrial space with a cast of hundreds and every aspect of the
narrative blown up by extras to a breathtakingly vast scale, yet
preserving elements of intimacy, is a bracingly exciting experience in
itself. So great is the achievement, professionals and hyperactive
amateurs alike, that one can only gasp in admiration. The electricity
generated is massive. Every production one has seen in these bizarre
capacious locations has been charged with excitement, with orchestra,
cast and chorus generating vast electricity. ‘One of the best three
things I’ve seen in the last year’ I heard one knowledgeable punter.
Some compliment. Long may it continue! To 09-14-15 Roderic Dunnetthttp://www.birminghamopera.org.uk/
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it
was easily superior to many leading permanent companies.
big
one too, a big, meaty voice that would cope comfortably with Wagner or
Verdi. And he is so in control of the tenor range – high, low, medium –
that one gets a thrill from hearing him in full flow. It’s not just a
weighty sound; it’s an alluring one.