“Clever direction and incredible vocal performances come together to make two 20th-century operas feel urgent and relevant.”
In a double-bill, the two short, twentieth century operas Der Wald and Lucrezia are currently being shown at Guildhall School of Music and Drama to showcase the work of their student musicians and technicians. Think of it as a preview of the next generation of British opera-makers.
Dame Ethel Smyth’s Der Wald – the first opera by a woman to be performed at the Metropolitan Opera – is set in a forest and tells the story of Heinrich who refuses to be threatened into leaving his wife, Röschen. The story is told through a conflict between Röschen and a woman who lives in the forest, Iolanthe.
It is the first, and slightly weaker, opera of the pair. Director Stephen Barlow borrows from the emotional language of German fairytales but with modern flashes. Jon Morrell’s design places them in a barn, deep in a forest and imagines Iolanthe to be the leader of a biker gang. It’s a clever staging but at moments lingers too long in images or repeats ideas. At moments it feels a little slow or overindulgent.
Smyth’s composition is Wagneresque and demands a lot from its sopranos especially. Manon Ogwen Parry as Röschen and Avery Lafrentz as Iolanthe find a rich emotional depth in their arias – Lafrentz finds a cruel determination in Iolanthe while Parry brings out a powerful sense of tragedy in Röschen. It’s emotionally and technically excellent singing.
Ottorino and Elsa Respighi’s Lucrezia (she completed it after he died) tells the Roman history, through a narrator called La Voce, of how the rape of Lucrezia by Tarquinio led to the toppling of the emperor. In this version it is reimagined in a modern courtroom with La Voce – played and sung brilliantly by Gabriella Giulietta Noble – serving as prosecutor. As explained by projected writing at the end, the opera is being used as an allegory of how Chanel Miller’s tireless campaigning raised the minimum sentence for rapists in California after Brock Turner was found guilty of raping her and only given six months. In the centre of the courtroom is a marble square – it is as if the Roman case is a stand-in for the modern one. This very clever direction preserves all the references to Rome in the libretto whilst also turning the opera toward a more relevant and important case. La Voce becomes the link between past and present and from tragedy to justice.
Lowri Probert sings Lucrezia with a voice that carries a very moving power. She has the kind of voice that makes your heart stand still. Another highlight is Redmond Sanders playing Tarquinio, whose ability to marry the natural musicality of spoken language with Respighi’s composition is masterful. A nod should also go toward Ben Hendry-Watkins, Hannah Hughes and Jacob Cole who sit silently playing the judge, plaintiff and defendant for the whole opera. They have a deeply concentrated stage presence, without which the opera wouldn’t make dramaturgical sense.
The next generation of opera – and you can be sure, with the talent on display, that those who made these two operas are going to be a large part of that – has things to overcome: opera’s long-standing elitism and how misogynistic the opera canon is. Problems that should be at the forefront of the industry’s mind, especially after director Katie Mitchell recently retired early from opera citing the culture of misogyny. Opera like this is the kind of opera that progresses the art form and is exactly what schools should be making with their students, the next generation.