A Singer’s Life Pt3
I have decided to change tack from a sort of chronological autobiography, since that could become rather tedious, to a series of related stories and anecdotes which give the reader an insight into how careers develop and how different countries and managements work with artists from other countries.
I have already written about how, even back in the early 1980s, Italian opera companies worked in a very different way to British ones. Today, I’d like to write about how Francophone countries (France, Belgium and Switzerland) produce operas by Britain’s prééminent composer, Benjamin Britten.
The most important thing to grasp here is that British singers are hugely diligent about singing correctly and idiomatically in foreign languages, primarily because most operas are written in languages other than English. We do a tremendous amount of work in colleges, and privately, to ensure that whenever we sing in a language other than our own, a native speaker would have no cause for complaint. As a general rule, and there are exceptions, this rule does not apply the other way round. By the way, I shall address the question of singing in English translation in another article. There is also the question of singing in a dialect or in Scots.
I have been lucky in my career that my voice and style of performing have appealed for some reason more to Francophone managements than others. Consequently, I have sung all over France, Wallon Belgium, French-speaking Switzerland, and even once in Luxembourg. Several of these productions were of operas by Britten, and here the distinction between foreign and British singers in their devotion to accurate pronunciation was most obvious.
I sang in 3 productions of Peter Grimes, as Swallow in Nantes in Brittany and another in Monte Carlo and one as Hobson in Brussels. I sang Peachum in A Beggar’s Opera in Rouen and then Snug in the Aix-en-Provence Festival. Most used largely British, American and Scandinavian casts, augmented by local singers, but on the whole, directed and conducted by non-English speakers.
My first experience of this was also perhaps the craziest. Only recently has the practice of surtitles become standard around the world, and so most of our audiences for these shows were unable to follow every word we sang. (The subject of diction by singers is also for another day!)
As a small preamble, I’d like to mention my first venture abroad professionally, which came a few years before I sang in Nantes. I was asked to sing in concert performances of Purcell’s King Arthur in and around Le Mans. This involved a local choir and soloists who were mainly imported from the UK. We sang two performances in nearby towns with the final grand show in a splendid old church in Le Mans. Come the last performance, we were amused to see that most of the nave was awash with civic dignitaries. On one side of the central aisle were the Socialist councillors and, on the other, the Gaullists. It was clear that no love was lost between the two. However, when the Counter Tenor began to sing, the two sides were joined in communal mirth with much snickering and nudging. This was in the early 1980s before the early music revolution had taken over, and the lovely high notes emanating from the very obviously male singer were the cause of much hilarity. I felt very sorry for my colleague but he seemed oblivious to what was going on, and presumably had seen it all before. The other source of hilarity, this time to the British singers, were the valiant attempts of the French choir to make any sense of Dryden’s words. The tipping point for us was when the choir had to sing the immortal lines “Hither this way, this way bend!” All we heard was “Eezer zees way, zees way bend, zees way, zees way, zees way bend”.
King Arthur was to become one of the most important works in my career. I first sang it as a treble in my school choir, but my next outing after Le Mans was to record it with Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert for Deutsche Grammophon, followed by a European tour, a trip to Buenos Aires, singing in the famous Teatro Colon, and an appearance at the BBC Proms. My recording of the Cold Genius aria “What Pow’r art Thou” is now usually broadcast by the BBC when they play this piece on Radio 3, along with the stunning Nancy Argenta as Cupid.
Meanwhile, in the early 90s, I was engaged to sing Swallow in a new production of Peter Grimes at the beautiful theatre in Nantes. The opera performs in the Theatre Graslin, opened in 1788, destroyed by fire in 1796 but rebuilt for the visit of Emperor Napoleon in 1811. It has since been restored but when I sang there, we were playing in the 1811 theatre. Directly opposite it across the Place Graslin is the celebrated restaurant La Cigale, opened in 1895 and declared a Monument Historique! This was a splendid combination!
The Artistic Director of the Opera was the stage director, working with his then girlfriend. He spoke reasonable English but had decided that the stage directions specified by Britten, and in fact much of the plot, were contrary to his vision of the piece. He had assembled rather a fine cast of mainly British singers, with a couple of Norwegians and an American Peter Grimes. Recently, at Covent Garden, the famous Canadian singer, Jon Vickers, best known for his Wagnerian roles, had experienced a fantastic triumph as Peter, and his performance was captured on record by Philips conducted by Colin Davis. Britten and Peter Pears, the original Grimes, were publicly well known for loathing Vickers’ performance, but the practice of using a bigger voiced Heldentenor (Heroic tenor) for the title role had become well established.
Consequently, our Peter in Nantes was a great bear of an American, not necessarily perfect for this subtle role. He also refused to eat the local wonderful cuisine, but was usually found at McDonald’s beside the theatre, tucking into Big Macs.
The director had decided to distance himself from any normal British production and added elements which we had not foreseen. I offer a few examples:
The scene where the local worthies of the Suffolk seaside town, the Borough, based fairly clearly on Aldeburgh, drink in the Pub sheltering from the raging storm, was rendered different by not taking place in a pub. A bare stage served to suggest, well, nothing really, and we had to pretend the whole thing. The wonderful English singer who was singing Auntie, the pub landlady, was heard to announce early on, in broad Lancastrian, “Ow can I play a pooblican when there’s no bloody bar?” This was perhaps the least of our troubles!
In the scene where the quack doctor Ned Keene, who normally delivers Laudanum pills to the weird widow Mrs Sedley, is accosted by the old woman who, in full Miss Marple style, tells him she has proof that Peter Grimes murders his apprentices, our director chose a different track. Mrs Sedley, the widow of an old East India company man, was turned into a teenage nymphomaniac drug addict, desperate for sex and drugs. The whole scene was set as a clothed (Deo gracias) sex act, only finishing when Keene says “I’m dry, good night”, usually signifying a return to the party in the Moot Hall but here signalling his failure to complete full coition.
Previous to this scene was my important scene as the pompous lawyer Swallow, trying to seduce the two “nieces” who help Auntie run the pub, and work upstairs too! This was too simple for our director who decided that what the scene lacked was a girl dressed as Bo Peep with two live rats. The Nieces and I were instructed to sing our lines rolling around near Bo Peep and her little friends. I suggested to the director that if a single squeaking rodent came within 3 metres of his singers, we would be on the first plane home. Consequently, the rats were only ever seen wandering over the person of Bo Peep, not on the stage. The smell was awful, but we survived.
As you may surmise, the production was considered controversial, but was well sung! The chorus were trained in their English by the director’s girlfriend, who unfortunately spoke little English, and with a strong French accent. The results you may imagine.
The final straw of this exciting event in my life occurred after the last performance. We all repaired to the Alsatian (province not dog) restaurant at the foot of the hill below the theatre, and ate, drank and were merry. Unfortunately, this coincided with one of France’s many student revolts, unknown to us, and a mini riot appears to have taken place. Consequently, we found ourselves locked into the restaurant, as riot police stormed past outside firing tear gas at the students, or whoever was causing trouble. The only solution was obviously more wine, and we duly consumed as much as possible before we got the all clear to leave the restaurant. However, it was typically bizarre few weeks in Brittany!
