RCS: The Medium and Three Decembers (Opera Double Bill)

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Alexander Gibson Opera Studio, Glasgow - 01/11/23

William Cole, conductor | Flora Birkbeck, mezzo-soprano | Rosie Lavery, soprano | Pawel Piotrowski, baritone | Nikki Martin, soprano | Charlotte Bateman, mezzo-soprano | Daniel Gray Bell, tenor

It’s that time of year again, when the clocks go back and guisers chap doors – and the students of the Alexander Gibson Opera School at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland put on their Autumn production, a double bill of chamber operas.  This year we got two American masterpieces, Jake Heggie’s ‘Three Decembers’ and Gian Carlo Menotti’s ‘The Medium’.  Both works featured small instrumental ensembles, but with different instrumentation.  The performances were conducted by William Cole, directed by Mathew Eberhardt, designed by Anna Yates and lit by Charlotte Burton.

Jake Heggie’s ‘Three Decembers’ follows the lives of a family over a period of 2 decades from 1986 to 2006, during the AIDS crisis.  The mother, Maddy, played by mezzo-soprano Flora Birkbeck, is a successful actress, whose career is just starting to take off at the beginning of the opera and whose Christmas letters to her grown-up children are lampooned by them: “She even writes in iambic pentameter”.  The father died when they were young and they discover that their “memories” of him are entirely derived from what the mother has told them, including the story of how he died in a freak accident.  The older sibling, Charlie, played by baritone Pawel Piotrowski, is gay and at the start of the opera is concerned at the deteriorating health of his partner, Burt.  His younger sister Bea, played by soprano Rosie Lavery, is married with children to an unfaithful husband and seeks solace in a bottle.  Both siblings are starved of parental affection and affirmation, having been brought up by nannies while their absentee single mother was working hard in the theatre to put food on the table.  They appear to cling to an idealised image of the father they hardly knew.  Maddy does not conceal her disapproval of Charlie’s lifestyle and Bea’s drinking.  The second December is 1996.  Burt has died of AIDS, Maddy having acknowledged him as a member of the family shortly before.  Maddy has been nominated for a Tony award and arrives late to her apartment to get ready, by which time Bea has been drinking, Charlie has arrived and the siblings have mocked her shoe-obsession.  Criticising Bea’s drinking, Maddy lets slip that she is ‘just like her father’ and, in the heated exchanges that follow, finally reveals that he was an alcoholic and a suicide. The siblings are devastated with the discovery that their lives and sense of self are based on a lie and that their mother is acting in real life no less than on the stage.  In the last December, 2006, Maddy has died and the siblings are speaking at a memorial service in a Broadway theatre.  Bea is forthright and shares her understanding that her mother was protective of them but emotionally distant and that a life based on a lie is not a life.  Charlie is more defensive of her memory.  Both have come to terms with the truth and are healed by it.  We see Maddy, as if from the afterlife, praising Bea’s insight.  The opera ends with a sense of reconciliation and a quote from Maddy’s last Christmas letter: “All in all, isn’t life simply grand?  I’m so awfully glad I showed up for it”.

In a first hearing for me, Heggie’s music is tuneful and emotionally engaging, perfectly supporting the wide-ranging moods of the action.  The playing of the handful of strings, winds, piano and percussion was superb.  Flora’s vocal and dramatic characterisation of Maddy, emotionally engaging in her stage persona, yet distant and disapproving with her children; always acting even off the stage with steely control of grammar, syntax and any revelation of self, was absolutely excellent.  Rosie’s Bea, vulnerable and starved of affection, was captivatingly expressive and emotionally charged, the transformation to a state of self-knowledge and self-realisation both compelling and credible – a soprano to watch.  Pawel’s Charlie, starved of affection, finding love but also tragic loss, finally healed by the truth, projected every nuance of the score and libretto in a rich expressive baritone.  All the elements that make a great opera were present and they worked together perfectly.  Reading up later on Heggie, I found it poignant to discover that the composer of the score of this opera, with libretto by Gene Scheer based on a play by Terrence McNally, is himself the son of a suicide.

Menotti, by contrast, was both composer and librettist for his 1946 opera, ‘The Medium’.  Flora Birkbeck returned in the title role, Madame Flora (Baba) and I must honestly reveal that I had to check my programme to confirm it was the same performer.  She looked and moved completely differently and even the tessitura of the part sounded lower.  Baba is cruel, domineering and a fraud.  Her household includes her daughter Monica, played by soprano Nikki Martin, and a mute boy Toby, played by tenor Daniel Gray Bell in a tacet role.  Toby is bullied by Baba but treated with tenderness and affection by the fey Monica.  The other characters are attendees at a séance.  Mr and Mrs Gobineau, played by Rosie and Pawel, are returning to contact with their deceased 2-year old son.  Mrs Nolan, played by mezzo-soprano Charlotte Bateman, wants to contact her deceased 16-year old daughter.  During the séance scene, the baby’s laughter is delightfully simulated instrumentally, while Rosie (offstage) sang the teenage ‘ghost’, all faked by Baba’s trickery.  The séance is interrupted and abruptly ended when Baba feels an invisible hand on her throat and hears voices that no one else hears.  At first, the fraud assumes that she is the victim of someone else’s trickery and tries to extract a confession from Toby by gentleness and then brutality, to no avail.  Racked by guilt, she returns the money to her clients, confessing to their disbelief that she is a fraud. Unable to accept that what she was faking might be real, she loses her grip on her sanity and descends into paranoia.  Lulled to sleep by exhaustion, she wakes to find someone lurking in the shadows and fires three shots from a gun. Toby, who has returned to find Monica, falls dead.

The music, with more winds and some brass, is melodramatic, tender and melancholy by turn.  All artistic elements of the production, including music, lighting, movement and vocal timbre, played on the contrasts of light and darkness, truth and lies, innocence and guilt, reality and the surreal.  This was another first time for me and I must acknowledge that the production convinced me that the work is a masterpiece.  Nikki’s portrayal of the incomprehensibly gentle Monica was a delight and her Act I lullaby to calm the volatile Baba was unforgettable.  The star of the evening must be Flora, though, for sheer dramatic range.  Her Baba was menacing and macabre, even as her world crumbled.  Fabulous.

This time last year, we had stunning artistry displayed in a pair of flawed chamber operas by Nyman and Bryars.  This year we have had a happy conjunction of excellent emerging talent with a pair of masterpieces.  RCS continues to deliver.  Like nowhere else.