Scottish Opera: ‘Ainadamar’ - Further Thoughts
Festival Theatre, Edinburgh - 10/11/22
Our editor, Hugh Kerr, has already reviewed the Glasgow premiere of Scottish Opera’s latest production, ‘Ainadamar’, with the encouraging words at the end: Don’t Miss it! It seemed appropriate that I, as a singer myself, and a one-time member of Scottish Opera, should follow his recommendation, and so I went along to the middle performance of the three shows which played at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh this week.
I had no idea what to expect, other than a good night in the theatre, but I must confess that I didn’t think I was going to have such a wonderful experience as this. As Hugh wrote, this is more than simply an opera, with multi-media effects, flamenco, dance, Cuban Rumba and light shows, as well as containing some luscious vocal music, especially for the three main female leads. First performed in a student production at Tanglewood in 2003, it was extensively revised by a creative team, including the director Peter Sellars, for Santa Fe Opera in 2005. Written by the Argentinian, Osvaldo Golijov, to a libretto by David Henry Hwang, it explores the story of the writer Federico Garcia Lorca, through the eyes of his friend, and sometime muse, Margarita Xirgu, in particular her lifelong performances of the title role in Lorca’s 1927 play, ‘Mariana Pineda’. She relives some of the moments in her life connected to Lorca, and using her protégée, Nuria, she endeavours to keep his story, and indeed his myth, alive by highlighting his tragic execution by the Fascist Falangists in the Spanish Civil War, both for liberal views and his homosexuality.
I was slightly perturbed right at the beginning by the obvious use of voice amplification, with the singers’ voices coming from speakers rather than directly from their mouths. It became clear that the large orchestra would cover all the words of the singers, and the electronic nature of some of that orchestration necessitated the use of microphones. However, as the piece progressed, the use of amplification became less important, and we became more aware of the actual sounds of the soloists, particularly when the orchestration was less lush, and I was pleased to note that the microphones were often turned off, or at least right down. Singers never like to use microphones, as the whole point of opera singing is that we use the natural projection of our voices to sail over the orchestra, making amplification redundant. The visceral quality of the unamplified voice is what makes opera special, and we jealously guard that aspect of what we do. However, a lot of modern opera uses electronic music and projected sound both in the orchestra and from the stage, and so it becomes necessary to amplify the singers’ natural voices to allow them to be heard. It must be said that some of the modern techniques are so sophisticated that the audience will be unaware of what is going on, and so we, as singers, have learned to thole this practice, although carefully monitoring its use.
Scottish Opera’s engineers have done a pretty good job here, and we were allowed to hear the real quality of the singers’ voices throughout, and what voices they are! There are only three main characters in ‘Ainadamar’ (which incidentally is an Arabic word for Fountain of Tears), a soprano with lower extension for Margarita, a high soprano for her student, Nuria, and a mezzo-soprano/contralto for Lorca. The poet’s brittle homosexuality is perfectly encapsulated by having him played by a woman in travesti, and the American, Samantha Hankey, rises superbly to the challenge, singing beautifully and carrying off the difficult task of portraying the fey poet wonderfully. The young Colombian soprano, Julieth Lozano, played the role of the doting student to perfection, with lovely top notes and authentic Spanish in her declamatory section towards the end. The magnificent Australian soprano, Lauren Fagan, was simply stunning as Margarita Xirgu, singing and acting quite superbly. I worked with Lauren at Covent Garden, when she was a Jette Parker Young Artist there, and realised quickly that here was a voice of true quality. I am happy to report that that promise is being fulfilled and she is now the finished article, a lyric soprano of the highest rank, with a full range from smoky chest voice to silvery filigree at the top. She is also an accomplished actress and dominated the performance from start to finish.
The smaller characters were also well cast, and I must single out Alfredo Tejada, playing the Falangist Officer, a role written for an authentic flamenco singer, but high up in the tenor range. His was an awesome performance!
The show was directed by the Brazilian choreographer, Deborah Colker, in her first venture into opera, and the result is magnificent. The performance looks splendid, with a heady mixture of choreography, acrobatics and visual effects, both beautiful and moving, and the handling of the singers is exemplary. Apparently, Ms Colker took a while to appreciate that singers rehearse differently to dancers, endless repetition being anathema to lyric artists, as the vocal chords tire more quickly than leg and arm muscles, but the results are spectacular. It helps that the majority of the performers are youthful, as much of the staging is quite physical, but all in all, the production is stunning.
The whole show is held together by Scottish Opera’s Musical Director, Stuart Stafford, who steered us through this complex musical score with aplomb and panache, coaxing beautiful sounds out of the large orchestra in the lyrical passages, and thrilling ones in the dramatic sections. Ian Watt and Stuart Semple were exemplary as the onstage guitar and cajon drum players, although their final bows need a bit of work!?
As Hugh Kerr said in his review of the Glasgow staging, Scottish Opera have a winner in this show, and it was noticeable that the audience in the Festival Theatre was considerably younger than the usual for opera, a very welcome occurrence.
