Royal Conservatoire of Scotland: MMus Opera Scenes 2024
Donal Hurley
Alexander Gibson Opera Studio, Glasgow, 9/5/24
Mark Wigglesworth, Valeri Ayvazyan (accompanists); Qi Liu, Stephanie Wong, Anna Marmion, Fran Stafford, Zsuzsana Cerveni (sopranos); Parker Millspaugh (mezzo-soprano); Aidan Thomas Phillips, Haydn Cullen (tenors); Fraser Robinson (baritone); Andrew Neil (bass-baritone); Shauna Healy, Vanya Astorsson (BMus Vocal Performance sopranos)
MMus Opera Scenes performances in the Alexander Gibson Opera Studio of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland afford a great opportunity to see the talent emerging from that school ‘before they are famous’, to use a cliché. I was pleased to catch the first of two performances of this year’s eclectic programme on the night of 9th May. Excerpts from contrasting works by Britten, Stravinsky, Poulenc and Richard Strauss featured, accompanied by piano (and, in part of the Stravinsky, harpsichord) by MMus Répétiteur students, New Zealander Mark Wigglesworth and Armenian Valeri Ayvazyan. The featured singers comprised sopranos Qi Liu, Stephanie Wong, Anna Marmion, Fran Stafford and Zsuzsana Cerveni; mezzo Parker Millspaugh; tenors Aidan Thomas Phillips and Haydn Cullen; baritone Fraser Robinson and bass-baritone Andrew Neil.
My favourite part of Shakespeare’s comedy ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ is in Act 3, Scene 2, where both Demetrius and Lysander, under the influence of a love potion, are pursuing Helena, who thinks they are both mocking her. Hermia arrives, bewildered at Lysander’s abandonment, and becomes convinced that Helena has alienated his affections. Accusations and counter-accusations are traded in the ensuing catfight, during which Hermia becomes convinced that her petite stature is being mocked, bristling at every word with diminutive connotations. The corresponding part of Britten’s opera is no less hilarious. With Qi Liu as Helena, Parker Millspaugh as Hermia, Aidan Thomas Phillips as Lysander and Fraser Robinson as Demetrius, this vocally demanding quartet was given a spirited performance, though I felt Parker Millspaugh’s voice was a little understated in the overall dynamic balance. Qi Liu’s coloratura had an immediate wow factor. I cannot decide whether the fact that Qi Liu is in fact more petite than her colleague gave added ironic hilarity to the text. A great comic opening to a concert, nonetheless.
Staying with Britten, but from comedy to tragic horror: two scenes from ‘The Turn of the Screw’. The first, from Act 1, showed Stephanie Wong as the Governess captivated by the children and secure in her ability to be a positive influence in their lives, but then skilfully lit apparitions of Quint (Haydn Cullen) and Jessel (Anna Marmion) shake her confidence. In the second, from Act 2, Jessel appears in the schoolroom and it is clear that the ghost intends to control and alienate Flora, just as Quint intends to do with Miles. Stephanie Wong’s portrayal of the state of mind of the Governess, first confident and dutiful, then anxious and fearful, and at last resolved and determined to save the children, was excellent dramatically and vocally. Anna Marmion’s Jessel was chillingly menacing. BMus Vocal Performance students Shauna Healy and Vanya Astorsson as Miles and Flora respectively played brief non-singing roles as the mesmerised children.
More macabre menace surrounds the sleekit diabolical Nick Shadow in Stravinsky’s ‘The Rake’s Progress’. In the Graveyard Scene, Fraser Robinson as Nick reveals to the naïve dissipated Tom Rakewell, played by Haydn Cullen, the full horror of the Devil’s Bargain which saw him receive a fortune and blow it on licentious living. Payment is now due; his soul is forfeit. In a ‘cat-and-mouse’ duet, Nick toys with Tom, offering him a loaded card-guessing game to redeem his soul. Against the odds, Tom beats the Devil, but as the latter is borne back to the fires of hell (great backstage lighting effects in a Don Giovanni moment), he curses Tom with madness. Tom, who has lost everything material, loses his mind. Fraser Robinson’s vocal portrayal gave us everything from chilling casual cruelty to demonic rage and was absolutely superb. Haydn Cullen brought equally graphic reality to the depiction of Tom’s emotional torment and his abjectly broken spirit, with just a glimmer of defiance before he is reduced to the rambling falsetto of a gibbering wreck. A master touch of pathos from Stravinsky was Stephanie Wong’s offstage voice reminding Tom of Anne Truelove, the sweetheart he had forsaken earlier in the opera.
Finishing up the first half, a slice of the beginning of Act I of Poulenc’s farcical comic opera after Apollinaire (and before Freddie Mercury), ‘Les Mamelles de Tirésias’ (literally Tirésias’ Boobs). Thérèse, played by Anna Marmion, “wants to break free” of the limitations of womanhood, releases her boobs in the form of two helium-filled balloons, into the air, takes the male name Tirésias (the blind oracle of Greek mythology and Sophocles’ Theban trilogy, who spent seven years as a woman as a punishment for disturbing two copulating snakes – I’m honestly not making this up) and chooses to live as a man. Her hapless ‘male chauvinist pig’ husband, played by Aidan Thomas Phillips, initially demanding to be fed with bacon, is compelled to wear a dress and do housework. The scene ends with some extended hilarious cross-dressed choreography to Poulenc in ‘Les biches’ mode, with Qi Liu, Stephanie Wong, Haydn Cullen and Andrew Neil in non-singing roles. Bonkers but brilliant.
Back to Britten after the interval with the Shop Scene from Act 1 of ‘Albert Herring’, an operatic sitcom from 4 decades before Ronnie Corbett’s portrayal of Timothy Lumsden in ‘Sorry!’ Albert (Haydn Cullen) is teased by his friend Sid from the butcher’s (Fraser Robinson) about his sober celibate existence of ‘all work and no play’ in the greengrocer’s, under the thumb of his domineering mother. Sid’s pretty girlfriend, Nancy from the bakery (Parker Millspaugh), arrives and they flirt, to Albert’s initial disapproval but visibly growing envy. They leave and Albert soliloquises about his dull life. A pretty but scatter-brained girl Emmie (Qi Liu) arrives at the shop and Albert discovers the joy of small talk. When she leaves, we learn that the seeds of Albert’s rebellion have been sown. I’ve never before rated ‘Albert Herring’ as one of Britten’s great operas, but this scene was utterly delightful with some lovely light comic touches and whimsical singing and characterisation, and it made me rethink.
Two scenes from Poulenc’s masterpiece ‘Dialogue des Carmélites’ followed. Set in the French Revolution, it follows the lives of an order of Carmelite nuns before 16 of them were executed by guillotine in Paris as enemies of the revolution in 1794. In the first scene from Act 1, the Reverend Mother (Fran Stafford in a brief silent appearance) is terminally ill. Sister Constance (Qi Liu) and Sister Blanche (Stephanie Wong) discuss life and death in a duet of contrasts, the former with light-hearted simple faith, the latter with darkly conflicted emotions. In the second scene from Act 2 a new Reverend Mother has been appointed (Anna Marmion). Blanche’s brother, the Chevalier de la Force (Aidan Thomas Phillips) visits and is permitted to see her, as long as she is accompanied by Mother Marie (Parker Millspaugh). He warns that her life is in danger because of the order’s links with the aristocracy and asks her to leave with him. She is offended by being treated as a little sister and responds coldly, her tone shifting from dignified reserve to a revelation of her troubled emotional state. Upset by her seeming hauteur, he leaves without a blessing. She repents of her coldness too late. Aidan Thomas Phillips and Stephanie Wong were excellent, both vocally and dramatically. The music is the Poulenc of the Gloria and the Organ Concerto, rich in uncompromising and starkly contrasting musical religious iconography. Even in piano reduction it is powerful. This really was thoroughly excellent.
The evening closed with a chunk of Richard Strauss’ ‘Ariadne auf Naxos’, billed as the first scene of Act 2, though strictly it is the first scene of the ‘Opera’, the first ‘act’ being termed the ‘Prologue’. The prologue sets the premise for the ‘play within a play’. Two performing groups have been hired for an entertainment, a burlesque Commedia dell’Arte troupe and an opera company expecting to perform an opera seria, ‘Ariadne auf Naxos’. Timings have run adrift and they are told they have to perform together. Thus the ‘Opera’ becomes a cobbled-together uneasy mixture of high and low culture being recomposed on the fly, as the real lives and concerns of the performers intrude in the action. It’s an odd opera, with farcical elements, yet profound in its examination of the tension between high and low culture. It starts with Ariadne (Fran Stafford) bewailing being abandoned by her lover (nice aria). Comedienne Zerbinetta (Anna Marmion) arrives and tries to cheer her up, to little avail. The Composer (Zsuzsana Cerveni in a trouser role) approves and keeps feeding her more and more complex material, culminating in an astonishing virtuosa display of coloratura singing. This was absolutely stunning and, as far as I am concerned, Anna Marmion is a star already. Wow! The rest of the scene consisted of Harlequin (Fraser Robinson) and 3 other comedians trying to woo the lovely Zerbinetta. Harlequin leaves them to it and they make fools of themselves, each believing they are ‘on a promise’. He makes his move and Zerbinetta and Harlequin sing a love duet, much to the chagrin of the scorned trio. Thoroughly enjoyable.
Lecturer Mark Hathaway directed; the performers were coached by Duncan Williams; the performance was lit by Mhairhi Burton-Coyle. The talent continues to grow and emerge from the RCS. It really is ‘Like Nowhere Else’.