An operatic clubnight is a new concept: Egg London opens its doors to the Tête-à-Tête Opera Festival for an evening containing four works. Although we move freely between them, they do have a linear start and end time, so our experience feels familiar at first, but is finally transformed by the original, immersive Boys of Paradise.
One Day This Will Be Long Ago is a duet for baritone and soprano, who circle a kitchen table singing melancholy fragments of speech, conductor Ross Gunning and six talented instrumentalists silhouetted behind a white screen. Opera Breve’s intention is to reveal “the unseen moments of reality, which are no less heavy with emotion.” The problem is: which emotion? Thomas Humphreys and Victoria Atkinson sang beautifully and moodily, but in the absence of any narrative scenario, I couldn’t tell whether they were sad, confused, angry or anguished. Nevertheless, Alexander Horowitz’s music exerts a hypnotic charm and the sheer beauty of the voices, particularly Humphreys’, makes this an undeniably beautiful, if not emotionally eloquent, experience.
Charmless, silly, dull and badly executed, the less said about Bad Habit Theatre’s China Doll the better. It’s not an opera, but rather a poorly conceived musical, in which staging, direction, singing and acting are equally disappointing, while the libretto is agony from start to finish. Never has an hour seemed longer...
By contrast, Cavalier’s Rock Tosca is basically one of the best ideas anyone has ever had. Big, sweaty, loud and brilliant, rock’s ego-heavy aesthetic is ideal for Puccini’s personality-driven thriller. Ella Marchment’s direction makes the most of this, focusing us on individual characters in turn, keeping the crucial claustrophobic air of persecution in each scene while blasting us with big volume and bigger emotions. The genius behind it all, as well as conducting from the keyboard and playing a fabulously nasty Scarpia (yes, all at the same time) is the multi-talented James Schouten. Schouten’s arrangements of Puccini stay melodically faithful to the original, sounding surprisingly natural on electric guitars (Nickolai Linnkick, Felix Stickland) or with the glitzy touch of a saxophone, bolstered by rock star drumming from Matt Lack. As well as Schouten’s sneering antihero, we have a superb Tosca from Justine Viani, note-perfect in gorgeous Italian. Her acting sassy and sensual, Viani’s “Vissi d’arte” allows each phrase to grow delicately into the vast emotion Puccini requires. Ed Hughes gives us a passionate Cavaradossi, finely sung throughout, his “Tosca, sei tu” and “E lucevan le stelle” both excellent: an impressively polished performance at short notice. Timothy Patrick, in an orange jumpsuit, gives Angelotti a memorably hunted look. The band can occasionally drown the singers, despite microphones, and arias in general work better than the recitative: newcomers to Puccini might get a little lost. However, if you already know and love Tosca, Schouten’s rock translation is an exuberant joy.