“We’re not modernising something that resists it. Sometimes Baroque works can feel remote – with kings and gods and mythological layers – but this is close to our lived experience. It’s just people being human.” Thus spake The Royal Opera’s Associate Director Netia Jones about Pinchgut Opera’s second go at getting Henry Purcell’s The Fairy Queen to stage in the 21st century.
Jones, calling herself “an opera and theatre director, designer and video artist” via her own Lightmap Company, may have begun her working life with the UK’s Early Opera Company, but now travels the world with screenwork for operas of all ages that has been hailed by some as “visually stunning”, but damned by others as “distracting” and “intrusive”.
Given a rare 17th-century English Baroque spectacular designed to delight the Restoration crowd, with roots – but little else – in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, no linearity but masques and sumptuous music, Jones not only required Pinchgut to move to a theatre big enough to contain her images, the Roslyn Packer, but to delight a cheering Sydney crowd. Yes, she is capable of going over the top with movement (in an airport scene) that grates the eyes, but her stiller work, such as a nighttime wine bar, stretched time as well as allowing lonely lovers their space to move us.
An airport? A wine bar? Jones’ conceit is 24 hours in a contemporary city with a brilliant circularity that sees a honeymoon couple heading off by plane (quod vide Shakespeare’s Athenian woods) at the beginning and finds the same couple leaving a wedding reception at the end with their same suitcases. It is not only their wedding, but one for two same-sex couples who join a party that may sometimes have required an intimacy counsellor!
It almost goes without saying that the Orchestra of the Antipodes’ years of stylistic experience in Baroque shone through all the challenges of design, absence of plot and almost irrelevant libretto. The musicians, seen in a chiaroscuro light tasting of Caravaggio, accompanied songs with viola da gamba, theorbo and oboe that simply hummed. The combination of violinists Matt Greco and Rafael Font was both harmonious and historically informed. Just occasionally, conductor (and score re-editor) Erin Helyard’s harpsichord seemed over-keen.
Despite the title, Titania fails to appear! Oberon is name-checked, but appears only as Phoebus in a gloriously feathered celebration of the seasons, one of Kanen Breen’s trio of delightful roles. In what is essentially an ensemble work (12 singers and four under-employed dancers), other singers emerging strikingly from the crowd were Andrew O’Connor as lonely lover, drunken poet and gay groom, Morgan Balfour as the sorrowing bar-fly and a flirty bride, and a mellifluous Eden Shifroni as both unloved radio fairy and lesbian bride.
Surprisingly, it was a bonus to have a sense of Shakespeare in your mind – though the Bard’s fairies were transformed into airport security. Thomas Betterton’s libretto fared no better – with the wedding reception best man saying nothing cogent that could have cheered up a sad wall-flower, though his singing clearly did the trick. And Jones’ prime justification for her emphasis on love and marriage occasionally broke through her Constable clouds like Phoebus’ sun with feminist lines such as “For I’ll be as false and inconstant as he”, and her overarching query, “If Love’s a Sweet Passion why does it torment?”.
Untormented, three hours passed sweetly and seamlessly indeed, transported – as barriers, tables, a bus stop and beds had been all night – on well-oiled wheels.
