A community opera that lacked bite
Agreed Glyndebourne ★★★★★
Glyndebourne’s latest contribution to “community opera” certainly takes the genre seriously. It puts a large chorus of local singers of all ages right at the heart of the action, but more importantly it makes community the actual subject of the piece, dealing with the tragedies that occur when its bonds are broken by power.
The father-and-daughter team of Howard and Anna Moody explore this theme through a story set in an imaginary country, ruled by the tyrant Alex (Michael Wallace). He and his council agree to split the country in two (thus the title) and banish all immigrants to a land across the sea. His own mother Maya (Louise Winter) is amongst them, and her banishment causes distress to her granddaughter Elin (Nazan Fikret), who imagines she can hear Maya’s song. An unexplained death brings an angry delegation from the banished people, among them Maya. Meanwhile, Elin defies Alex by falling for someone from across the sea. Alex’s power is fading, and eventually he’s humbled when he brings about his own daughter’s death.
Director Simon Iorio wraps characters and story in a mythic atmosphere, helped by vaguely Near-eastern costumes and Cordelia Chisholm’s luminously simple circular design, around which the bardic figure of jazz singer Zara Mcfarlane slowly paces, pointing the moral of the story in vaguely bluesy song. Inside the circle is “us”; beyond it is “them”, a division made vivid use of in the gripping scenes where choruses from the two lands have angry encounters. Mingled with the actions are four musicians, performing on Western and “world music” instruments.
All this is effective, particularly in those scenes where a rapt peace falls on everyone, and Howard Moody’s gently soughing harmonies set a vaguely oriental mood. But the piece overall lacked bite, partly because Moody tended to slip into an allpurpose dissonant “modern” idiom whenever the tension rose. Elsewhere his music was disconcertingly diffuse in style, sometimes evoking Bach’s Passions, sometimes getting close to Bernstein. Anna Moody’s libretto tended to pile up imagery in a vaguely mythical but puzzlingly obscure way, and was most effective when it was most straightforward.
As for the main roles, Michael Wallace as the tyrant Alex never seemed truly threatening, but he was moving in the final reconciliation with Elin’s lover, played by tousle-haired counter-tenor Tom Scott-cowell. Louise Winter was dignified as the wise elder Maya. Elin, as played by Nazan Fikret, was innocently ardent, and in a nice touch her spirit was embodied after her death by dancer Ellyn Hebron. In all it was a touching if somewhat dramatically sluggish tale, in which the community performers certainly stole the show.