Royal Opera

20th July 2008

I shouldn’t be reviewing this because I’m on a lads holiday but it’s like 5pm and they’re still asleep and I’m so bored, it sucks having a girlfriend sometimes because if I was single there would always be something for me to do but I’m not single so all I can do was like sit in the room for like hours or go on the Internet and really the Internet option sounded like miles better. And I’m glad I came online because I got some really cool messages and even a whole email from a real life opera singer, how about that?

The Young Artists Concert is usually loads of short extracts all with the same theme but sometimes they do something a bit different. One year the first half was an extract from Cosi fan tutte and a whole opera, called Der Kaiser von Atlantis. This year they had three extracts. And before the concert started I was thinking, which is the best way to do it? Longer extracts means more time for the singers to get into character which is good but the short ones are fun too because you get to see a bit of everything.

This year’s concert with three extracts did give the singers the chance to be versatile. They did the whole of Act 4 of Figaro to start off with (apart from the Marcellina and Basilio arias), then they did a bit from Capriccio, then a bit from this opera by Rossini called Il viaggio de Reims. But the problem with doing short extracts like this is that everyone has to be in almost everything and everyone isn’t always going to be suited to everything especially when they’re as different as these three operas. When they did Cosi and Der Kaiser von Atlantis it didn’t matter so much because they more or less had the lighter singers in Cosi and the heavier singers in Der Kaiser but the three extracts here had millions of characters in so everyone was in at least two of them.

The second problem I had with the concert was that it was much too short. It was only like 1 hour 45 minutes altogether and that was including the interval, it would only have been like 1 hour 20 minutes without that. I’m sure it’s usually more than 2 hours. They were doing it as a matinee so I suppose they didn’t need to make it that long but at the end it did kind of leave me feeling like, was that it? I’m sure they could have done one more thing at least. The theme this year was Counts and Countesses but there must be more of those, there’s the other Figaro operas for a start like Il barbiere (she’s not a Countess yet in that but they do get married at the end so she kind of is) and Cherubin by Massenet and this opera based on the 3rd Figaro play called La mere coupable by this bloke called Darius Milhaud. And there must be like millions of others.

But anyway Act 4 of Figaro came first. I think it should have come last. First of all because it is obviously the end of the opera so it felt weird getting to the end and it was only the interval. Also it’s a good one to end on, the Il vaggio de Reims one was funny and really good but not really dramatic. Capriccio was probably right for the middle because it’s probably the most challenging to listen to.

Most of the singers in the Figaro section were playing the roles they’d covered this season. They all performed really well but I couldn’t help thinking, like why is this singer playing this role? Kishani Jayasinghe was a brilliant Susanna as far as her acting goes, she was really funny and sexy and she really got the character just right but she’s not exactly a soubrette and it sounded really odd for Susanna to be heavier than the Countess. Barbarina was even heavier, Pumeza Matshikiza, she sang her aria really really well and even got some humour into it but she’s another one with a big voice. Ji-Min Park who sang Don Basilio is obviously not a Mozart singer either and he’s really more of a romantic lead than a comic tenor, I’m surprised they didn’t get Haoyin Xue to do it, he loves all that comic stuff but Ji-Min did a really good job actually.

Monika-Evelin Liiv I thought would have trouble with Cherubino but she so didn’t. She’s a bit heavier than you’d expect but she really got the phrasing and the character was just so funny, she was slouching all over the stage like a cool version of my brother. It was amazing, she’s a really hot girl but I didn’t fancy her one bit when she was Cherubino.

Then there was Krzysztof Szumanski as Figaro, he is seriously good. He’s not totally confident yet, the music and the character weren’t quite there all the time but you can just tell he’s going to be a great Figaro once he’s got a bit more experience. He’s funny but you can tell he wants to make Figaro into a really nice character who has a bit of a tough time really instead of just a comedy one.

But all this did kind of make me think okay I am enjoying this but is this really the right time the right place and the right people? If this was the whole opera I’d be a bit pissed off if the singers were this unusual and in a way I feel like it was a bit mean to make Krzysztof sing a huge role like Figaro in one of the top opera houses in the world, he’s going to be great and he was pretty great actually but there’s no need to push him.

Some people were great like Jacques Imbrailo as the Count, he is so obviously a Gerald Finley wannabe but they do have similar voices and similar approaches to the character, it does seem quite natural when Jacques does all his mannerisms and stuff but Gerry is so like distinctive (we have to go and see him loads because CLV knows him so I know his performances quite well, not that I’m complaining) it’s like I recognise his performance. He’s going to be great too, he should sing the Count for the ENO or somewhere like that.

Then there were some really good performances in the other roles, Vuyani Mlinde and Kostas Smoriginas were good as Bartolo and Antonio. Elizabeth Sikora who’s not a Young Artist was Marcellina, she’s always really funny and she’s got this role totally nailed. Rachel Walters who wrote the programme notes was Antonio’s Girlfriend. She looked younger than his daughter, Barbarina must be so embarrassed! Lucky guy though, Rachel’s well hot.

But seriously as soon as Anita Watson came onto the stage as the Countess I could kind of get why they were doing this piece. Anita was the lightest soprano in the concert, kind of midway between the typical Susanna and typical Countess I’d say. But as the Countess she was just brilliant. She’s got this really gorgeous voice (she’s gorgeous all over actually) and even though most of the time she was pretending to be Susanna she really got into the character, she was obviously a bit upset over the whole Count-Susanna thing but she wasn’t let anyone walk all over her. And she’s funny, there aren’t many really funny Countesses but you’d be surprised how well it works.

Anita was the star of the Capriccio section as well, this time she was the Soprano Singer who gets drunk and she was so funny, so was Haoyin Xue as the Italian singer, like I said before he knows all about how to do comedy.

Pumeza Matshikiza was good as the Countess, I couldn’t really imagine her singing Strauss but she’s got something about her, she’s not a flirt or anything like that, she’s just got this magnetic power, you can tell why all the blokes are after her. But Frances Millar as the ballerina was obviously getting lots of attention off them as well and I can see why. She’s not with the Royal Ballet, she was an actress in Figaro and some other operas but she looked like a proper ballet dancer to me.

Monika-Evelin Liiv was Clairon the actress, she was wearing this short dress, if the Primi Divi do a Best Legs award she could win it. She was a bit of a slag though. Jacques Imbrailo was cool as Oliver, that’s another Gerald Finley role but it’s a role that really suits him because he’s got like all this energy.

Ji-Min Park sang Flamand, another role I wouldn’t have expected him to sing but he did really well and he was one of the singers (Jacques was another one) who really got the whole Strauss thing and you could really hear where all the tunes were. Vuyani Mlinde was La Roche the director, I kind of expect him to be quite an old bloke but it actually worked really well having this young cool guy, you can imagine he’s got some really out-there ideas.

There were lots of really good things in Capriccio but there was something missing, and what I reckon it was was proper Straussian energy.

Then the concert finished with the Il vaggio de Reims extract which was quite funny and everything and it was good music I suppose but it was just a load of people standing in a line and some of them sang a song. Jacques Imbrailo sang God Save the Queen which was funny and everyone sang really well in this which was quite impressive really because lots of it’s a capella but nothing really happened. It was interesting but I don’t think it really made a good Finale. So they should have done more extracts, maybe not including the ones they actually did and they should have done them in a different order. But apart from that it was great.

FitCrit

primi-divi at hotmail.co.uk