British Youth Opera at the Peacock Theatre

9th September 2008

Yes it’s opera season time again and it’s review time and I went to this even though I was still a bit hungover from my 18th, I don’t think there’s anything I can’t do now except go into nightclubs for over 21s and over 25s but I get into over 21 nightclubs easily (joking Mum!)

BYO is always really cool because they don’t usually try to do clever stuff. This year was extra good because they did two operas you don’t see everywhere else all the time, La rondine and Flight. Flight is a really cool opera but the others were all like fighting over who got to review that so I’m doing La rondine even though it’s more Violetta’s thing than mine but like whatever.

Another thing we really like about BYO is that we can take bets (Barry paid for Hairy’s stake because Hairy said he had to buy loads of nappies, there’s always some reason why Hairy can’t pay his share. Caledonia doesn’t even wear nappies now, well that’s what she told me, didn’t really know what to say to that) on which ones are going to be the next big stars. Like when we saw The Cunning Little Vixen like years ago we all thought Lucy Crowe was going to be a big star and look at her now, she’s sung major roles with the ENO and Scottish Opera and she’s going to sing with the ROH this year. Then you’ve got Anna Leese, she was Juliette in Romeo et Juliette, she sang at the ROH for the first time like 2 years ago. Then some people end up as Young Artists like Vuyani Mlinde (Commendatore and Gremin) and Kishani Jayasinghe even though she was only the Fiordiligi cover. No-one from last year has really done anything major yet but most of them are still studying so it could still happen.

And this year as usual there are loads of good singers but I’m going to tell you 2 of the people I reckon are going to make it big. I’m going for Telman Guzhevsky who was Ruggero in La rondine and Verity Parker who was the Controller in Flight. Remember you heard it here first.

Telman Guzhevsky is good not just because he can obviously sing really well, he’s really good, but also because he doesn’t prat about like most tenors. You put most tenors on a stage and they start ringing their hands and falling over on the floor and writhing like a Tottenham player who’s just dived, pathetic. Telman didn’t do any of that crap, he obviously wasn’t like thrilled when his girlfriend left him but he was going to be a man about it more or less. Much more subtle.

Magda was sung by Meeta Raval, this is a really difficult role to pull off and musically she’s got it, she’s got an amazing voice, really big and powerful and she’s only like 25. She could probably sing Wagner or anything. But she doesn’t just blast it out, she’s sensitive to the music and stuff. She hasn’t quite got the character but Magda is just a really complicated role because she’s a bit of a bitch in lots of ways. Lots of people compare La rondine to La traviata but Violetta is a lot easier to like. Meeta did her big aria really well, the one about Doretta, I’ve heard that like millions of times but it was nice to hear it in the full opera for a change.

The other couple are Lisette and Prunier, they’re kind of the funny couple. Sadbh Dennedy, I think you say it Sive to rhyme with drive who played Lisette was well hot and she was really funny, kind of like a thick version of Susanna. Thomas Herford sang really well but he didn’t come over quite so much as a character, I think that was Puccini’s fault though and the librettist’s.

Then there were all these.girls running round being sexy which was cool. And they were good singers too, I noticed, Laurie Ashworth, Melanie Lang and Michelle Daly as Yvette, Bianca and Suzy. I wish their roles were longer, one thing about La rondine that makes it not such a great choice for BYO is that there aren’t that many proper characters that stand out, these 3 girls seemed like group of 3, they didn’t really have like seperate personalities. Laurie had that problem in The Magic Flute last year when she was First Boy and Melanie was just one of the Villagers in Albert Herring but both those operas still have loads of brilliant characters so there’s lots of chances for people to stand out. But they were still really good.

The other hot girls were Lilly Papaioannou (no idea how to say that) as Lolette, Natalya Romaniw (Georgette) and Anna Patalong (Gabriella).

Jonathan Sells as Rambaldo, Magda’s other bloke was cool, I’m sure I’ve seen him before a few times, he didn’t have a big role but he was important to the story so he made sure he stood out. Then there was Thomas Kennedy as Perichaud, John Pumphrey as Gobin and the Student, Aidan Giles Smith as Crebillon, Paul Curievici as Adolfo, Nicholas Morris as Rabonnier and Georgios Papaefstratiou as the Major-domo. I didn’t always know which was which but let’s blame Puccini and the librettist again.

This wasn’t always brilliant, like I said it’s just really hard to make this opera work and that’s probably why no-one hardly ever does it. That’s why it’s only getting 3 stars. But seriously I bet a lot of opera companies would love it if the lowest rating they’d ever got was 3 stars. I don’t quite get why there were chairs hanging from the ceiling in Act 2 or why Magda decided to do a spot of gardening when she was breaking up with Ruggero, well it was probably symbolism but it made her look a bit mad.

But it seemed like John Lloyd Davies who did the directing and the sets wanted to make it really fun and he did that. Peter Robinson’s conducting was real typical slushy Puccini, I’m sure when they did it at the ROH the music seemed better than that but I can’t really complain when conductors make it sound like is Puccini when it is Puccini can I? If it was someone decent like Mozart I’d have something to say about it. But La rondine is actually quite good stuff for Puccini really. And no-one even dies, even in Turandot people get their heads chopped off and that’s supposed to be a happy one.

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