Reviews 2005
Reviews 2005
✭✭✭✭✩
by Ana Sokolovic, directed by Michael Cavanagh
Queen of Puddings Music Theatre, Harbourfront Centre, Toronto
June 11-18, 2005
June 11, 2005, saw the world premiere of The Midnight Court presented by Queen of Puddings Music Theatre, one of the foremost of Canada’s smaller companies specializing in the creation of new operas. For this 70-minute comic opera Montreal-based composer Ana Sokolovic set the libretto of Paul Bentley, best known for his acclaimed libretto for Poul Ruders’ The Handmaid’s Tale. The production dazzled with the exuberance of its verbal, visual and musical wit and the flawless cast stunned with its mastery of the vocal pyrotechnics Sokolovic demands.
Bentley’s libretto is based on Frank O’Connor’s translation of the celebrated 1780 Gaelic poem by Brian Merriman (1749-1805), a work surprisingly contemporary in its frank discussion of women’s sexual needs and how men fail to meet them. In Bentley’s adaptation Merriman himself (baritone Alexander Dobson) becomes the opera’s central figure who falls asleep on a midsummer’s eve only to be summoned to the midnight court of the fairy queen Aoibheal (mezzo Krisztina Szabó), where the relation of the sexes is under review. Grace (soprano Shannon Mercer) complains that Irish men marry for wealth not love and spurn, as Merriman has, attractive girls like her. Snarlygob (tenor John Kriter) counters that marriage is hell and women are whores until his wife Bridie (soprano Laura Albino) arrives to set the record hilariously straight. In reaction, the queen orders the punishment of unmarried men, including Merriman, who suddenly awakes from his nightmare.
The opera is scored for clarinet, violin, double bass, two percussionists and accordion, an ensemble often evoking Weill’s early satirical works, while Sokolovic’s exquisitely detailed word-setting owes more to Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and Berio’s Sinfonia. The marvelous young cast effortlessly segues from spoken word to Sprechgesang to arioso and back, sometimes within a single phrase, as a four-woman fairy chorus echoes, distorts or shatters the words the principals produce. In this way Sokolovic captures the hallucinatory nature of Merriman’s dream but, most crucially, her vast array of techniques from Renaissance trills to bebop serve only to enhance the text, never to obscure it. Indeed, the result is a refreshing sound-world of wildly inventive playfulness filled with the joy of life. A delicious tension exists between carnivalesque atmosphere of Michael Cavanagh’s direction and the precision of conductor Dáirine Ní Mheadhra’s rhythmic control.
Before the premiere the company was invited to present the work in spring 2006 at the Linbury Theatre of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. They are in for a real treat.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Opera News 2005-09-01.
Photo: Cast of The Midnight Court. ©Guntar Kravis.
2005-06-12
The Midnight Court