PUCCINI'S MANON LESCAUT / Singapore Lyric Opera / Review

 

PUCCINI’S MANON LESCAUT

Singapore Lyric Opera

Esplanade Theatre

Friday (31 August 2012)

 

This review was published in The Straits Times on 3 September 2012 with the title "Outstanding opera deserves more audiences".

 

First things first, for congratulations is due to Singapore Lyric Opera (SLO) for producing a Puccini opera that is not La Boheme, Tosca, Madam Butterfly or Turandot. Manon Lescaut, Puccini’s third opera and first outright hit, is part of the standard repertory but has never been staged in Singapore. It does not boast of the hit arias that made Puccini so popular, but it nonetheless possesses the drama, sumptuous music with a touch of Wagner, and the characters to make it memorable.

 

For a first production of something unfamiliar, SLO pooled its strongest resources together to make it one of its best productions to date. Director E. Loren Meeker chose to update the tragedy to the modern day without the gimmickry that usually accompanies such attempts. All the singers were dressed in Orchard Road day clothes, which made the verismo cautionary tale of confused woman-child Manon Lescaut, torn between virtue and vice, all the more topical given the ongoing underage sex scandal occupying local tabloids today.  

 

Singaporean soprano Yee Ee-Ping’s elevation to status of prima donna in the titular role was an unqualified triumph. Not only does she have the vocal apparatus and pulmonary capacity to pull it off musically, her acting with a panoply of facial expressions and bodily feints was totally believable; even sympathetic, despite being blinded by bling.

 

Opposite her, Korean tenor Lee Jae Wook as student-in-love Des Grieux was up to his usual heroics. He nailed his aria Donna Non Vidi Mai with much earnest zest, and their duets together were easily the opera’s high points. The supporting cast led by Andrew Fernando (Manon’s brother), William Lim (Geronte) and Melvin Tan (Edmondo) were excellent for fleshing out the action and drama.

 

The musical theatre moved between seriousness and plain silliness so naturally, which will become a hallmark of Puccini. Witness the comical Dancing Master scene, with tenor Lemuel de la Cruz totally hamming up the gay role without so many words, before transitioning into pure sobriety as if with a flick of a switch.

 

Set designer Christopher Chua’s work was stark and effective, especially in the bleak Fourth Act in the arid Louisiana desert. The blood-red backdrop served to represent undying love and the scorching wilderness, and as the sun set on the affair of Manon and Des Grieux, a pall of grey descended agonisingly like a guillotine’s blade. The final duet was exactly as it was depicted - a slow and painful death.       

 

The SLO Orchestra led by conductor Joshua Kangming Tan gave one of its best showings in a highly detailed score, the poignantly moving Intermezzo leading into Act Three was enthusiastically applauded. The marvellous chorus, augmented by 17 Filipino vocal talents (where would Singapore opera be without them?), also lent their collective weight to the proceedings.

 

On a worrying note, this third opera to be staged in Singapore within six weeks, was greeted with many empty seats on opening night. With Donizetti’s L’Elisir D’Amore and John Sharpley’s Fences also playing to small houses, one ponders the future for classical opera in Singapore.

 

There are two more shows of Manon Lescaut on Monday and Tuesday. The quality and effort of all the artists involved should not go unrewarded. 

 



THE BLUE PLANET LIVE / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

THE BLUE PLANET LIVE!

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Friday (29 June 2012)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 2 July 2012 with the title "Awesome dive into the oceans".

Using live music to accompany images projected on a screen is not something new for the SSO. In 2001, the Eisenstein black and white classic Alexander Nevsky was screened to stirring music by Prokofiev. Two years ago, Debussy’s La Mer lent an added dimension to stunning marine photography by SSO violinist William Tan. The Blue Planet Live!, a two hour documentary-concert adapted from the BBC natural history series, is unsurprisingly the most spectacular culmination of this genre. 

Drawn from 7000 hours of film shot in 300 localities over 5 years, every minute provided its own thrills and spills. Acclaimed film composer George Fenton’s score was memorable, wide-ranging in style and vividly captured the spirit of the oceans. The sea is an awesome, almost unfathomable and most unexplored expanse of our world, and its denizens among the most curious and diverse.

It is also dangerous and unforgiving. An advisory warned of the disturbing visual scenes of predatory animal behaviour, and nothing quite prepares one for the carnage of a pod of orcas tearing into a defenceless grey whale calf. Low brass and ominous percussion set the prefatory mood. Equally gut-wrenching is seeing seal carcasses tossed like cabers by captors before crashing limply into oblivion. The music was just as harrowing.

The sentiment changed considerably in The Frozen Oceans, where Arctic and Antarctic scenes stitched together become seemingly inseparable geographically. A medley of Christmas carols and melodies accompanied polar bear frolics and the belly-gliding ballet or waddling march of penguins.

The plaintive flute and unaccompanied choir provided a soothing nocturne to the verdant mass of kelp forests. Jazzy trumpet and flugelhorn solos lit up Life In The Flow, which highlighted some of the more quirky fauna, including the mass migration of Christmas Island (once of Singapore) red crabs. Fact is indeed often stranger than CGI.

Swift changes of scenarios prevented any possibility of any subject from lingering longer than necessary, each preceded by narrator Remesh Panicker’s calming baritone declamations. The orchestra conducted by Joshua Kangming Tan was excellent throughout, whether capturing the majesty of sailing marlins or sei whales gulping down breakfast. They were well augmented by singers from the Hallelujah and Singapore Symphony Choruses trained by Wong Lai Foon.

Their parts were mostly wordless until the final number with Charles Trenet’s chanson La Mer, which carried the vital ecological message of conservation. The heavy price exacted by homo sapiens by pollution and over-fishing in our oceans will mean that in fifty years, all the wondrous scenes seen this evening will be a thing of the past. That was the one singular abiding message of The Blue Planet.

MOZART'S DON GIOVANNI / Singapore Lyric Opera / Review

MOZART’S DON GIOVANNI
Singapore Lyric Opera
Esplanade Theatre
Saturday (25 February 2012)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 27 February 2012 with the title "Don of a new age".

Considering that Don Giovanni is widely regarded as Mozart’s greatest opera, it comes as some surprise that the Singapore Lyric Opera had waited some 20 years to stage it. This may be due to the fact that there had been two previous productions in Singapore during the late 1980s and mid-1990s by groups from Britain and Hungary. This, the first featuring all Asian voices, however has much to recommend.

First, veteran director Tom Hawkes does not tamper with the story or setting as a tragicomedy and morality tale, instead allowing the relationships between the characters to be clearly defined. The two lead baritones, Song Kee Chang’s Don Giovanni and Huang Rong Hai’s Leporello, shared a marvellous chemistry together as master and serf (above). Huang’s comical mix of hero-worship and contempt for the Don was well characterised, as was Song’s nonchalant and callous way with women.

The excellent supporting cast was completely Singaporean, now achievable because a critical mass of experienced and young local opera singers exists today. Rising to the fore was soprano Cherylene Liew’s sympathetic portrayal of purity and goodness in the role of Zerlina (above). Her two arias Batti batti, Vedrai carino and the famous duet La ci darem la mano with the Don call to notice an impressive new talent.

But why was tenor Melvin Tan’s believable Don Ottavio denied his few minutes in the limelight of Il mio tesoro? Its excision to keep the show under three hours (the final curtain came down one minute before eleven) seemed cruel. He and relative veterans Nancy Yuen (Donna Anna), Yee Ee Ping (Donna Elvira), William Lim (The Commendatore), Martin Ng (Masetto) and the dependable SLO Orchestra conducted by Joshua Kangming Tan provided a firm bedrock to the proceedings.

Unlike the two previous productions which barely had sets to speak of, Christopher Chua’s backdrops were effective and simple, with an emphasis on stone that seemed to pre-empt the arrival of the stone guest for the final dinner scene. The Don’s fire and brimstone comeuppance, a rare scene with three low male voices (below) and an opportunity for special stage effects, however seemed a tad underwhelming.

With the unrepentant philanderer safely dispatched to Hades, the final sextet was a joyous denouement but was the descending image of a crucified Jesus Christ’s head appropriate? Surely this sent mixed signals about sin, recalcitrance and eternal damnation. Or had the Don made yet another one of his audacious escapes?

This production of Don Giovanni plays at Esplanade Theatre 8 pm this evening (Monday 27 February) and runs till tomorrow (Tuesday 28 February).

THE TALES OF LOVE AND DEATH / Singapore Lyric Opera / Review

THE TALES OF LOVE AND DEATH

Singapore Lyric Opera

Esplanade Concert Hall

Friday (25 November 2011)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 28 November 2011 with the title "Love, death and sympathy for a courtesan".

The combo of love and death, inseparable as Siamese twins, was the subject of the Singapore Lyric Opera’s annual gala, but there was to be no Tristan or Isolde. Given that the tradition of performing Wagner is close to non-existent here, the tried and tested Puccini verismo operas were among the unsurprising offerings.

Why not, as the music has popular appeal and there are no shortage of good singers in this repertoire. The usual stars who have graced SLO’s productions returned, and all three were in superb voice and form. The ageless soprano Nancy Yuen (left) was the chief protagonist with bleeding chunks from her signature roles in Tosca and La Bohème.

Nobody here does dying consumptive divas better, except in this case Floria Tosca leaps to her demise rather than wastes away. Her duet Mario, Mario, Mario (Tosca) with Korean tenor Lee Jae Wook (left) simmered and then sizzled, aglow with the anticipation of a late night tryst. The famous sequence in La Bohème which begins with Rodolfo’s Che gelida manina and closing with O soave fanciulla also sported the chemistry which has made this pairing a very special one. So far no deaths.

It was in the final moments of Massenet’s Thaïs, with Korean baritone Song Kee Chang (left), that the tears flowed. Who could not have sympathy for a courtesan turned nun who succumbs, predictably but beautifully, to the strains of the familiar Meditation. For once, that most overplayed of melodies is heard in its proper context.

As a preview to next February’s production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, highlights were performed, including Yuen and Song in the tender duet La ci darem la mano. Meanwhile Lee, as the roving Don, flirted with a lady in the audience in the Window Serenade by way of a rose, and then polished off the Drinking Song.

The SLO Ladies and Children’s Chorus made credible short appearances in Bizet’s Carmen and Verdi’s Macbeth, while the SLO Orchestra conducted by recently conferred Young Artist Award winner Joshua Tan Kangming (left) played rather many minutes of orchestral excerpts. While Puccini’s youthful Symphonic Prelude came off half-baked, there was no denying the passion in the Intermezzo from Manon Lescaut.

The sole encore was, of course, the Brindisi from Verdi’s La Traviata, which had all three soloists toasting the audience. One would have hoped for more singing in the two hour long concert, but it was the quality rather than quantity that truly mattered.

THE ARTS AWARDS 2011 / Exclusive from The Istana

The annual Arts Awards ceremony took place at the Istana this evening, with two members of the musical fraternity being honoured. The 2011 Cultural Medallion in music went to composer, lecturer and administrator Kelly Tang Yap Ming, and the Young Artist Award in music was conferred on conductor Joshua Tan Kang Ming.

Joshua Tan, Kelly Tang and Singapore's No.1 jazzman Jeremy Monteiro.

Kelly Tang is the first composer of the newer generation (born in the 1960s) to win the Cultural Medallion. An extremely versatile composer and musician, he is at home with the serious classics, jazz, film, popular music besides being adept as a mridangam player. In 2010, he composed two piano concertos, one in the atonal idiom (premiered by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra) and the other a jazz concerto (premiered by Jeremy Monteiro and the Singapore Chinese Orchestra.) He is also the newly appointed Dean of Performing Arts of the School of the Arts.

Joshua Tan Kang Ming is presently the Resident Conductor of the Beijing National Centre for the Performing Arts. He has conducted the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (the 2011 President's Young Performers Concert) and the Singapore Lyric Opera's 2011 production of Bizet's Carmen. He is also winner of several international conducting competitions.

Joining the fray is the 2003 Young Artist Award recipient Zechariah Goh Toh Chai (extreme left) and a certain gatecrashing music reviewer.

Chinese orchestra conductor Major Tay Soon Huat, soprano Yee Ee Ping (left), and Tan Wie Pin of the Ministry of Education.

Dr Kelly Tang's family

Joshua Tan and his wife Yolanda.

2004 Young Artist Award winner violinist Chan Yoong Han with the Maestro.

We came here for the food too!

For the record, the other Cultural Medallion winners were: Yusnor Ef (Music), Atin Amat (Theatre) and Lim Yew Kuan (Visual Arts). The other Young Artist Award winners were: Troy Chin (Literary Arts), Lim Woan Wen (Theatre), Nawaz Mohammad Mirajkar (Music), Peter Sau (Theatre) and Ang Song Ming (Visual Arts).

SSO Concert: President's Young Performers Concert / Review

PRESIDENT’S YOUNG 

PERFORMERS CONCERT 

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall 

Friday (8 July 2011)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 11 July 2011 with the title "Young, hip and heady".

The President’s Young Performers Concert series has over the years showcased Singapore’s top young musicians with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. Last Friday’s concert held some poignancy as it marked the final gala for President S.R.Nathan, who has been an unwavering supporter of local talent. He and Mrs Nathan never missed a concert, and always stayed through to the very end.

The performers who have graced this platform now reads like a Who’s Who of Singapore musical life. The three young men spotlighted in this concert have the potential of figuring on the world stage in years to come. Conductor Joshua Kangming Tan is presently Resident Conductor of Beijing’s National Centre of Performing Arts and his programme astutely combined the familiar with the obscure.

Samuel Barber’s Second Essay, a Singapore premiere, was the perfect starter. Not only were the woodwind solos fully warmed up, their sheer immediacy galvanised the orchestra as it emerged from languor to a heightened state of readiness. The culmination was a wonderful fugue, with the woodwinds leading the charge for an impressive climax and close.

The brass was no less exuberant in Sibelius’s Karelia Suite, with the two invigorating quick marches bookending the plaintive Ballade where Elaine Yeo’s gorgeously shaped cor anglais solo held court.

The first of two soloists was violinist Loh Jun Hong (above right), a most sensitive interpreter of Wieniawski’s Faust Fantasy. If he were a singer, he would be a lyric tenor with the most cultured and refined of voices, weaving yarns of silk in this less-than-subtle showpiece. There were some familiar tunes including Mephistopheles’ Song of the Golden Calf which caused the audience to applaud prematurely, long before the work ended.

The other soloist was pianist Azariah Tan (above left) in an effectively nuanced performance of Gershwin’s jazz-inspired Rhapsody in Blue. Not only did he blaze the keyboard with glittering written-out cadenzas, he also took time to savour the blues. The liberties adopted with tempos and grace notes teased and tantalised, but never crossed the line to sound contrived. A convincing jazzman he can be.

The concert ended exuberantly with the hustling and bustling of Gershwin’s An American in Paris. As before, conductor Tan expertly controlled a tight ship but one that luxuriated in heady rhythms and beat. If it was a guilty pleasure to observe his hips swaying Elvis-like with the music, there need not be any apologies.

Pianist Azariah Tan
with his teacher Albert Tiu (right).

BIZET'S CARMEN / Singapore Lyric Opera / Review

BIZET’S CARMEN
Singapore Lyric Opera
Esplanade Theatre
Friday (21 January 2011)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 24 January 2011 with the title "Bravo for a unique Carmen".

Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen is so popular and familiar that it runs the risk of being a museum piece, endlessly rehashed and flogged to the benefit of the box office. Not so, the Singapore Lyric Opera’s fourth production of Carmen in its short history, which presented new vistas while remaining true to its original spirit.

As the rousing Prélude was being played, Sophie Fournier’s Carmen and Lee Jae Wook’s Don Jose appeared on stage sealing a love pact in blood, even before a single word was uttered. This mere act alone was to pre-determine its slightly modified but nonetheless fatal ending some three hours later.

In between were some of the best moments to be witnessed on the Singapore opera stage. Director David Edwards, of the wackiest Barber of Seville of seasons past, returned with a vengeance, but this time balancing radical ideas with urgent gravitas. Carmen and Jose were no mere singing cardboard cut-outs but multi-layered characters who ultimately evoked genuine sympathy.

Fournier mesmerised not only with her dusky voice, but with moves and gestures that flaunted every single asset she possessed. Femme fatale she was, but also a complex psychological basket case, which swung wildly from a Boudicea-like revolutionary to a bitch-in-heat writhing uncontrollably on the stage floor. Lee was equally believable, caught between two loves and emerging in a confused daze rather than murderous rage.

The supporting cast was one of the strongest assembled in recent memory. Melvin Tan, Peter Ong, Cherylene Liew and Satsuki Nagatome elicited splendid chemistry as the smugglers, and even had a vaudeville number on their own, complete with canes. Huang Rong Hai’s Escamillo and Li Yang’s Micaela sang their standout arias well, while William Lim’s Zuniga was suitably bathetic.

The set was simple and effective. Wire mesh, corrugated boards and planks conjured the barrenness of an industrial wasteland, aptly reflecting the lives caught within, completed with a screen displaying scenes of Spanish landscapes and the bloodfests that are bullfights. The uniformed presence of soldiers suggests a totalitarian state, one policing mobs yearning for liberté.

Choral scenes, augmented by male voices from Beijing’s National Centre for Performing Arts, were superbly handled, and the SLO youth and children’s choirs a total joy, despite singing past their bedtimes. Joshua Kangming Tan’s direction of the SLO Orchestra was taut and precise, without being excessively driven. Some of the instrumental solos could have been more accurately executed.

The final scene of Carmen and José will be this production’s talking point. There was no face-off, instead both sang into the audience, indicating that their split to be final and irredeemable. Without revealing too much about the ending, there are only losers when a love affair dies. 

This rather unique Carmen plays for two more nights (24 & 25 January), and it would be a shame to miss it.

Singapore National Youth Orchestra: Prelude to a Symphony / Review

PRELUDE TO A SYMPHONY
Singapore National Youth Orchestra
JOSHUA TAN KANGMING, Conductor
Victoria Concert Hall
Friday (4 December 2009)

An edited version of this review was published in The Straits Times on 7 December 2009.

The prowess of young Singaporean musicians today is often proven by the demanding musical programmes they deliver in concert. The latest offering by the Singapore National Youth Orchestra (SNYO) does not look out of place in the subscription series of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.

Beginning with Debussy’s Prelude to The Afternoon of the Fawn, young Jasper Goh Chien Teng’s confident flute solo immediately set the standard for the rest of the orchestra to match. His colleagues did so, albeit in fits and starts, this gorgeously written but elusive music probably being new to their palates. The lush verdant strings however came through beautifully, saving the fawn from slipping to a deep slumber.

The orchestra’s next task was to partner the Canada-based Japanese violinist Yosuke Kawasaki in Russian composer Alexander Glazunov’s compact but showy Violin Concerto. Although marked Moderato, the first movement ambled along at a pedestrian pace, diminishing the virtuosity that was on show. It got better in the slow movement with Kawasaki’s lovely singing tone coming to the fore. Excellent trumpet fanfares heralded the festive finale, one befitting the glitz of Christmas trees on the back of the stage.

Having enjoyed three young orchestras grapple with Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony within the space of six months this year, it was thus unmitigated pleasure to witness a rare performance of the Russian’s Third Symphony in A minor (Op.44). Most of the SNYO’s best qualities came through in this reading, guided by award-winning Singaporean conductor Joshua Tan Kangming’s (left) sympathetic direction.

There was an unerring sense of direction and inexorability in the proceedings, brought about by the composer’s exile and pangs of homesickness. And how the cellos sang the bittersweet principal theme, one inspired by that same section of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Rachmaninov’s favourite band.

The peaks and troughs of the music were clearly delineated, and traversed with much wide-eyed enthusiasm and diligence, none more so in the central movement. The orchestra engaged in its aching nostalgia, and with a flick of switch trooped to a martial beat. It was never going to be the perfect rendition, but the thunderous acclaim indicated a common shared thought: every person on stage had their hearts in the right places.