DVORAK'S RUSALKA / New Opera Singapore / Review

DVORAK’S RUSALKA

New Opera Singapore

Victoria Theatre

Sunday (20 August 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 22 August 2023 with the title "Tragic, moving staging of Dvorak's Rusalka".

New Opera Singapore (NOS) has garnered an enviable reputation over the years with successful productions of operas that are not exactly household names. In the midst of the pandemic, it mounted online Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, while Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Telephone and Francis Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine saw the light of day in 2022. This year brought out the Singapore premiere of Czech composer Antonin Dvorak’s opera Rusalka. Its fame outside of the old Czechoslovakia was long premised on a single hit aria.

 

Composed in 1900 with libretto by Jaroslav Kvapil, this was a variation of Hans Christian Andersen’s well-known Little Mermaid story, about a water nymph who sacrifices her identity and  voice for the love of a human prince. It makes for a ridiculous story but unlike Andersen’s (or Disney’s) version, this one directed by NOS founder Jeong Ae Ree has no happy ending. Sung in English rather than the original Czech, and with helpful English and Chinese surtitles provided, there was also no mistaking its tragic narrative.

 

London-based soprano Victoria Songwei Li as the titular Rusalka was a stunning presence. Her multi-faceted acting abilities, which navigated from lovesick longing, through frustration and confusion to finally grief, was as moving as her singing. The unforgettable Song To The Moon (Mesicku Na Nebi Hlobokem or Moon Deep In The Heavens), which came early in the first act, was beautifully rendered in Czech, setting the tone for the dramatics to unfold.   

 

Excellent Latvian tenor Martins Smaukstelis as the ill-fated Prince, towered over Li in physical stature, but as the story goes, would have made for a very poor Tinder match. Destined to hear her voice only in the third act’s final duet, his earnest yet misguided strivings would get no satisfaction except in death.

 

The supporting cast was just as good, particularly mezzo-soprano Rebecca Chellappah as the smarmily evil witch Jezibaba, who was balanced by baritone Martin Ng’s Water Gnome with his woe-laden lines. Soprano Joyce Lee Tung as the seductive Foreign Princess was the Prince’s principal distraction, her striking red gown a stark contrast to adversary Li’s pallid one.

 

Tenor Leslie Tay (Hunter/Gamekeeper), soprano Lara Tan (Turnspit), water spirits Ashley Chua, Rachel Ong and Wen-Yu Tseng provided added commentary, levity and comic relief to the otherwise dark tale. Members of Symphonia Choralis (Chong Wai Lun, chorusmaster) had multiple roles, including playing wedding guests, mysterious denizens and wave simulations of the watery realm.

 

The inclined stage designed by RT+Q Architects was simple yet evocative, providing the illusion of depth and added dimension. The NOS Orchestra, a chamber sized outfit, conducted by Chan Wei Shing supported the singers well, and there was little to no risk of them being drowned out in the lush late-Romantic score.

 

Despite a lean annual budget, NOS has always delivered. From the quality of singing, fresh ideas in presentation to honest-to-goodness production values, this sympathetic production of Dvorak’s Rusalka would be no exception.   

Concert photographs by Chrisppics+ 

FANTASIA, FAREWELLS AND FAURE / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

FANTASIA, FAREWELLS & FAURE

Singapore Symphony Orchestra 

Victoria Concert Hall, Singapore

Friday (16 September 2022)

 

This review was first published in Bachtrack on 20 September 2022 with the title "A Requiem of repose: Stephen Layton conducts Fauré in Singapore"

 

British choral conductor Stephen Layton was to have led the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and its choruses in Fauré’s Requiem in March 2020. The Covid pandemic put an end to that. Two and a half years later, with the virus now endemic, Layton finally arrived and never has there been a more appropriate time for this masterpiece to be heard. The passing of HM Queen Elizabeth II on 8 September had cast a pall around the world, but this concert held in a historic hall memorialising Queen Victoria in the former Straits Settlements colony of Singapore seemed like the most timely response.

 

Thomas Tallis’s Why fumeth in fight sung by an offstage chorus opened the evening’s music, those being the very strains quoted by Ralph Vaughan Williams in his Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis which followed without a break. Despite having just 28 string players onstage (21 in the main body and 7 standing behind), Layton coaxed from the ensemble a cathedral of sonority. Having former SSO Concertmaster Igor Yuzefovich (now with the BBC Symphony) as leader certainly helped with crafting textures of evenness and homogeneity. His own quartet of soloists, including violinist Michael Loh, violist Zhang Manchin and cellist Yu Jing, also stood out above the harmonious throng. Seldom has three choirs of strings sung with such moving intensity.

 

Still with string music, two short pieces from William Walton’s film music for Henry V lent further relevance and significance with their inclusion. In Passacaglia – Death of Falstaff, a slow throbbing pulse held sway, later giving way to the more richly harmonised Touch her soft lips and part in gentle sicilienne rhythm. There was no pretence to lugubriousness, just the regret of parting and bidding farewell.    

 

The Singapore Symphony Youth Choir (Choirmaster: Wong Lai Foon) with woodwinds, French horn and harp joined the string orchestra for Gabriel Fauré’s lilting Pavane. Has anyone actually paid attention to Robert de Montesquiou’s words, which include Les reines de nos coeurs (Queens of our hearts) and Adieu donc et bons jours aux tyrans de nos coeurs (Farewell and good days to the tyrants of our hearts)? A soothing benediction followed in Cantique de Jean Racine, with the splendid choir’s reassuring mellowness approximating voices of angels.

Photograph: Jack Yam / Singapore Symphony Orchestra

 

The concert’s centrepiece was Fauré’s Requiem, in John Rutter and Stephen Layton’s edition for soprano and alto voices, performed by the boys, girls and ladies from both the Singapore Symphony Children’s and Youth Choirs (Choirmaster: Wong Lai Foon). Sung completely from memory, this was a show of perfect deportment and discipline. Yet there was a depth of feeling from the opening Requiem aeternam, allied by vocal clarity and excellent enunciation of consonants, all through to the close.

The soloists:
Baritone Martin Ng, soprano Victoria Songwei Li
and violinist Igor Yuzefovich (behind harp)

 

Organist Isaac Lee provided steadfast support on the hall’s Klais organ, and Yuzefovich’s delightful obbligato violin solos in Sanctus and In Paradisum were the gilded edge. Two of Singapore’s finest young opera singers also had spots to shine. Baritone Martin Ng lent gravitas in Hostias and the rapturous Libera me, while London-based soprano Victoria Songwei Li’s cameo in Pie Jesu revealed a voice of rare beauty. The closing In Paradisum floated on angels’ wings, its ethereal lightness finding a perfect match in the purity of the voices. It would have been hard to find dry eyes among the audience in this requiem of repose.

Photo: Jack Yam / Singapore Symphony Orchestra

 

Star Rating: *****

BENJAMIN BRITTEN A Midsummer Night's Dream / New Opera Singapore / Review

BENJAMIN BRITTEN

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

New Opera Singapore

Victoria Theatre

Friday (16 August 2019)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 19 August 2019 with the title "Fantasy and hilarity rule the night".

It has been 22 years since Benjamin Britten’s operatic setting of Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream last played in Singapore. In 1997, Singapore Lyric Opera mounted a production, with a largely foreign cast of singers and conducted by Lim Yau, which remains one of the company’s most remarkable achievements.

Although trailing in authenticity and refinement, New Opera Singapore’s production with a largely local cast, directed by Jeong Ae Ree and conducted by Chan Wei Shing, was nonetheless impressive for its freshness of ideas and ebullience of delivery.

Britten’s adaptation of Shakespeare saw its original five acts reduced to three, with the First Act dispensed altogether. Much of the libretto remained unchanged, thus retaining much of the humour and farce. Its story of fairies, humans and actors (here called rustics), their falling in and out of love, and mistakenly applied “love” juice, made for much fantasy and enchantment.

Soprano Victoria Songwei Li, returning from last year’s triumph in Poulenc’s Dialogues Of The Carmelites, was just as stunning in the coloratura role of Tytania. The range and agility of her voice was matched by an alluring physical presence that was hard to ignore. Coming quite close was actor Dwayne Lau Wei An as the playful Puck, prancing opposite countertenor Glenn Wong as the tyrannical Oberon.

The mortals Helena (sang by Jennifer Lien), Hermia (Rebecca Chellappah), Lysander (Shaun Lee), Demetrius (Kang Mingseong) as subjects of love were also well cast, especially the women. The rustics, comprising Bottom (Sangchul Jae), Quince (Keane Ong), Flute (Adrian Poon), Snout (Samuel Ng), Starveling (Francis Wong) and Snug (David Lee), who were planning a play within a play, provided further comic elements to an already hilarious script.

Although singing and speaking in English, not all the words were clearly enunciated and heard. The Korean singers were at a disadvantage here, made more difficult when wearing the headpiece of an ass. As such, the smart use of surtitles proved all the more vital.

The all-boys choir from Anglo Chinese School (Junior & Barker Road) provided the atmosphere of innocence which Britten sought. Mingling among them were the fairies Jasmine Towndrow (Moth), Lara Tan (Peaseblossom), Melissa Hecker (Cobweb) and Yssela Erquiaga (Mustardseed), youngsters who aquitted themselves with purity and grace.

The set made up from detachable and mobile ramps of different heights, designed by RT+Q Architects, was simple and highly effective. This allowed for clarity of story-telling on different planes besides preventing a cramped stage. Consistent with the company’s penchant for the edgy and slightly risque, there were scenes of cross-dressing (Poon as the awkward bride Thisby) and the hinting of bestiality (woman and ass).

New Opera Singapore has overachieved again, given its small budget that allows for just one major production annually. Next year sees the Singapore premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, and expectations already run high.  

All photographs by the kind courtesy of New Opera Singapore.

POULENC'S DIALOGUES OF THE CARMELITES / New Opera Singapore / Review

DIALOGUES OF THE CARMELITES

New Opera Singapore

Victoria Theatre

Friday (3 August 2018)

This review was published in The Straits Times (online edition) on 10 August 2018 with the title "Unconventional choice, but Dialogues of the Carmelites a landmark for New Opera Singapore".

New Opera Singapore (NOS) has done it again. By mounting the Singapore premiere of Francis Poulenc's 1957 opera Dialogues Of The Carmelites (Dialogues Des Carmelites), it defied the conventions of what operas should local companies be presenting. No Verdi, no Puccini, no Mozart, but no worries. NOS had Purcell, Britten and Monteverdi on its books, and has now added 20^th century Frenchman Francis Poulenc to its list of successes.

In reality, Carmelites should not have been a great surprise as it represented the last of last century's great tonal operas, conceived during the era when serious composers were pursuing atonalism and avant-garde agenda. Its subject, the 1794 martyrdom of the Camelite order of Compiegne during  the French Revolution's Great Terror, was also fertile for exploitation in musical drama.

Mother Superior Lidoine (Jennifer Lien)
leads the Requiem service.

Sung in English instead of French, directed by Kyongsu Kathy Han and conducted by Chan Wei Shing, this production was furthered by a very strong cast of principals as the ill-fated nuns. The protagonist Blanche (soprano Victoria Songwei Li) as aristocrat-turned-novice sparkled as she alternated between hope and fear, finally finding a resolution in extreme courage. Beside her, Sister Constance (soprano Capucine Daumas) was a light-hearted and playful presence, the perfect foil.

The Mother Superiors were well contrasted, soprano Patricia Sands as the long-suffering and terminally-ill Madame de Croissy and soprano Jennifer Lien (fresh from her leading role in the other significant Poulenc opera La Voix Humaine) as the plain-speaking and more cheery Madame Lidoine. Between them, mezzo-soprano Rebecca Chellappah was a rock-steady Mother Marie, close confidante to the beleaguered ladies. Their voices rang well over the discreet orchestral manoeuvres from the pit.

Blanche (Victoria Li) with
Mother Marie (Rebecca Chellappah)

Men had much smaller parts, including tenors Reuben Lai (Father Superior) and tenor Shaun Lee as Blanche's brother the Chevalier. The touching scene between Blanche and Chevalier came closest to a conventional operatic love duet, but had the former rebuffing the latter's pleas to flee the oncoming crisis. The men's black suits also contrasted markedly against the light pastel nuns' habits and ultimately white, symbolising innocence and purity.

The sets in all three acts by Allister Towndrow were monochrome and starkly effective, with series of screens adding layers of dimensions. The shadow of the guillotine loomed ever so ominously through the First Act, and when the heart-wrenching final scene beckoned, there were to be no falling blades.

Execution by decapitation was depicted symbolically. With the chorus of nuns (including NOS Artistic Director Jeong Ae Ree in a cameo role) singing the poignant Salve Regina and each walking through the scaffold and towards oblivion, their voices diminished and decimated until there were only two. Blanche's final act of sacrifice with her sisters in faith could not have been better depicted.

This production marked yet another important landmark in the short history of New Opera Singapore. It produces only one opera a year, but making that count is what that really matters.

The main cast (from L): Sands, Daumas, Li,
Chan, Han, Jeong, Lien & Chellappah.

Production photos by Chester Chew, applause photos by Pianomaniac.