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Opera Triple Bill: Michael Tanner Second Movement is a young opera company which gives singers who have graduated from their college but are not yet on the opera house circuit a chance to demonstrate their gifts, and in unusual repertoire. Since standards at Second Movement are evidently very high, it also gives enterprising opera goers, supposing they manage to spot one of the company’s rare and unobtrusive adverts, an opportunity to see things they might easily spend a lifetime without encountering. Last week, in the London Film Studios in Mercer Street, there was a triple bill, all of which would have been news to almost anyone. It kicked off with an updated version of Offenbach’s Les deux aveugles, a brilliant short piece about two ruthless tramps. There isn’t a lot of music, but it is of vintage quality; and the performance was stunning; also that of the orchestra, located in this inconvenient venue by the side of the stage. It was made, so Michael Flexner the adaptor said, into a piece about contemporary homelessness in Britain, but most of the audience’s attention is more likely to have been focused on the attempt to retrieve a diamond from a dead beggar’s colon, an attempt carried out with alarming realism. The second piece, still more interesting, was Rothschild’s Violin, an adaptation of a Chekhov story by Benjamin Fleischmann, who died in 1941, leaving his work incomplete. Shostakovich orchestrated it, and had to write some of the music, which he did in masterly fashion. It is a devastating, compressed piece about anti-Semitism, and in this sharp performance packed a strong punch. I left after it, having a strong allergy to Martinu (The Knife’s Tears) and to dada and surrealism in general. Even so, this was one of my best-spent evenings in some time.
Opera Triple Bill: Anna Picard Now in its fourth year of staging rarely heard operas in unusual places, Second Movement has found its groove. The company's ambition is undimmed, its young stage and musical directors Oliver Mears and Nicholas Chalmers are displaying more confidence, the orchestra has new zing and bite, and although the cistern in the Old Film Studios is as intrusive as the peacocks in Holland Park, the programmes are bristling with glossy specialist travel, music festival and educational advertisements. This is good news. But whoever allowed last year's quarter-page funeral home advertisement to slip through the net missed a trick with this year's triple-bill of variously mad-cap or miserable death-obsessed one-act operas. In Michael Flexer's cheeky, Radio Four-ish adaptation of The Two Blind Men, the corpse of Archie (Nathaniel Tapley), a blind beggar and part-time fence, is subjected to a series of wince-making indignities as his friends, fellow con-men, and inadvertent murderers William (Nicholas Sharratt) and Dan (Stephen Anthony Brown) search for two missing diamonds that Archie has euphemistically hidden "up the Old Kent Road". (A new one on me.) I doubt Offenbach's bouffonnerie musicale bore quite so strong a likeness to Weekend at Bernie's in its original, or that "Bum-hole!", as sung a dozen times in one duet, is a direct translation from the French. Nonetheless, I was tickled by the satirical dumb-show in front of the row of cash machines, charmed by the easy ring in Sharratt's elegant, attractive tenor, only mildly embarrassed by the fake Sarf London argot, and thoroughly seduced by the unerring refinement Offenbach lends to even his lightest music. Rothschild's Violin, adapted from the Chekhov short story by Benjamin Fleischmann, and orchestrated by his teacher, Shostakovich, also features a corpse. But the principal function of poor Marfa (Hannah Pedley) is to prick the conscience of her casually anti-Semitic husband, Jacob (Jonathan Brown): a coffin-maker, misanthrope and part-time violinist. With the stage split into three boxes by designer Simon Holdsworth - one a coffin-store in which Marfa quietly dies in front of the TV, one a shabby office in which Jacob realises that his soul has died along with his chances of prosperity, one a filthy back-door to the party venue - and some interesting, if easily missed, use of the floor-level space, Mears's tightly-timed production paid homage to Richard Jones. The non-singing actors were cunningly utilised, and though Brown's beautifully produced, even tone could have done with more emotional edge, this was a remarkable debut. The sour, oily, closing doyna was played with audacious expressivity. What a stunning piece. Stunning too was The Knife's Tears: a Dadaist morsel in which a woman and her daughter are seduced by the Devil. It was a shame that the production budget did not extend to a pair of plastic hands for the hanged man (a dummy) whom Eleanora (Yvette Bonner) falls in love with, and that the set change took so long to execute. But the work itself was well sung by Bonner, Brown and Pedley, well staged, and, most of all, well played. Though the plot condemns this work to curiosity-piece status, its thick, exotic palette of banjo, strings, piano, saxophone - each used in the most unexpected ways - makes me wonder again why Britain's opera companies are so infatuated with Weill when Martinu uses the demotic more interestingly. Improved as its musical and theatrical presentation undoubtedly is, such ingenious programming remains Second Movement's strongest suit.
Opera Triple Bill: George Hall Second Movement has established a reputation for its presentation of unusual one-act works which is bolstered here by acute and musically distinguished versions of worthwhile rarities. Offenbach’s 1855 Les deux aveugles is staged with a new libretto by Michael Flexer as The Two Blind Men. A ribald, streetwise satire on dishonesty and attitudes to homelessness, it makes a brilliantly entertaining start, even if Flexer needed to fit his words more closely to Offenbach’s rhythms. The remaining two items are both UK premieres. Rothschild’s Violin was begun by Shostakovich’s pupil Benjamin Fleischmann, but completed by the master himself after its originator’s death in the Second World War. Based on a tale by Chekhov, it shows the mean-spirited musician Bronze reconsidering his life and making a final redemptive gesture by giving his violin to Rothschild, whom he has persecuted. Jonathan Brown attacks the central role with vigour, and the piece strikes home forcefully. Last comes Martinu’s 1928 The Knife’s Tears, a Dadaist fantasy in which Satan attempts to seduce Eleonora with her mother’s complicity. The piece proves fun, its jazzy score highly attractive. Simon Holdsworth’s effective designs peel back as each opera is completed, and Oliver Mears’ stagings hit three nails on the head. Conductor Nicholas Chalmers draws superior playing from a sixteen-piece orchestra. The company is strong. Once again Second Movement shows itself capable of remarkable things. Let’s hope they can expand their activities.
Opera Triple Bill: Warwick Thompson The Knife’s Tears – The music – a Parisian mix of pastiche sentimentality, jazz and expressionism – is aural gold and the cast (Yvette Bonner, Hannah Pedley and Jonathan Brown) excellent. … Nicholas Chalmers’s contribution is uniformly good and the small band plays with exciting commitment.
Opera Triple Bill: Nick Kimberley Second Movement is a company intent on taking audiences into uncharted territory. Its latest show offers three one-acters, two receiving UK stage premieres. The singers are young, the tiny wind-heavy orchestra has a vaudeville tang, and there is a pleasingly ramshackle air about proceedings, complete with hissing water pipes and protracted scene-changes. This is the sort of semi-guerrilla ad-hocism that London opera needs… Offenbach ’s Two Blind Men is the kind of satirical squib, more spoken than sung, that mid-19 th century Paris loved. Oliver Mears’s production updates it to contemporary London, where two rather posh vagrants find diamonds cached in a dead colleague’s fundament, and dishonour among thieves win the day. Short and sharp, the piece retains its bite. The Knife’s Tears. As the daughter, Yvette Bonner has a guileless sexuality, while Hannah Pedley makes the mother both harridan and harlot. Jonathan Brown’s Satan more avuncular than devlish, but, like everyone else, gets the words across. …Second Movement is clearly on the right track.
Opera Triple Bill: Geoff Brown Squat and oblong, the Film Studios in Mercer Street, Covent Garden, used to be a banana warehouse. But the food it stores at the moment is much more exotic. No La Bohème for the young opera company Second Movement. Their new triple bill offers Bohuslav Martinu’s Dadaist frolic The Knife’s Tears (a UK premiere) and the first staging of Benjamin Fleischmann’s Rothschild’s Violin – the Jewish-flavoured opera that Shostakovich completed from the piano score of his student, who was killed in the Second World War. Even Offenbach’s The Two Blind Men can’t be called bread and butter. All glory to Second Movement for their thrust and ambition: so many short operas sulk in the dark, unheard. It’s not a programme, though, exactly brimming with spring delight. Oliver Mears’s stagings present each piece, in different ways, as a dance with death. The Offenbach, rapaciously updated by Michael Flexer, features a hand locating a diamond in a corpse’s least appealing orifice. Centre-stage in the Martinu romp is a hanged man, a bizarre object of love at first sight. Rothschild’s Violin, from Anton Chekhov’s story, avoids coffins – the lead character makes them – but has quite enough of other black stuff: anger, futility, the wife’s dead body. On Wednesday, muffled consonants in the rotund baritone of Jonathan Brown’s coffin-maker helped to make Rothschild gloomier than needed. But this, still, was the evening’s meat: a powerful opera of characters and relationships, with music very Shostakovich-inclined. Mears’s direction squeezed the best from the awkward stage space, and Nicholas Chalmers’s orchestra was always on the ball. Gusto lightened the blackness in the items on either side. If Flexer’s very 21 st-century libretto rubbed jollity from Offenbach’s jape, some joy returned with the music’s fizz. Performance styles were all over the shop in the Martinu, but the singers’ spunk and the score’s diluted jazz chatter and smoochy blues worked enough magic to entertain. Don’t mind my cavils. Second Movement should keep on excavating.
Mozart & Menotti double bill: George Hall Second Movement’s double-bill showed this imaginative young company getting into its stride. Neither opera is seen very often. Gian Carlo Menotti’s 1946 tragedy The Medium ran for 211 performances on Broadway, paired with The Telephone. It’s often written off as a schlocky score to a sordid subject, but there’s no denying the musico-dramatic effectiveness of this post-verismo tale of a fake, alcoholic medium losing her mind as her non-existent spirits start to become real to her. It offers a prime star role for a mezzo who can act, and Hannah Pedley’s vocal and dramatic authority as Baba (alias Madame Flora) was complete. She was ably seconded by Allison Bell as her sexually manipulative daughter Monica and Sean Clayton in the silent role of the poor abused mute, Toby. Bell’s vibrant soprano has clear potential, though it needs more focused pitching. The contemporary setting (we could have been on an inner city housing estate) was vividly realised in Simon Holdsworth’s precisely imagined recreation of Baba’s flat, and the costumes, credited to Holdsworth and Alexie Kharibian, were socially and psychologically spot on. The Medium clearly gripped the audience on this occasion, and the second half was genuinely entertaining, if a bit too long. Michael Flexer’s new libretto for The Impresario, a charming if slender piece, brought Mozart’s operatic satire up to date with a director (Daniel Leatherdale) and producer (Simon Thorpe) auditioning three sopranos for the lead role of the Prime Minister’s wife in a new work exploring contemporary political themes. There were plenty of good jokes, some of them drawing wry laughter from the pros in the house, and the cast certainly knew how to deliver them, but there was just too much dialogue for the amount of music Mozart provided. I’d have cut the third contender for the role, brilliant though Margaret Rapacioli’s impersonation of a vapid celebrity actress/model was. But it was an inventive way of treating the piece, and good fun was had by Jane Harrington as the preposterous Ukrainean prima donna Rayechka Kopinos, Allison Bell as the more laid back though equally manipulative Hermione Easton, and from Sean Clayton’s ditzy tenor, while Hannah Pedley once again gave good value as Rayechka’s wealthy girlfriend. Director Oliver Mears provided two skilful productions, with the reduced orchestra working hard and to good effect under the baton of Nicholas Chalmers.
Mozart & Menotti double bill: Warwick Thompson Second Movement is a young opera company for gifted singers and directors on the cups of their professional careers. The Medium tells the story of a fake clairvoyant, Mrs Flora, who becomes terrified by her own powers. Director Oliver Mears places it in a drab, 1970s council flat and provides a neat contrast between the spiritual hope Mrs Flora offers her clients and the realities of her grubby life. The atmosphere is wonderfully claustrophobic and he’s got a cracking show in his hands, especially with mezzo Hannah Pedley’s visceral, earth performance in the title role. For the second half, play write Michael Flexer has updated and adapted Mozart’s comic bonfire of operatic vanities: rival divas Jane Harrington and Allison Bell manage to sparkle and conductor Nicholas Chalmers keeps things crisp in the pit. Plucky Second Movement deserves a loud bravo.
Mozart & Menotti double bill: Anna Picard Advertisements in opera programmes tend to be for fancy restaurants, high-end holidays, luxury jewellery and private schools. In the programme for Second Movement's Mozart and Menotti double-bill, however, the sole advertisement was for a funeral parlour: not something you want to contemplate on your evening out, perhaps, but highly appropriate in the circumstances. A mordant tale of repressed sexuality, exploited grief and supernatural fakery, Menotti's two-act opera The Medium is unique in having enjoyed both a long run on Broadway and an Oscar-nominated cinema release. Why? From its tonal simplicity to its modest duration, it is an opera for opera-phobes. Menotti's great gift - and handicap - is that his writing for voice is so naturalistic in its rise and fall that when it is sung as well as it was in this production, one half-forgets it is being sung at all. Unfortunately, this means you are free to focus on the text, and like Barber's Vanessa (1958), for which Menotti also wrote the libretto, The Medium (1946) plays like film noir. The role of Baba - bad mother, lush, hysteric, cynic, and fraudulent medium - seems tailor-made for Joan Crawford, and what was intended as an opera of ideas becomes a lurid melodrama. In the intimate space of the Covent Garden Film Studios, director Oliver Mears intensified the trash aesthetic by placing the drama in the early 1970s, turning noir into horror. As Baba, Hannah Pedley was an imposing presence: a convincing drunk, hard-faced, half-ashamed, half-proud of her moral vaccuum. As the duped grieving parents Mr and Mrs Gobineau, Simon Thorpe and Jane Harrington gave fuller and more interesting characterisations than Menotti demanded. As mute Toby, Sean Clayton added pathos. Most arresting, however, was Allison Bell's Monica: a startling portrait of a girl just old enough to use her sexuality as a weapon from a cool, clear, naturally bright soprano. Michael Flexer's reworking of The Impresario - an odd companion piece for the Menotti - was wittily scripted and well-directed but over-long. In-jokes about arts funding, directorial pretensions and singers' neuroses jostled for space with a satirical plot-line of the sort you might hear in sketch-format on Radio 4's The Now Show, an amusingly accurate parody of Ligeti, and a well-observed impersonation of Martine McCutcheon from Margaret Rapacioli. Ha ha, I thought. But show me a prima donna who reads Brecht in her down-time and turns up for rehearsals in a leotard and I'll eat my hat. Mozart's trios - the loveliness of which I had quite forgotten - played second fiddle to the satire. In any young opera company there are teething problems. Conductor Nicholas Chalmers has to learn how to "catch" his singers when they drag behind his beat. Bell needs to temper her ping in a small space, and Rapacioli and Pedley lost control of their vibrato at moments of tension. That said, the playing of the chamber orchestra was stylish and well-drilled in both operas and the acting was excellent. Like Tête á Tête and the conservatoires, Second Movement prove that some of the most interesting opera can be found on the fringe.
Mozart & Menotti double bill: Michael Tanner Second Movement is the name of a three-year-old company, whose main aim is to provide ‘a professional platform for young singers, administrators and practitioners on the cusp of their professional careers”. We were rewarded with excellent performances of two pieces, both of which I could easily do without, but it was, as it invariable is, good to hear and see such fine young singers – though the proportion of those whom I see at the “cusp” that I never see again, and conversely the number of established singers I encounter on the stage of the major opera companies whom I would be happy not to see again, but do, remain a mystery to me. The fits piece was Menotti’s The Medium, which had a long career on Broadway in 1946. The two main characters here are Baba aka Madame Flora, the Medium, and her daughter Monica, who does many of her tricks for her; there is a silent role, brilliantly taken by Sean Clayton (a tenor, who sings in the other piece). And there are three small parts for the Medium’s clients. Allison Bell, the Monica, delivered a scintillating performance. She is an impressive actress, too. But the Baba of Hannah Pedley, though she has fewer vocal challenges to meet, was still more impressive: it’s a part that not only permits but also demands scenery-chewing, and Pedley left no furniture unturned. More than that, so far as the tacky music and plot allow, she created a vivid and disturbing portrait of a woman who finds that her fakery has touched an alarming reality which she can’t control.
I heard the Bernstein I really care for in Second Movement's short run in Hoxton Hall of his theatre piece, Trouble in Tahiti, about a marriage falling apart in 1950s American suburbia - a piece he was working on during his honeymoon. Paul Carey-Jones was terrific as macho Sam, his "there are men" a great showstopper. Dinah's "There is a garden" was just as powerful, movingly sung by Hannah Pedley. The Jazz Trio, a chorus who trill away in close harmony about the joys of suburbia, performed with great style. The reduced orchestra was a bit loud but was expertly conducted by Nicholas Chalmers. Trouble in Tahiti is Bernstein at his best - ironic, touching and very funny.
Trouble in Tahiti: George Hall Bernstein’s early (1952) one-act opera, to his own libretto, is a dark, witty little piece, that explores a rocky marriage in American suburbia in a way that manages to cast doubt on the institution itself, as well as the American dream, all in the space of 45 minutes. A new company called Second Movement staged it here, in a former music hall with limited stage facilities but an excellent acoustic. Their conductor Nic Chalmers delivered a suave, punchy account of the score, in a reduced orchestration. With a few effective props, the designers came up with Sam’s office, Dina’s psychiatrist’s, a lingerie shop and a gym as well as their home. It was an attractive show, ably directed by Oliver Mears, choreographed by Linda Dobell and cleverly lit by James Bartrum. The jazz trio, who comment on and occasionally interrupt the action with their happy go lucky jingles and mindless musical commonplaces, was delivered with style and witt by Jane Harrington, Alastair Merry and Tom Raskin. As the go-getting exec husband, cheerfully sacrificing anything and everyone in his climb to the dizzy heights of senior management, Paul Carey-Jones impressed with his vibrant, focused baritone and his equally focused acting,. Hannah Pedley sang Dinah, a woman half-conscious of her world falling apart around her but trying to lose herself in a world of fantasy. It was a canny, thoughtful portrayal, purposefully sung. The first half of the show consisted of songs by American composers ranging from Copeland and Barber to Gershwin and Cole Porter. Of the three soloists Jane Harringtons’ clear, clean soprano in particular was well worth listening to, but it might be better if Second Movement aspires to a double bill or a full length piece next time. They’re worth looking out for.
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