Opera! In! Spaaaaaaace!
Apr. 2nd, 2011 02:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pallas_athenaTonight I went to see a new opera that I really enjoyed.
I'm a little biased, because most of the cast and chorus were people I know. Also, I only got a couple hours' sleep last night, so my judgement may be a tad hazy. But Piccard In Space, by Will Gregory of Goldfrapp fame, made me exceedingly happy, and I'm very, very glad I heard it. Here's their publicity spiel:
Good things about this opera:
-- Beautiful music. It's scored for 5 principals, chorus, orchestra and Moog synthesizers, and manages to make it work eerily well. I think the secret of its success is that the Moogs and the orchestral instruments are treated as one ensemble rather than playing against each other, so that they actually achieve synthesis.
-- Very good artists singing and playing said music. The chorus, directed by David Clegg, were especially impressive: a bunch of solo-quality voices singing as a super-tight ensemble. The principals were all quality singing actors, and it showed. In particular, this opera would be much less cohesive without tenor Robin Tritschler's open-hearted performance, which leads the audience through the story like Ariadne's thread through the labyrinth.
-- Geekery. The mainstream reviewers slated this opera, but it wasn't written for them. It's for us: the ones who inhabit the tiny overlap between the Venn diagram fields of Music and Geekiness. The heroes are geeks pushing the physical boundaries of altitude and the metaphysical ones of knowledge. At one point they actually sing, in triumphant unison, "Where no man has gone before". They're watched over by two feuding scientist spirits: countertenor Nick Clapton's superbly disdainful Newton and baritone Leigh Melrose's sex-bomb Einstein. They sing about space, time, light, math and the joy of discovery-- along with the desire not to die horribly in space. Friends, geeks, countrypersons: this is our opera.
-- Playfulness! This is one of this piece's best features. I love a composer who doesn't disappear up his own arse in the name of being Serious. Gregory's score is perhaps a little fragmentary, but the sense of fun makes up for it. Sir Isaac Newton sings weirdified Handelian pastiche; Einstein sings jazzy little numbers about relativity; the chorus sing ominous warnings of death at the slightest provocation; and the Piccard and Kipfer double-act in the capsule is kind of beautifully absurd. Also, at one point the audience are invited to sing the time-dilation equation in unison. THAT is entertainment.
Following on from this newfound scientific knowledge, I have attempted to calculate a formula for operatic awesomeness. It goes:
(Geekery + Opera)Comedy * (Nick Clapton in a frock coat making icily perfect Baroque gestures) / Sexy Einstein = Awesome to the power of WIN.
Piccard in Space will be broadcast on Radio 3 on Wednesday 13 April at 7pm. If you listen, I'd be intrigued to know what you thought of it.
I'm a little biased, because most of the cast and chorus were people I know. Also, I only got a couple hours' sleep last night, so my judgement may be a tad hazy. But Piccard In Space, by Will Gregory of Goldfrapp fame, made me exceedingly happy, and I'm very, very glad I heard it. Here's their publicity spiel:
Will Gregory’s debut opera is a classic adventure about the brilliant physicist, Auguste Piccard. On a mission to prove Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, he takes to the skies with his assistant in an airtight capsule. Travelling to a record-breaking 51,000 feet, they survive being roasted by the sun, toxic balls of mercury and crashing into the Alps. Clearly not a blackboard and chalk type of scientist, Piccard became world front-page news in 1931 and the inspiration for Hergé's cartoon character Professor Calculus in the Adventures of Tintin series.
Good things about this opera:
-- Beautiful music. It's scored for 5 principals, chorus, orchestra and Moog synthesizers, and manages to make it work eerily well. I think the secret of its success is that the Moogs and the orchestral instruments are treated as one ensemble rather than playing against each other, so that they actually achieve synthesis.
-- Very good artists singing and playing said music. The chorus, directed by David Clegg, were especially impressive: a bunch of solo-quality voices singing as a super-tight ensemble. The principals were all quality singing actors, and it showed. In particular, this opera would be much less cohesive without tenor Robin Tritschler's open-hearted performance, which leads the audience through the story like Ariadne's thread through the labyrinth.
-- Geekery. The mainstream reviewers slated this opera, but it wasn't written for them. It's for us: the ones who inhabit the tiny overlap between the Venn diagram fields of Music and Geekiness. The heroes are geeks pushing the physical boundaries of altitude and the metaphysical ones of knowledge. At one point they actually sing, in triumphant unison, "Where no man has gone before". They're watched over by two feuding scientist spirits: countertenor Nick Clapton's superbly disdainful Newton and baritone Leigh Melrose's sex-bomb Einstein. They sing about space, time, light, math and the joy of discovery-- along with the desire not to die horribly in space. Friends, geeks, countrypersons: this is our opera.
-- Playfulness! This is one of this piece's best features. I love a composer who doesn't disappear up his own arse in the name of being Serious. Gregory's score is perhaps a little fragmentary, but the sense of fun makes up for it. Sir Isaac Newton sings weirdified Handelian pastiche; Einstein sings jazzy little numbers about relativity; the chorus sing ominous warnings of death at the slightest provocation; and the Piccard and Kipfer double-act in the capsule is kind of beautifully absurd. Also, at one point the audience are invited to sing the time-dilation equation in unison. THAT is entertainment.
Following on from this newfound scientific knowledge, I have attempted to calculate a formula for operatic awesomeness. It goes:
(Geekery + Opera)Comedy * (Nick Clapton in a frock coat making icily perfect Baroque gestures) / Sexy Einstein = Awesome to the power of WIN.
Piccard in Space will be broadcast on Radio 3 on Wednesday 13 April at 7pm. If you listen, I'd be intrigued to know what you thought of it.
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no subject
on 2011-04-05 09:40 am (UTC)Glad to see Clegg and Clappers on form!
no subject
on 2011-04-05 10:21 am (UTC)