Fitzwilliam Chamber Opera

Ivan Moody: Fables of La Fontaine; Judith Weir: The Consolation of Scholarship

Thursday 5th May, Fitzwilliam College Auditorium

[rating:4/5]

The Fitzwilliam Chamber Opera are prepared to set themselves challenges. Their choice of program- two difficult modern operas- stretched the abilities of the student performers. Yet thankfully the audience’s hopes were not challenged by a concert that was well-executed and thoughtfully planned.

Ivan Moody set himself a tough task in choosing to base an opera on two of Jean de la Fountaine’s fables (themselves based on the legendary Aesop). The animals are replaced by a quartet of singers (Hannah Partridge, Alice Rose, Stephen Lawrence and Christopher Dollins) reclining about a fire, and a narrator (David Harrap) who appears to mark the start and end of the two tales. The largely sedentry and repetitive nature of the work places the onus on the acting ability of the cast to keep it entertaining.

In that respect, The Fitzwilliam Chamber Opera were captivating. The poses, many of them physically taxing to maintain, were clearly the result of disciplined deliberation, preparation and execution. Their leanings, crawlings and disparate gazes aptly complemented the implied state of inebriation. The singing was excellent, effectively evoking the crudeness and hyperbole that the drama demanded.

The instrumental ensemble, consisting of a string quintet plus harpsichord, was well integrated into the production; like the actors, the players were dressed in waistcoats. Yet they never attained an intensity comparable to the singers. This makes perfect sense in the passages where they serve as a lethargic background, but there were other times when the music could have drawn greater attention to itself.

Despite being spread out across three sides of the stage, Lliam Paterson’s conducting ensured that synchronisation rarely flagged. Accuracy was generally very good though there did not seem to be consensus across the ensemble as to matters of tone: bow strokes and vibrato varied perceptibly between the players.

Whilst the neo-Baroque idiom of the music should not be treated as prescriptive, more could have been done to ensure a consistent interpretation. Whilst the harpsichordist, Francis Knights, was the strongest in this regard, delightfully pacing the broken chords that are so idiomatic to the instrument, the decision to have both violoncellos play the “basso continuo” passages somewhat upset the balance.

Nonetheless, Moody’s opera was engaging, intense, and appropriately funny, and this world première certainly conveyed the spirit of the work compellingly. The economy of size, material, and movement gives it a beautiful elegance and deceptive simplicity; it is precisely such traits that make it so challenging to play.

Whilst the second opera, Judith Weir’s The Consolations of Scholarship, might not be a world première, I suspect it would have been the first time most of the audience had heard it. A touch more serious than the personified animals of the Fables, the plot relates the adventures of “The Avenging Orphan of Chao”, who through shrewd learning discovers the fate of his father, Chao Tun and thwarts the usurper, General Ka’an.

The diegetic structure of the Weir is complicated, with nested stories (narrated in song by Anna Harvey) explaining the orphan’s past. Harvey’s stage presence was arresting from the beginning, and the instances where she stared and pointed directly into the audience were truly chilling. An immense emotional range was achieved by stupendous, unsubtle exaggerations of tone and acting that were completely appropriate to the extreme style of Weir’s writing. If anything, Harvey could have dominated the performance more. As it was, the sheer volume of the instrumental ensemble, and especially the pianist, somewhat drowned out the words to the extent that I had to really concentrate to catch them (the person sitting next to me admitted afterwards that he did not actually understand how the plot concluded).

Yet the Weir is very complex: in texture, rhythm and sheer volume of notes on paper. The physical boundary between singer and other musicians is challengingly unclear: at one point Harvey slapped the conductor on the chest! Although the concealment of mistakes in a complex and dissonant texture is easier, it would be unfair to take such a cynical view on this performance. Most of the more exposed passages were navigated fluently under Paterson’s baton, and the slight co-ordination issues between strings and wind were rare.

This production – the product of immense dedication and hard work (and presumably a lot of rehearsal time) – is imaginative in its pairing of chamber operas, and exemplary in execution. The standard of student performers must surely have had some part in inspiring Weir (a Cambridge graduate) to pen her work in the first place, and it is a testament to the quality of Fitzwilliam Chamber Opera that they are giving a world première.