Sam Brown's production of Gerald Barry's The Importance of Being Earnest at the Theatre National de Lorraine, Nancy |
Sam Brown, who directs the Rossini opera, is a young British director who has been making something of a name for himself on the continent where recent productions have included Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady at the Badisches Staatstheater, Karlsruhe, Hair at the Staatstheater, Darmstadt, Donizetti's La Favorite at Oper Graz in Austria, Rossini's La Cenerentola at the Luzerner Theater, Switzerland, and Bernstein's Candide and Gerald Barry's The Importance of Being Earnest at the Opera National de Lorraine in Nancy. But The Barber of Seville will only be his third UK production; he directed Wolfgang Rihm's Jakob Lenz with English National Opera in 2012 and Stephen Shulman's The Water Palace at Tete a Tete this summer. I met up with Sam to talk about his new production and what he has been up to on the continent.
Sam Brown ©Jochen Klenk |
With the three operas in the WNO season sharing the same set, I was curious how the logistics of directing The Barber of Seville would work for Sam. He explained that the set is inspired by a production of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra which David Pountney and Ralph Koltai did some time ago. It is not so much a set as a system of moving panels of scenery around and Sam assured me that the result will be abstract and sculptural and to contrast with this he has requested extreme, cartoonish costumes.
Doing the three operas together is intriguing but they form significant musical contrasts. For Sam the concept works because he sees it as Figaro’s story; though the Count and Countess go through all three operas they are not central. In an ideal world Sam would use the same singers throughout but having the same singer are Rosina and the Countess would be difficult, and the rehearsal schedule would be a nightmare. As it is, The Marriage of Figaro and Figaro Gets a Divorce have the substantially the same cast so the rehearsals have to be carefully scheduled.
I comment to Sam that The Barber of Seville seems a long way from the serious Jakob Lenz, but his response is to grin and say that he loves comedy. He has become known for directing operetta, as well as musical theatre, and he has recently done Rossini’s La Cenerentola in Karlsruhe. He has come to realise that comedy is one of the things he is best at. He says he would often rather do a comedy than a serious opera, and that there is something satisfying about making people laugh. When I add that doing Rossini’s comedies requires precision, Sam’s response is that all comedy requires precision and that all the details have to be crisp. He cites a recent production of his which was huge success at its premiere, but when it was revived (without his participation) it did not do as well simply because the revival was not precise enough. Working on a comedy has to be very much like creating a well oiled machine.
Sam’s background was originally in spoken theatre and I was interested in how he saw the differences between playing comic plays and comic operas. For Sam, in a comic opera the comedy is in the music and the timing is dictated by the composer whereas in a play you have to manufacture the timing as you go along. But he adds that when he is rehearsing recitative in opera he is trying to find the correct timing also, and if it works you can get a lot of laughs from recitative. And we both agree that we have been to performances of The Barber of Seville where there were no laughs.
Inevitably with a touring production, the ethos behind the production of The Barber of Seville is pragmatic rather than striving for historical authenticity. Rosina will be played by soprano Claire Booth but Sam assures me that she will be singing in the original keys. And the recitative will be accompanied by a harpsichord (rather than a fortepiano), simply because one will be needed for The Marriage of Figaro.
Handel's Alcina at the Staatstheater, Cottbus directed by Sam Brown |
Sam also enjoys directing 20th century and contemporary opera partly because he feels that the texts are better, with music and text having the same parity unlike in 19th century opera. It is for this reason, Sam thinks, that directors like doing more modern opera and he cites it as one of his great pleasures. He directed first staged performances of Gerald Barry’s The Importance of Being Earnest in Nancy (the opera was given the same year in Nancy, Belfast and at the Royal Opera House but all three were different productions). Sam sees it as is one of the first genuinely comic operas to be written recently. Not only does it have a good text, based on Oscar Wilde’s play but Barry’s use of the text is clever and witty, though the piece is not as deep and dark as Barry’s previous opera The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit which Sam directed in Karlsruhe in 2013.
Recent work has included directing Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady also in Karlsruhe. This is a piece which Sam describes as long and difficult, especially as it has such a substantial book. In Karlsruhe it was being given in German and Sam was very pleased with the result. It was mostly performed by opera singers, which provides a number of challenges. So that, for instance, the singer playing Dolittle not only had to master the Berlin accent which is used to replace the Cockney, but he had to master the musical theatre style of the part. Sam directs in a mixture of English and German, using German with those singers who have no English and also with the chorus. This means a lot of flipping about between the two languages which he says is good for his mental agility. A week before the Karlsruhe premiere of My Fair Lady, the theatre did an avant premiere introduction to the production and Sam was pleased that he did his entire presentation in German.
Rossini's La Cenerentola at the Luzerner Theater directed by Sam Brown |
Whilst Sam might exercise his fertile imagination in an older opera, he feels that with a new piece the director has a responsibility to the audience. They are experiencing the words and music for the first time and it is important a director presents this as cleanly as possible. It is the director’s responsibility to interpret the work, drawing out themes and making a presentation of it as a work of art. This clarity need not imply naturalism, his production of The Importance of Being Earnest took place on a giant cake-stand, but he feels that this was rightly illustrative.
Wolfgang Rihm's Jakob Lenz at English National Opera directed by Sam Brown |
I bring up the subject of the highly choreographed nature of many production of Rossini’s comic operas, and he quotes Richard Jones saying ‘it is all choreography’. For Sam, any production involving a chorus has to have choreography of a sort and one of the things he finds fascinating is the contrasts between chorus members doing things individually and doing things in unison. He enjoys working with choruses full of strong individual personalities and thinks that this particularly describes those in the UK. Even scenes of great naturalism need choreographing, and the ability to animate a bit group of people is not easy, and the great directors of opera are the ones that can really shape things.
A discussion about the difference between UK and German choruses leads us to a discussion of the more general differences between opera in the UK and Germany. Sam sees that the difference is in how the work is made. Most German opera is produced by state theatres alongside drama and dance. The work is presented in repertory with many artists on contract. This combination of an ensemble of singers producing work in repertory is very different from the stagione system in the UK. Sam thinks that it is better for the audience, he points out that Leeds gets around 6 weeks of opera per year whereas in Germany some opera is presented every week. But German productions have to be made like a production line whereas in the UK by concentrating on a single production at a time makes things far better for the director.
Sam Brown |
Sam started out working in spoken theatre. Working at the West Yorkshire Playhouse he was invited to become a staff director at Opera North. He had no previous experience of opera and loved it, he describes himself as gorging on it and he still listens to a lot of opera. His opera education is very much based on the operas he has been commissioned to work on, so he is still making discoveries, and mentions seeing the recent production of Gluck’s Orphee et Eurydice at Covent Garden.
Looking ahead he is writing a new opera with Elena Langer entitled Trotsky and Kahlo, about Trotsky’s exile in Mexico and his affair with Frida Kahlo, and his assassination. One of the appeals of the story are that the characters are all operatic, with the highly jealous Diego Rivera being described as wielding a pistol like an exclamation point. It will be written for six singers and chorus, with the male chorus being off stage and often representing the voice of Stalin chasing Trotsky. There are plans for a production in the UK, but the exact timing will depend on funding.
When I ask him what his desert island production would be he says he would love to do a Russian opera, because for him the music and the text in these pieces go hand in hand whereas even in the great Italian operas there are moments when this is not true. He thinks that this arose because of the strength of Russian theatre and literature so that the composers took the text as primary. But directing such an opera, Sam feels that it needs to be performed in the audience’s native language (English in the UK, German in Germany), and that there is nothing to compare to the communication possible from such an experience. Added to which Sam would find it difficult to direct and opera in a language that he did not speak.
Bernstein's Candide at the Opera National de Lorraine, Nancy directed by Sam Brown |
Sam seems to give so much thought to the wider issues of presenting opera and developing audiences, that it is no surprise to find that running his own company is something which appeals to him. He finds that coming into a company as a guest director and then departing again is not completely satisfying and he would like to represent the art form fully and so directing a company is something he would like to aim for.
Gerald Barry's The Importance of Being Earnest at the Theatre National de Lorraine, Nancy directed by Sam Brown |
His final point is to return to the importance of the artistic director, he cites Nicholas Payne and David Pountney as exemplars and goes on to mention Barrie Kosky’s regime at the Komischer Oper in Berlin. Six years ago, before Kosky took over, the house was often empty but now there are queues round the block. Kosky’s regime has a clear sense of the opera’s brand and made it fashionable and popular, and this in a city which as one more opera house than London and far fewer people.
Sam Brown's production of Rossini's The Barber of Seville at Welsh National Opera opens on 13 February 2016 at the Wales Millennium Centre, conducted by James Southall, with Nicholas Lester, Claire Booth, Nico Darmanin, Andrew Shore and Richard Wiegold. Also in the same season, Tobias Richter's production of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro conducted by Lothar Koenigs with David Stout, Anna Devin, Mark Stone, Elizabeth Watts, and Naomi O'Connell (18 February 2016), and David Poutney's production of Elena Langer's Figaro Gets a Divorce conducted by Justin Brown, with David Stout, Marie Arnet, Mark Stone, Elizabeth Watts, Naomi O'Connell, and Andrew Watts (21 February 2016).
Elsewhere on this blog:
- Intelligent programming< The Sixteen at Christmas - Concert review
- Brahms & Bruckner: Tenebrae & Nigel Short - CD review
- Shared experience: Bach's Christmas Oratorio from Solomon's Knot - concert review
- Superb musical tour: Jordi Savall & Hesperion XXI - concert review
- The Marriage of England and Spain: Chapelle du Roi - Concert review
- Heroic undertaking: Premiered recording of Weinberg's The Idiot - CD review
- Sheer Magic: Elina Garanca makes her Wigmore Hall debut with Roger Vignoles - concert review
- Through other eyes: Zender's reimagining of Schubert's Winterreise at Spitalfields - concert review
- Acoustic and electronic: Alastair Penman's Electric Dawn - CD review
- Alchemy: Meridian Arts Ensemble - CD review
- Enduring appeal: Stanford choral music from Winchester College - CD review
- Fresh indeed! Bastard Assignments Fresh and Clean - concert review
- Home
No comments:
Post a Comment