The performance on BBC Radio 3 of new opera, Love and Other Demons, recorded with the original cast at Glyndebourne Opera earlier this year, gained a new dimension on radio.
Alison Bell as the Innocent Maria in Glyndebourne Premiere of Love and Other Demons
There was an underlying purity and simplicity to it that the dramatic, visual aspects of the opera hid from view when I saw Love and Other Demons at Glyndebourne.
That doesn’t mean it’s an easy opera to listen to any more than it is to sit through. In fact, it’s challenging on many different levels. My earlier review follows:
Soprano coloratura, Alison Bell’s bravura performance as Sierva María, the misled and tortured heroine of Love and Other Demons is quite extraordinary.
Her top notes remind of Yma Sumac, another particularly unusual singer, whom I remember hearing on the radio as a youngster (Sumac recorded an extraordinarily wide vocal range of more than four octaves.
This opera was a brave new commission, based on the best selling novel by Gabriel García Márquez, whose whimsical yet stubborn characters from the book, Love in the Time of Cholera still haunt me. The production team at Glyndebourne deserves huge credit for having the courage to put it on.
The story goes… ‘One Sunday, in the slave market in the port of Cartagena de Indias, a dog bites a young girl. The girl is Sierva Maria, the daughter of the Marquis, and the dog is rabid.
‘Although Sierva herself seems unhurt, this is a town where reason and superstition are at war. Soon the talk is not of rabies but possession.
Allison Bell as Maria and Marietta Simpson as Dominga de Adviento
‘Sierva finds herself imprisoned in the Convent of St Clare, where Cayetano Delaura, the bishop’s exorcist, comes to drive out her demons. But soon it is Delaura who is possessed by Love - the most terrible demon of all.
‘As the lovers’ obsession grows, so too does the desire of the authorities to purge this sickness from their midst.’
The Glyndebourne season has seen the world premiere of this work by the Hungarian composer of Angels, Peter Eötvös, and the composer thinks it very much a Glyndebourne piece.
“I know the Glyndebourne audience as I have conducted here (The Markropoulos Case/Festival 2001),” he told Edward Kemp, dramaturg for Love and Other Demons.
“There is no physical limit in this novella, everything is possible… Márquez… lies to us from the very beginning! This fantasy world allows me freedom as a composer to concentrate on the music rather than the action.
Maria with the Abbess, Love and Demons, Glyndebourne Opera
This ‘fantastical’ work is Peter Eötvös’ first opera about love; his first opera ‘quasi bel canto’. He says, “It gives each singer the chance to show the beauty of the voice.”
The novel’s central elements – forbidden love, the restrictive hand of religion, imprisonment – certainly belong to the heart of opera repertoire; a frenzied exorcism akin to a butcher’s market marks the finale.
This final scene reminds me of the famous mad scene with Joan Sutherland in Lucia di Lammermoor. I saw this late in her performing career at Sydney Opera House production during the early 80s, conducted by her husband Richard Bonynge. It was one of Sutherland’s last performances before retiring and she didn’t quite soar over the top notes in the way she had in the past. But what dramatic power!
Likewise, with Allison Bell, who did soar over the top notes at the performance I attended at Glyndebourne – an eagle could have ridden on her voice – although her long red hair (soon to adorn the floor) added to the faint illusion that I was in a time warp harking back to a performance by the great Australian singer.
With Love and Other Demons, the madness lies less in the central figure than with the ‘protectors’ of this young girl’s innocence.
When the physician, Abrenuncio can no longer help her, she capitulates to the overtures of the last person she feels she can trust, heinous priest, Father Cayetano Delaura.
Nathan Gunn as Father deLaura and Allison Bell as Maria in Love and Other Demons, Glyndebourne Opera
In the final, exorcism scene, it is clear that everyone but Sierva María has lost their sense of reality.
As I watched, a shudder went down my spine for there are mind terrorists in modern life and, in my opinion, opera is better at amplifying the fine line between human sanity and madness than any other medium.
Nathan Gunn as Father Cayetano Delaura, in Love and Other Demons, Glyndebourne Opera
The music itself incorporates elements of the African, “a style that the Spanish transformed,” according to the composer, “during the 17th century.”
Mysteriously, for I could really define no pressing reason for it, he also divided the orchestra into two halves, “left and right, like stereo speakers.”
“The housekeeper Dominga and the slave women represent this (African-Spanish) style as does Sierva at the beginning,” he said. “The second musical style is my own style for this piece…The third style is for the physician, Abrenuncio, who sings in melisma, a baroque technique.”
Felicity Palmer as Josefa Miranda, the abbess and Jean Rigby, in particular, as Martina Laborde - a definitively insane nun, both gave remarkable performances.
The cast included mezzo-soprano, Marietta Simpson as Dominga de Adviento, the housekeeper and apparently an influential mother-figure for Maria, Robert Brubaker as Don Ygnacio, the Marquis and abstracted father of Maria, John Graham-Hall as Abrenuncio, a doctor without power, and Mats Almgren as Don Toribio, the ambitious Bishop.
Silviu Purcarete was overall Director of Love and Other Demons with Music Director, Vladimir Jurowski as conductor.
Pieter Schoeman led the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Thomas Blunt was Chorus Master for the Glyndebourne Chorus. Cast photos: Mike Hoban, Glyndebourne ‘Between Scenes’: ©vidubo2008
Glyndebourne Opera House is renowned for its Summer Festival and their touring opera company, Glyndebourne on Tour.
The venue is 11 miles east of Brighton and four miles from Lewes. Many people board a coach at Lewes Railway Station.
Between the Scenes at Glyndebourne Opera
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