Opera and Gardens

We're going to Glyndebourne tonight, and last night, to get in the mood, I took the tube out to Holland Park (pictured right), one stop past Notting Hill, to hear Giordano's opera FEDORA performed out in their temporary venue at Holland Park Opera. The British love gardening and they love opera, and what could be better, in these summer months, than to get both at the same time? Holland Park itself is a lovely suburb, not as well-known as its film-star neighbors, and the vast park is full of this kind of garden, that kind of garden, playing fields, and a small quasi-outdoor opera theater. (Only seats about 500, I'd guess; pavillion-type roof which probably makes a lot of noise in the rain.) But they put on an ambitious program of operas each summer, have been doing so for some ten years, and the quality is quickly on the rise.

That said, it still isn't a company competing on a world scale--the real biggies, around here, are English National Opera (the people's opera, where they sing everything in English, mostly with titles); Royal Opera Covent Garden; and, down south outside Brighton, Glyndebourne. But there are truckloads of other fine opera companies everywhere you go around here, many of them doing very exciting work.

I was glad to get a chance to hear FEDORA, which is one of those operas you always read about but which rarely gets done. (Domingo and Freni made the rounds of the big houses doing it some years back.) It's not hard to see why: the plot, based on Sardou (one of the 'well-made play' guys, he also came up with the plot of TOSCA) is more than usually silly. There are a few interesting situations, bristling with more dramatic irony than all of contemporary American media; but at the end, when Fedora kills herself, I had a really hard time figuring out why, or if I should care. (Jane Eaglen once told me: "I simply can't play those parts where the girl goes, 'Oh, my boyfriend left me, I think I'll sip poison out of my ring and die.' I need to play strong women!" Fedora sucks poison out of her ring, obstensibly because she feels guilty that she's inadvertently caused the death of her boyfriend's mother and brother; but she'd never be guilty in a court, and it felt much more like 'okay, it's about time for this opera to end, so...I know! Let's have the soprano commit suicide. That's never been done before!')

That said, there's some attractive music in this piece. I'm a great fan of Giordano's better-known opera ANDREA CHENIER--a guilty pleasure, to be sure, since it, too, is pretty cheap; but it sure is fun to listen to. FEDORA is the kind of opera that stands or falls by star power--if you have a good pair of lovers, with beautiful voices and strong personalities, you can have a really nice evening in the theater. Our Fedora last night was Yvonne Kenney, an Australian who's had a decent career here in London but is getting to be closer to the end of her career than she is to the beginning. She had the personality, but not especially the voice--her top was full of effort and a little wobbly. She's a tall, grand woman who appeared in several amazing dresses, and had no problem commanding the stage. Easier on the ear was her very young tenor, Aldo di Toro, another Australian (originally from Western Australia, it seemed to me) with a really attractive, Alfredo Kraus-type lyric sound. He sings the popular aria "Amor ti vieta" in the second act, but for me the most exciting scene was the love duet that followed, sung entirely over onstage piano accompaniment (orchestra tacet). In this scene he explains why he killed her former fiance--a Russian nobleman who, unbeknownst to her, was only marrying her for her money, and only days before his wedding to Fedora was carrying on an affair with the tenor's wife. Fedora (who'd been trying to kill the tenor as revenge for murdering her fiance) forgives him and hate very quickly turns into love--as it only can in opera! (Don't know why M. Sardou bothered to write this as a play; it absolutely needs music.)

The audience was packed, a decent assortment of well-dressed Londoners, good age range, same demographic more or less as you would see in any of the big London opera houses. I don't see quite as many school groups here as I did in theaters in Germany. All the kids are going to the museums; I spent a nice afternoon at the Tate Britain the other day, and yesterday took a fabulous walking tour around Chelsea, a suburb on the way toward Holland Park. My tour guide, a former elephant-tender at the zoo (good training for dealing with tourists), had been an extra in the great movie SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE.