KING IDOMENEO: Birmingham Opera Company
I saw the free dress rehearsal of King Idomeneo on Sunday which was staged in a former rubber factory.
Thoughts:
Visually impressive. The Maoist motif was a fun take on a story of kingdoms particularly for an opera overlapping with the Beijing Olympics. The prince in a Maoist suit with Italian leather loafers was an amusing snark. The massed choir at the end of the first half where the populace appeared to get the plague and half of them ran off in terror while the other half died mixed in with the audience was impressive and disturbing.
Dust was an issue. At points it was a bit hard to breath. The sculpted loose-earth interior of the warehouse gave a lot of flexibility with staging but they will really need some sort of spraying system to dampen the earth to keep the dirt on the ground instead of in the air. If you go wear shoes that work in loose earth and clothes that you can sit on the ground in (they do provide rugs when needed).
The acoustics were good for the orchestra but problematic at points for the singers. At some points I lost the plot because I either couldn’t hear clearly or the music overwhelmed the singing. I also lost the plot at points because my attention just wandered and i found myself distracted by the contortions of the press photographers and the clicking of the SLRs.
It was an interestingly unconventional setup. Unfortunately, too interesting. The opera was less powerful because being herded around, trying to be out of the way, picking good vantage points and watching the setup and transitions distracted from what I normally find emotionally overwhelming.
Ninety minutes mostly on my feet got to be a bit much. The second half would probably have killed me or at least my bad knee. I hope there was more sitting in the second half. Ultimately, I left because I had a pretty bad headache and three hours exceeds my attention span but overall I’d say it was worthwhile.
Reviews:
Guardian, Times Online Birmingham Post, Metro, BBC
Update: The Guardian has an interview with the Director, Graham Vick. via CiB
Update II: According to wikipedia Graham Vick studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.
This entry was posted on Thursday, August 14th, 2008 at 4:39 pm and is filed under BirminghamUK, Entertainment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
