Ambitious exercises in women behaving badly

Opera Factory director Sally Sloman is also keen to do local works. Picture / Carolyn Robertson

Opera Factory makes a lot of its "off-Broadway" status. It's had three venues in as many years - all just a few streets away from Newmarket's main drag - the most recent, and most handsome, being in Eden St. This Saturday will see the opening of an enterprising double bill of two short operas by Gian-Carlo Menotti.

Broadway crops up again. The second work, The Medium, is one of a handful of American operas to make it on to the Great White Way; in 1947 it had a season of 221 performances in Broadway's Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

This Saturday, the evening sets off with frothier fare - Menotti's first opera, Amelia Goes to the Ball, written by the 23-year-old composer, just out of university.

Sally Sloman, the formidable force behind Opera Factory, warns that Amelia has been quite a challenge for her young company. "Menotti was a young man and he put everything his tutors taught him into that one score."

Clever it may be, but Amelia is based on the delicious sort of irony you might find in a Maupassant story - the headstrong heroine does indeed get to the ball, not with her husband, or her lover but with an unexpected fourth party. With the able talents of Vanessa Blake as Amelia, Edward Scorgie as the husband, Jack Bourke as the lover and James Ioelu as the fourth party, it promises 50 minutes of bubbly buffa.

The Medium sees the welcome return of Carmel Carroll to New Zealand opera stages after some years living and working in Scotland. Carroll, whose mischievous mezzo last left its mark on NBR New Zealand Opera's La Cenerentola and Falstaff, is enjoying the role of the bogus medium, Madame Flora, a character she describes as "deranged, ambitious, having lived a dreadful life and behaving badly. There's no upside. She has lost and gone vicious."

Carroll talks as a singer when she says "Menotti was clearly writing this music because he loves it. He's not trying to be clever. He's trying to express something."

There are tunes galore in this piece, wrapped around a plot that might have sneaked in from television noir of the period. So tuneful that Nina Simone took the aria Black Swan and recast it as a moody, magnificent ballad.

It's these "old fashioned tunes" that are part of the work's appeal for Carroll. "You're always clear when Menotti's romping through the plot and you always know when he's getting to an aria. It's a nice way to pace yourself. It builds up all frantic, frenetic and passionate and then along comes an aria so you can be calm and work through it all. This makes me feel secure as a singer."

 

There are dangers, however. The mezzo admits that Menotti's opera is often "extremely melodramatic and difficult to play, so over-the-top at times that you have to be careful not to be comic, but ultimately it does work because it's so rich and so unapologetic about itself".

"It's still out there," adds director Sloman. "A few weeks ago I had the thought of setting it in Karangahape Rd because it could happen today. I guarantee that tonight, in South Auckland or Remuera or wherever, someone is getting fooled and the fooler has got problems himself or herself."

With this Summer Festival just days away, Sloman is already looking forward to a busy year ahead, with a Winter Festival that will feature Walton's The Bear and Stravinsky's Mavra, a combination that will be titled Russian Nights.

And, local composers. Sloman is still desperate to do a New Zealand piece. All she wants is "gorgeous, topical, singable and sellable music".

"I'd love to do Philip Norman's Dirty Weekends later in the year round about November in time for the Ellerslie Garden Show. The title would sell it but it's actually about gardeners and compost."

In the meantime, don't miss the chance to go to the ball with the devious Amelia and gasp at the wiles of Madame Flora.

Performance

* What: Menotti Double Bill

* Where and when: Opera Factory, 7 Eden St, Newmarket, Sat Mar 5, 7.30pm, to Mar 13. Check times on (09) 585 1229