Opera At The Movies is a strange concoction in many ways but a pleasing one that gradually grows in warmth and charm throughout an evening of sublime Hall of Fame musical treats.
Stunning pieces of classical music have long been used in film and television to create deeper emotional involvement, conjuring up feelings of excitement, tension, fear or alarm, ecstatic joy, poignant tenderness or intense sadness. Thanks to football and a certain charismatic Signor Pavorotti, Puccini’s beautiful Nessun Dorma is widely loved and revered by millions worldwide who have never heard of Turandot while, thanks to a certain airline’s advertising, the divine harmonies of The Flower Duet have knocked the socks off vast numbers of people who have never heard of Delibes. These musical gems existed long before that, of course, but no-one knows what musical wonders they’re missing until the songs burst into their own, personal worlds to amaze them.
Philip Blake Jones founded London Festival Opera (LFO) more than thirty years ago and is determined that musical gems like this burst into as many lives as possible. LFO’s distinguished singers from various major British opera companies perform at theatres, festivals and charity events worldwide, entertaining anyone from a queen or passing Prime Minister at 10, Downing St to Chelsea Pensioners or residents at HMP Brixton, as well as reaching thousands of children through their Opera Magic programme. In a day and age when children and adults can choose to view and hear 24/7 only what they know already interests them, spheres of reference grow ever narrower with less and less chance of anyone stumbling upon gems they don’t yet know exist. So LFO’s entertainments take something already familiar and then broaden and deepen the experience of it through top-class, live, intimate singing and spoken commentary.
Yes, to the delight of all, Nessun Dorma is the heart-warming finale, this time arranged for four other singers to occasionally join the tenor, and yes, the fabulous Flower Duet is on the bill, too. Bouts of Puccini’s Brindisi Drinking Song top and tail the show, sung first time by tenor alone, then by all five singers in a jubilant encore, urging in fervent Godfather style that we ‘libiamo, libiamo’. Puccini pops up again for Madame Butterfly’s One Fine Day and again for Tosca’s touching E Lucevan Le Stelle, a song that also accompanied both the Witches of Eastwick and the goings-on of a Mr James Bond in Quantum of Solace.
Dressed ultra-smart in DJ and dickie (unless in Chelsea Pensioner red as a model major general), Philip Blake Jones is MC throughout, reading out snippets about actors, composers, films and operas in an accent so perfectly posh it totally belies and defies the fact that he’s a Yorkshire lad from Keighley who once had relatives working down t’ pits in Donny. Philip comes over in no way as a film enthusiast himself, it must be said, and the clipped, staid introductions to the first pieces tend to evoke thoughts of early, very proper radio or TV announcers. The simple set does come in colour, though, its four tall boards, picturing the columns and tiered boxes of an opera house, lit with coloured light, and the show steadily warms thanks to the expressive singing of mighty fine music from tenor Cameron Rollings, Katherine Blumenthal, Natasha Page and Swedish baritone, Erik Mjones (their fine gowns and smart dickies tweaked in the interval) while audience rapport builds steadily through humour, fun, personal chat and some good old audience participation.
As Erik sings Figaro’s Largo al Factotum from Rossini’s Barber of Seville (and from Mrs Doubtfire), he makes his way along audience rows, giant comb and clippers in hand, offering haircuts. Natasha Page’s Carmen likewise travels the auditorium, this time handing out red roses as she sings the Habenera to various individuals and warns, ‘si je t’aime prends garde a toi’, a song also played in the animation, Up, as a stair-lift slowly, slowly travels a staircase. Things speed up, though, when the Topsy-Turvy world of Gilbert and Sullivan gets in on the act, word banners unfurling for accelerating audience choruses on the subject of a model major general as Philip Blake Jones performs cocked hat capers in soldierly red before swiftly turning into a modern maiden general to flap a fan and sing Three Little Maids with the two ladies, one of whom sings, too, of being a Poor Wand’ring One. Bizet’s caped Toreador stamps across the stage as well, while his Pearl Fishers weave their melodious magic as they did in the films Gallipoli and The Father (with Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman).
The cost and logistics of touring with live orchestral performers making this an impossiblibility, the artists sing to pre-recorded music – which includes a pre-recorded tune-up. This does mean, of course, that the singers must fit their performance to the recording rather than having a conductor shape the orchestra around their individual requirements, and the instrumental sound quality, naturally, lacks full vibrancy. The singers, though, do not.
Other particularly special, widely loved musical treats are on offer, like Offenbach’s Barcarole (Titanic) and Handel’s Onbra mai Fu from Xerxes (Dangerous Liaisons) while Mozart’s high-flying soprano notes ring out as sung by the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute (and in Amadeus), and the ever popular La Donna e Mobile, sung by the philandering Duke of Mantua in Verdi’s Rigoletto, struts its stuff, too, as it did in Rocky Balboa and Family Man. And of course, of course, the haunting, floating charm of Mozart’s duet Voi Che Sapete from The Marriage of Figaro arrives to cast its melodic spell just as it did when it totally enchanted and mesmerised every single Shawshank Prison inmate in Shawshank Redemption. It seems improbable, perhaps, that music even as sublime as this this could totally transfix hardened criminals in real life but, following LFO’s performance at Brixton Prison, Mr Blake Jones assures us it can.
Such sparkling musical gems sung live and intimate are precious indeed.
Eileen Caiger Gray
