Music Theatre

THEATRE So back to the search engine. Add Wales to music theatre in the subject box and it Music theatre obligingly comes up with Music Theatre A radical aesthetic Wales, the Cardiff-based company whose work is regarded as the finest in Britain and rather than a form among the very finest anywhere. The company took its cue from the progressive Rian Evans ideals of the English Opera Group (later the English Music Theatre Company) originally formed by Benjamin Britten at Aldeburgh. However, since what Music As the countdown to the opening of the Theatre Wales stages is primarily Wales Millennium Centre gathers pace, contemporary chamber opera, our original Rian Evans laments the lack of a suitable question immediately poses itself once space for the performance of music again. theatre, and suggests how this difficulty Perhaps the reality is that music theatre is might be overcome so that one of Wales’s a radical aesethetic rather than a form. It has most progressive theatre forms can be its roots in the experimental work of the enjoyed and celebrated by a wider 1960s which attempted to shed the audience. perceived excesses of opera. Its defining characteristic is a greater emphasis on the dramatic and the visual rather than on The advent of the Wales Millennium simply musical elements. That emphasis Centre will change our perspective on ought, in theory, only to be further many aspects of what Richard Eyre has enhanced in today’s climate with the new termed lyric theatre, so it is perhaps timely freedom offered by a greater naturalism on to look at the challenge this presents for the one hand and by up-to-the-minute music theatre in particular. But before considering this challenge, it might be as technology on the other. In recent years, the well to try to pin down the genre. Internet influence of the music theatre aesthetic on entries, however, only underline the difficulty mainstream opera has been noticeable, and of doing so with any precision. Typing ‘music Welsh National Opera’s often stated theatre’ into a search engine quickly produces commitment to a heightened dramatic Music Theatre International, the agency approach is a reflection of the fact that, even which represents Miss Saigon, Les Misérables in very traditional opera, it’s no longer and all of Stephen Sondheim. It’s certain that sufficient for singers simply to stand and the likes of these will come to the deliver their arias. We can assume that the Millennium Centre, but it’s not what the Millennium Centre, with its state-of-the-art purists mean by music theatre. It’s significant facilities, will permit WNO to embrace this that, from the outset, the Wales Millennium commitment with a renewed vigour, but for Centre has had to accommodate two sets of Music Theatre Wales the situation is requirements and figures: one set identified different. There’s no place for them in the by the letters WNO and the other by CM, new set-up, where the main auditorium is 102 Cameron Mackintosh. It’s also significant too big and the Centre’s studio too small. that the establishment of a biennial Performances can be programmed in the International Festival of Musical Theatre latter space, but it has no pit for musicians, intended to alternate with the Singer of the and will not suit the company’s present style World competition was an early of work. Given that Music Theatre Wales acknowledgement of the fact that the Wales enjoys associate status at the Royal Opera Millennium Centre would be as much a House, where they perform in Covent musical house as an opera house. Garden’s Linbury Studio, it is both baffling and ironic that Wales’s ‘other’ flagship For McCarthy and MTW’s fellow company will not be at the WMC, but it is founder, Music Director Michael Rafferty, typical of Music Theatre Wales’s inventive it was always a very deliberate choice to approach that they are determined to turn eschew large-scale work and, as McCarthy things round and make the new landscape points out, not for nothing is the company work in the company’s favour. slogan ‘Intimate opera with a big kick’. But ‘It has always been a frustration that the while it was MTW’s brilliant production of one place we’ve had trouble getting the Harrison Birtwhistle’s Punch and Judy – right space to perform is Cardiff, our with all its raw power and immediacy itself home city,’ says Artistic Director Michael a milestone in the history of music McCarthy. ‘And, yes, in some ways, it’s even theatre – which established the company’s more ironic that we won’t fit anywhere into reputation beyond doubt, McCarthy now the Millennium scheme. But we realised wants that characteristically powerful style that our biggest successes of late had been and energy to be channelled into new in the Cheltenham and Buxton Festivals pieces, rather than contemporary classics. playing in Matcham-designed theatres, ‘Our work is not about the where our work fits and sits well. So it overwhelming, indulgent spectacle that is seemed logical to think about Cardiff’s opera, but about operating on a different New Theatre (also Matcham), and when we level of communication with the public, performed our last show, Param Vir’s Ion, requiring a different kind of participation we had a very positive experience there. So which is more like theatre. We invite the as WNO moves out of the New into the audience to be part of the experience from Centre, there’s a logic about our moving the inside, so that it becomes a process of into the New and inviting audiences to gradual engagement rather than telling look at that space afresh.’ them how to feel. One of our fundamentals 103 Music Theatre Wales, Punch and Judy (photograph by Marilyn Kingwill, courtesy Music Theatre Wales) is that we regard the whole score as our text, not just the words of the libretto, and this is where the relationships we develop with the composers are crucial.’ McCarthy and Rafferty’s optimism is further supported by the news that Music Theatre Wales will be getting funding from the Jerwood Charitable Foundation worth £60,000 over the next two years. This will help finance the two current projects, Nigel Osborne’s The Piano Tuner and Lynne Plowman’s House of the Gods, and will also Music Theatre Wales, Gwyneth and the allow the company to appoint two associate Green Knight (photograph by Mojo, courtesy composers, reinforcing Music Theatre Music Theatre Wales) Wales’s commitment to new work. ‘This kind of music needs perfomers of an about tackling new music, but he believes its incredibly high standard, and it’s gratifying power to communicate is intricately bound that we have so many gifted and versatile up with the way that the human voice is Welsh singers,’ says McCarthy. ‘There is used. ‘I’m less concerned with whether a sometimes an implication that music theatre is piece is thought of as music theatre or less demanding a genre than opera but, on the modern opera. Whatever the message or contrary, it is more demanding and requires whatever the music, a composer still needs to real virtuosity vocally as well as dramatic flair. write for a voice in a way that it can still sing For me, it has been particularly instructive to and I believe that as long as the music is be party to discussions currently underway in singable, that is to say manageable by singers, Norway, where a new national opera house is then the whole business of connecting with also moving towards completion. That an audience can produce powerful stuff. The building will also house a smaller space where emotion is there, the drama is there and it’s music theatre and chamber opera will be the voice which expresses it. In Wales the staged, and it’s interesting that the Norwegians power of the voice is something we’ve always are considering opening the smaller space first recognised, and it would be great to think in order to spotlight the more progressive form that composers were going to be given the and to give it a chance to establish itself before opportunity to create music that comes out staging the more traditional work in the main of such a strong tradition.’ auditorium.’ The Welsh composer John Metcalf is not Since it is the intensity of the experience content to accept the parameters of chamber that makes music theatre such a forceful opera or music theatre. He has a profound medium, it may be that, in terms of audience commitment to changing the whole audience response, a parallel should be with experience in order to make it less formalised contemporary cinema rather than and less hierarchical, and to push back the conventional opera. Judging from the boundaries between different forms. To that successes of the past couple of years, there end, his piece Kafka’s Chimp, first produced 104 certainly appears to be a growing appetite for by the Banff Arts Centre in Canada, new opera in England. Welsh bass Gwynne dispenses with a conductor – Metcalf will not Howell sang in Thomas Adès’s opera The license the piece unless this condition is met Tempest, performed recently at Covent – and also requires musicians to be characters Garden to popular and critical acclaim, and in the performance alongside the singers and he would like to think that there will be more dancers. His aim is to achieve the greatest new works produced in the Millennium possible interaction between music, dance, Centre.

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