CHAN 10197 Book Cover.qxd 2/2/07 2:31 pm Page 1 CHAN 10197(2) Jonathan Dove Flight CHAN 10197 BOOK.qxd 2/2/07 2:46 pm Page 2 Jonathan Dove (b. 1959) Flight An opera in three acts Libretto by April De Angelis live recording Refugee.....................................................................................Christopher Robson countertenor Controller ..............................................................................................Claron McFadden soprano Bill .......................................................................................................................Richard Coxon tenor Tina ....................................................................................................................Mary Plazas soprano Older Woman .....................................................................................Nuala Willis mezzo-soprano Stewardess............................................................................................Ann Taylor mezzo-soprano Steward...........................................................................................................Garry Magee baritone Minskman..............................................................................................Steven Page bass-baritone Minskwoman .....................................................................................Anne Mason mezzo-soprano Immigration Officer .................................................................Richard Van Allan bass-baritone Glyndebourne Festival Opera London Philharmonic Orchestra David Parry Jonathan Dove Lebrecht Music Collection 3 CHAN 10197 BOOK.qxd 2/2/07 2:46 pm Page 4 COMPACT DISC ONE Time Page Time Page Act I 13 ‘Look who’s coming!’ 3:05 p. 72 1 ‘Look! Up there’ 4:25 p. 64 Controller, Refugee, Minskwoman, Bill, Tina, Older Woman, Steward, Refugee, Controller Stewardess 2 ‘Darling!’ 2:49 p. 64 14 ‘Gone.’ ‘Time to be gone’ 4:02 p. 73 Bill, Tina, Refugee Refugee, Tina, Controller, Bill, Minskwoman, Older Woman, Steward, 3 ‘Excuse me. Have you any English money?’ 1:10 p. 65 Stewardess Refugee, Bill, Tina 15 ‘Disgusting.’ ‘Record lusting’ 3:20 p. 74 4 ‘Welcome travellers. Thank you for travelling Tri-Star’ 0:55 p. 66 Controller, Bill, Tina, Older Woman, Minskwoman Controller 16 ‘Due to circumstances beyond our control’ 1:47 p. 74 5 ‘Do I look conspicuous?’ 2:27 p. 66 Controller, Refugee Older Woman, Refugee, Controller 6 ‘Welcome. We’re always smiling as you can see’ 3:02 p. 66 Act II Steward, Stewardess, Refugee, Older Woman 17 ‘The storm is getting worse’ 2:30 p. 74 7 ‘Down you go. Scurry down’ 3:04 p. 67 Controller Controller 18 ‘It’s quiet’ 7:00 p. 75 8 ‘That’s us.’ ‘Is that us?’ 3:49 p. 68 Steward, Stewardess, Bill, Tina, Older Woman, Minskwoman Minskman, Minskwoman, Controller, Older Woman 19 ‘I know. We could do the business with our trolleys’ 1:44 p. 77 9 ‘No! I don’t seem able to go’ 3:28 p. 69 Stewardess, Older Woman, Minskwoman, Steward, Tina, Bill Minskwoman, Minskman, Controller, Refugee 20 Orchestral interlude 1:10 p. 78 10 ‘What have I done?’ 2:16 p. 70 21 ‘Fierce night. Jagged light’ 1:34 p. 78 Minskwoman, Steward, Stewardess, Bill, Tina, Older Woman Controller 11 ‘What have I just done? Why couldn’t I go?’ 1:14 p. 71 22 ‘I bought this suitcase in New York’ 5:36 p. 78 Minskwoman Minskwoman, Steward, Stewardess, Bill, Refugee, Older Woman, Tina 12 ‘Excuse me. Have you a hat or a scarf?’ 3:07 p. 71 23 ‘The thing about people is’ 1:08 p. 79 Refugee, Older Woman, Stewardess, Steward, Tina, Bill, Controller Controller TT 64:55 4 5 CHAN 10197 BOOK.qxd 2/2/07 2:46 pm Page 6 COMPACT DISC TWO Time Page Time Page 1 ‘About this stone. Is it true?’ 5:59 p. 79 12 ‘Oh look, he isn’t moving’ 0:42 p. 89 Older Woman, Refugee, Tina, Bill, Minskwoman, Steward, Stewardess, Stewardess, Older Woman, Minskman, Steward Controller 13 ‘Ow!’ ‘What is it?’ 3:06 p. 90 2 ‘A wish for me. I’m wishing for my brother’ 1:33 p. 82 Minskwoman, All Refugee, Bill, Steward 14 ‘It’s so small’ 1:05 p. 90 3 ‘Excuse me, can I trouble you for some advice? 1:49 p. 82 All, Minskwoman Older Woman, Tina, Minskwoman, Stewardess, Bill 15 ‘New, wondrous, nothing so new as you’ 7:14 p. 90 4 ‘What’s this for?’ ‘Let’s see…’ 1:09 p. 83 Refugee, Tina, Stewardess, Older Woman, Controller, Minskwoman, Bill, Steward, Older Woman, Tina, Stewardess, Minskwoman Bill, Minskman 5 ‘He’s lucky’ 1:39 p. 83 16 ‘He’s coming back! Get in the trunk! 2:52 p. 92 Women, Refugee, Older Woman, Controller, Tina, Stewardess, Controller, Refugee, Immigration Officer, Women, Men Minskwoman 17 ‘Surely you can be magnanimous on such a day as this’ 2:11 p. 93 6 ‘You have a stone?’ 1:13 p. 84 Minskman, Minskwoman, Immigration Officer, Tina, Steward, Stewardess Women, Refugee 18 ‘You can’t fool rules’ 1:40 p. 94 7 ‘I believed in miracles’ 3:36 p. 84 Immigration Officer, Older Woman, Bill, Steward, Tina, Refugee, Controller Older Woman, Minskwoman, Stewardess, Tina, Refugee, Controller, 19 ‘Dawn, still darkness…’ 6:13 p. 94 Bill, Steward Refugee 20 ‘But look at me now’ 2:35 p. 94 Act III Refugee, Immigration Officer, Stewardess, Older Woman, Minskwoman, 8 ‘What a dreadful night’ 1:16 p. 86 Minskman Women, Controller 21 ‘…I can’t do much for you…’ 1:11 p. 94 9 ‘A plane is coming!’ 2:08 p. 86 Immigration Officer, Older Woman, Steward, Bill, Tina, Stewardess Controller, Older Woman 22 ‘…Flights to Minsk and places smarter…’ 3:04 p. 95 10 ‘I flew back immediately. I’m not angry’ 2:53 p. 86 Controller, Older Woman, Minskman, Minskwoman, Bill, Tina, Steward, Minskman, Minskwoman, Tina, Bill, Steward Stewardess, Refugee 11 ‘Oh my goodness!’ 4:36 p. 87 23 ‘A frozen man falling like a frozen star’ 4:21 p. 95 Bill, Tina, Steward, Stewardess Refugee, Controller TT 64:17 6 7 CHAN 10197 BOOK.qxd 2/2/07 2:46 pm Page 8 Minskwoman and Tina (Anne Mason and Mary Plazas) Refugee (Christopher Robson) 8 9 CHAN 10197 BOOK.qxd 2/2/07 2:46 pm Page 10 Bill, Tina, Older Woman, Stewardess and Steward (Richard Coxon, Mary Plazas, Nuala Willis, Tina and Bill (Mary Plazas and Richard Coxon) Ann Taylor and Garry Magee) 10 11 CHAN 10197 BOOK.qxd 2/2/07 2:46 pm Page 12 special occasions as the opening of both the Dove has more often than not engaged with Dove: Flight Millennium Dome and the Millennium Bridge. playwrights as his librettists, David Lan, Nick (Well, at least the music worked.) Britten Dear and, here as elsewhere, April De Angelis. Successful new operas are rare birds, which is as ‘a piece that made opera look like a thriving famously wrote that he wanted his music to be Flight is customarily described as a comic nothing new. Think of the hundreds and art form and not an elegant fossil. It’s never ‘useful’, and Dove seems to be following his opera, which it is, despite not being anywhere hundreds of new works of the eighteenth and easy to create accessible art without example. Nothing could have been more so designated. But like Albert Herring it is a nineteenth centuries of which not much has compromising integrity, but Dove and [his ‘useful’ than his enchanting little opera for great deal more than that. You almost feel been heard of since. Successful new comic librettist] De Angelis have succeeded primary schools in East London, where he lives, guilty for having laughed so much when the operas are even rarer nowadays. How many gloriously’. Now Flight is on CD, and not the The Hackney Chronicles (2001). Refugee’s profoundly moving narrative hits you have there been since Britten’s Albert Herring least pleasure of this live performance is Perhaps most significantly of all, as a young in the gut in the final minutes. An airport (1947)? New operas that audiences actually hearing so much audience laughter. man he had worked with City of Birmingham departure lounge is as valid a microcosm of enjoy rather than – be honest! – tolerate as a Flight did not spring from nowhere. Surely Touring Opera (now the Birmingham Opera the human condition as, say, the Almaviva necessary penance before guiltily scurrying off wisely, Dove, who was then nearing forty, had Company), who commissioned reduced household in Figaro. Airports are places of to the next revival of Le nozze di Figaro are served an arduous apprenticeship of his own orchestrations of operas as diverse as La transition, of adventure, of change. At least just as rare. devising before embarking on his first full- Cenerentola, the Ring (in the process reducing three relationships are in a state of flux, and at On all those counts Jonathan Dove’s Flight length, full-scale opera. There were smaller Wagner’s four evenings to two), Janácˇek’s Vixen least two are healed and maybe granted added counts as a rare and heart-warming success. It works, including the appropriately beguiling (which has enjoyed especially wide circulation), depth. was commissioned by Glyndebourne, premiered Siren Song (1994) in one act for Almeida Opera, The Magic Flute and Falstaff. Accumulating such Much in the libretto is nothing if not by the touring wing in 1998 in a witty and and in the same year an opera for the intimate intimate knowledge of masterworks of the past, original, quite apart from the setting. This must spectacular production by Richard Jones, and Batignano Festival in Tuscany, L’Augellino of the sheer mechanics, the nuts and bolts of be the first on-stage childbirth in operatic given at the summer festival the following year. Belverde (The Little Green Bird ) (since followed operas that last, must have been invaluable literature, and aeroplanes take off twice. Yet It was televised by Channel 4, and has since by three more). Smaller still was the ‘operina’ experience, quite apart from acquiring as much there is much about it that is from the been successfully staged across Europe and in Greed (1993), which lasted just six minutes. expertise about orchestration as could be mainstream of operatic tradition. The lay-out of the USA. More significantly, he was greatly gleaned from any number of learned treatises.