It’s time for the BOV Opera Festival once again, with Nanette Brimmer and Denise Mulholland directing Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci respectively. Alex Vella Gregory interviews the ladies about the pull of opera and the transition from theatre.
Nanette Brimmer was brought up with opera. At just six years old she could hum along to operatic arias, and had already seen Rigoletto. And yet, although opera has accompanied her all her life, she had never had the chance to direct an opera – until recently, that is.
The characters are not kings or gods. They are ordinary people that an audience can relate to
At 13 years of age, Denise Mulholland walked out of Le Nozze Di Figaro, only to take up singing at 19 and pursue opera professionally for a number of years.
Together, these two ladies will each direct an opera for the BOV Opera Festival. Mulholland will take on the ‘clowns-are-not-so-funny-after-all’ Pagliacci, while Brimmer will direct the ‘if-I-don’t-get-my-man-no-one-will’ Cavalleria Rusticana.
It might sound like an unusual combination, and also rather unorthodox, to divide this famous double-bill between two directors. As it turns out, this is more of a collaborative project, with both directors contributing from their vast experience.
Brimmer is more closely associated with theatre and panto, where the drama is not dependant on the pace of the music. She is keen on keeping each gesture credible within the musical framework.
On the other hand, Mulholland has her roots firmly planted in opera, and she is aware of the technical challenges of singing out your lines. What they both share is a commitment to the story and its characters.
“Without giving too much away,” says Brimmer, “I can say that Denise and I have collaborated to make these two one-act operas with similar themes as contrasting as possible.” Each opera will stand on its own, yet they will complement each other.
In a way, this reflects the operas’ compositional history. Leoncavallo heard the young Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana, and set out to create a similar success. I Pagliacci was an immediate hit, and made Leoncavallo famous. Sadly for both of them, they would never achieve a similar triumph.
Both operas belong to the verismo genre, with its emphasis on stark reality. “The characters are not kings or gods,” says Mulholland. “They are ordinary people that an audience can relate to.” Of course, the more sceptical among you might say that one does not sing when one is fighting with one’s husband, nor when one is drinking, flirting, loving, hating, killing, or getting killed. Well, to those I can only say that you don’t know what you are missing.
Both ladies agree that opera is not a dying form. Although Brimmer does point out that there hasn’t been an operatic hit at par with Verdi or Puccini operas for quite some time, Mulholland is more optimistic. She says that many playwrights, such as Mark Ravenhill, Jake Heggie, Terence McNally and Armando Lanucci, are being commissioned to write new operas.
“Of course opera is still relevant,” she insists. “There is definitely more to it than plump singers screaming on stage. In fact, it hasn’t been plump singers screaming for a really long time!”
Well, thank you Jamie Oliver!
What is most striking about these two directors is their down-to-earth approach to the genre. The operatic world is admittedly full of high-flown rhetoric fanning over-sized egos. Yet both Brimmer and Mulholland offer a grassroots approach, with their focus firmly set on the story.
When I ask them what it is that they dislike most about opera, their answers are disarmingly simple. Mulholland hates singers who are constantly looking for the conductor’s beat during crucial dramatic moments. Brimmer hates audience members who hum along. I must remember to ask the Manoel Theatre box office to put me far from this director when I go to watch!
All this boils down to one very simple ingredient which both share: a genuine love for the genre. True, as Mulholland herself is the first to admit, it did take some time and quite a bit of research for her to be won over, but she does not regret it in the least.
Brimmer was easier to convince, and at the tender age of eight, Tosca was the opera that did it for her.
“I was mesmerised, and to this day, the firing squad scene and Tosca’s subsequent suicidal leap from the ramparts of Castel Sant’Angelo remain my favourite scenes. Uncannily, I learnt in later years that my parents had toyed with the idea of christening me Floria when Iwas born.”
So whether you are an opera lover or not, why not give it a try? Who knows, you might find the opera diva in you, or even consider naming your children Turiddu or Nedda. You might also discover, as many have done before, that a few seconds of song can express that which simple words cannot.