Wilton’s Music Hall, 2 February 2012
There were times when the intensity of this evening given by Lontano at Wilton’s was almost too close for comfort but there is something about the intimacy of the building which encourages an unusually intense rapport between artist and performer.
The placement of the opening Trio by Libby Larsen was disconcerting. The flute, harp and violin sat under the balcony on the right hand side and were thus invisible to most of the audience on the unraised floor. The four movements develop with a post-Debussyan impressionistic wash which is often melancholic but charms the ear throughout. In the final movement the harpist is required to thrash her instrument to the point where I was wondering how it remained in tune.
Annea Lockwood’s Monkey Trips was simply confusing, and not even pleasantly so. Part improvised by six instrumentalists, it claimed to be based on the Tibetan Buddhist metaphor of the six states of being. I regret I could not follow this. I was only aware of highly professional instrumentalists wandering around the stage making fools of themselves. When they went of laughing loudly I wondered if it was us they were laughing at for sitting through it in silence.
The main work of the evening was the first performance of Nicola LeFanu’s chamber opera Dream Hunter. The piece suited the venue with its intimate relationships slowly unfolding before us. Catarina is a Dream Hunter, slowly realising she has her mother’s powers to see into the future. In this case she sees the death of her sister’s feckless fiancé.
The character’s are rapidly sketched for us without resorting to stereotypes, and John Fuller’s libretto is clear and clean, allowing us to follow not only the action but the nuances of character development. This is particularly important for Charmian Bedford’s Catarina who grows up before us without any uncomfortable changes of mannerisms. Her sister Angela is far more practical in Caryl Hughes rendition, being the only one actually involved in work during the evening.
Brian Smith Walters’ Sampiero is well sung and creates for us a nasty, self-centred individual for whom we have little sympathy. His death, inevitable given the line of the narrative, comes with no emotional impact. It is little more than the earlier death of the wild boar. This is remarkably well handled both in the music and text.
Jeremy Huw Williams’ as the girls’ father seems to come from another place altogether with his bluff acquisitiveness and heavy drinking.
Odaline de la Martinez has worked with Nicola LeFanu many times before and it showed in the careful control she brought to the balance between instrumentalists and singers, and to the easy flow of the musical line throughout.
If the production under Carmen Jakobi did little to create a sense of the 19th century Corsican setting, it did use the space well and provided just enough naturalism to convince us of the reality of both the characters and events.
The score of Dream Hunter is available from Edition Peters.
BH