The Rake's Progress - Stravinsky
Don't let the name Opera Theatre Company deceive you. OTC may be a provider of small-scale opera, but this new Rake's Progress is a Hibernian Group-sponsored co-production with RTE, which will take Stravinsky's operatic masterpiece on a seven-venue tour with the RTE Concert Orchestra under Richard Farnes and with members of the National Chamber Choir as the chorus.
Stravinsky's Rake is a work chock-a-block with artifice, as if the commonplaces of 18th century opera were poured into a special Stravinskian mould that allows them to exhibit a magical dual nature.
Director James Conway and designer Joe Vanek have responded to the formality and ritual of the work with formality and ritual of their own.
Vanek's light set, with its layered, squared walls, has simplicity and elegance. Two moveable, foldable, playpenlike dividers (set and re-set by the chorus) are used to present a series of mostly symmetrical tableaux.
Conway's direction has a strong sense of reserve, sometimes feeling a bit too static, but livening up after the interval, which is placed before Tom's breakfast of discontent with his bearded wife.
On Thursday's opening night in Dundalk, both Iain Paton's Tom and Louise Walsh's Anne took some time to settle down, with neither of them showing their best in surroundings of rural idyll but rather in their more trying environment of London.
Sam McElroy's Nick Shadow is a more consistent presence, but obsequious to a fault. Frances McCafferty doubles up as Mother Goose and the hirsute Baba the Turk, sharp, pointed and characterful in both guises. The chorus works and sings smoothly, even in the over-the-top miming that Conway has conceived for the Bedlam scene.
James Farnes conducts with thrust and a nice ear for Stravinskian texture. With the orchestra on the floor in the absence of a pit, there were problems of balance to which he sometimes seemed heedless - Stravinsky has not always made the words easy to catch in the first place. But the abiding musical impression he made was of lively responsiveness. In short, this is one of the finest productions that OTC has yet mounted.
