Die Verschworenen (The Conspirators)
Press reviews
full of warmth, personality and camaderie… a joy Opera
The year 1823 was a torrid one for Schubert. Syphillis was taking hold of the bones in his body and the discomfort was immense. A pain in his left arm forced him (temporarily) to give up the piano, and his near-month-long stay in hospital in June most likely included a course of mercury treatment that couldn’t have been anything but excruciating. He spent most of the year musing, with increasing bitterness, on the cruel consequences of sexual relations, beginning with his final Singspiel, Die Verschworenen (The Conspirators), a light-hearted piece about the impossibility of abstinence.
The work is loosely based on Aristophanes play Lysistrata, a battle of the sexes. A city is at war; the women are in revolt. The females won’t make love until the males make peace and, in the Greek original, the play ends in feminist triumph. But in Die Verschworenen the belligerant men give up their arms only after lightly humiliating their wives. Was Schubert, perhaps, trying to settle some scores?
Die Verschworenen is widely regarded as Schubert’s best stab at the operatic form, easily the most dramatically viable and musically consistent of his 15 attempts, and it became hugely popular when it was finally staged in 1861, 33 years after the composer’s death. It’s attractions are simple: they include a handsome overture, at least two very decent arias, a handy duet and several pretty choral interjections. Yet the simplicity is deceptive, and for Bampton Classical Opera to turn to it for its yearly educational venture was brave.
The result – a collaboration with a London girls’ school, Queen’s College – was intermittently scrappy and confused, yet still also a joy. Few of the period opera companies, who spend so much time and effort trying to recover the original feel of a work through elaborate academic digging, come close to conjuring up the atmosphere of authenticity of these performances. Schubert and his friends would surely have felt at home with Bampton’s small production (directed by Jeremy Gray) and tiny orchestra (conducted by Gilly French), so full of warmth, personality and camaderie, all charmingly fraying at the edges.
The young, raw voices were the highlight. As the programme notes pointed out, Anna Gottleib was only 12 when she sang Barbarina at the premiere of Mozart’s Figaro, and it was a 13-year old, Ella Clayton, who stepped in when her classmate came down with a bug. She sang the lead role of Isella with a clarity and confidence that was truly astonishing. But the finest aria – the romance for Helene, a winsome newly-wed – was sung by the finest of the young singers, Alexandra Soiza, who performed with such a natural grace and naïve intensity that my only recording of the sung – by an older, fuller Elly Ameling – pales in comparison.
Igor Toronyi-Lalic
…delightfully entertaining, remarkably confident and outstandingly assured…
Opera Today, 24 March 2009
Schubert was desperate to be an opera composer — or so one might surmise from the many (at least 18) attempts he made to make a name for himself as a man of the theatre.
Given that each Schubert Lied is in many ways a ‘mini-opera’ — tightly dramatic, conveying character, situation and a gamut of emotions with immediacy and power, the ‘meaning’ expertly communicated through an intense interaction of words and music — one might have expected him to have been more successful. Unfortunately, while he understood perfectly the musico-dramatic conventions of Mozart and his contemporaries, he failed to find his Da Ponte … and repeatedly applied his musical talents to undeserving material.
However, with ‘The Conspirators’ — his sixth and final effort in Singspiel — Schubert found some posthumous success; written in 1823, it was only performed privately during his lifetime, but the public staging in 1861 was well-received and the work became a popular success. One can imagine that its wit and parody were instantly appealing to the admiring Arthur Sullivan who, in the autumn of 1867, travelled to Vienna, returning with a treasure-trove of rescued Schubert scores.
Modelled on Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, Schubert’s libretto, written by Ignaz Franz Castelli, presents a tale of domestic discord and sparring spouses. The original play is a comic account of one woman’s mission to end The Peloponnesian War: Lysistrata convinces the women of Athens and Sparta to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands as a means of forcing the men to forgo warmongering, a peace strategy that ironically inflames the battle between the sexes. Castelli updated the action - a band of Crusaders, commanded by Baron Herbert von Ludenstein, are dissuaded from continually waging war by their wives, led by the Baroness — and removed some of Aristophanes’ more explicit obscenities! This was not enough to prevent trouble with the censors, however; for somewhat obscure political reasons, they balked at the title and insisted on having the opera renamed Der Häusliche Krieg (The Domestic War). It seems Schubert’s was out of luck once again …
Sadly, in this domestic tussle, the women do not prevail; but, whatever their own feminist principles, this did not prevent the girls of Queen’s College London from presenting a delightfully entertaining, remarkably confident and outstandingly assured performance of this unjustly neglected opera.
Bampton Classical Opera has an admirable history of devising challenging educational projects which enable young singers to work with professional musicians, thereby encouraging them to aspire to, and attain, the highest standards. In this shrewdly cast production, the young soloists proved an equal match for the two professional singers, tenor Tom Raskin and baritone Edmund Connolly, who supported and encouraged the young performers sensitively throughout. Indeed, ‘The Conspirators’ seems ideally suited to young, light voices, with its sequence of lyrical solos and duets demanding not virtuosity but clarity and precision, interspersed with lively, inventive ensembles — many of which had been deftly arranged and reallocated to allow members of the chorus to step briefly into the limelight.
After the Singspiel style, the dramatic action is largely conveyed spoken dialogue. Rightly doubtful that the witticisms of the 1823 text would still pack a punch, Gilly French and Jeremy Gray also revised the text, providing a new English translation, brisk and uncluttered, which struck an effective balance between detail and dramatic momentum. Even the literal silencing, by a severe throat infection, of one of the leading ladies could not stall the show: Hannah Burns read the dialogue from the wings with fluency and naturalness, while Katya Farkas’ graceful gestures and eloquent movement aptly expressed Isella’s coyness and cunning. In the opening duet, Isella’s lines were performed by thirteen-year-old Ella Clayton who, having learned the part at extremely short notice, displayed a confidence and talent far beyond her years.
All soloists showed themselves capable of projecting a range of musical emotions. Alice Sharman, remarkably convincing as Isella’s lover, Udolin, relished the occasion and was inspired to reach the peak of her performance in her ensembles with the male professionals. Alexandra Soiza communicated both Helene’s misery and her resolution in her beautiful opening aria, in which she laments the prolongued absence of her husband, Astolf. And, as the bossy Baroness, Theodora Hand delivered a consummate musical and dramatic performance which suggested that her operatic ambitions may well be fulfilled in years to come.
Perhaps the highlight of this opera is Schubert’s ensemble writing: given the opera’s clear delineation of the sexes, he shows a genius for exchange, for phrases that call across a musical space and are answered in kind. This production made the most of such opportunities, exploiting the small stage effectively and utilising the whole performance venue to take advantage of the antiphonal and imitative writing. Indeed, the staging was extraordinarily inventive. The restricted space and budget were no hindrance to the imagination of director Jeremy Gray: a combination of neat motifs and swift gestures produced the deft visual and verbal wit which has come to characterise Bampton Classical Opera’s unfussy, sharp approach.
The chorus also included members of the College staff. And, throughout there was a sense, not just of ambition and aspiration, but of genuine enjoyment and fun — a joy which was shared and conveyed by the small accompanying ensemble under the assured baton of Gilly French. A delightful evening.
Claire Seymour
What the audience said
…we endorse everything that Jeremy has said. He has done a magnificent job in staging this piece, and Gilly got a wonderful performance out of the band. The professional singers were excellent and the girls were really good. Without in any way seeking to diminish the achievement of everyone involved tonight, I would just say that, for me, one of the great joys of the evening was discovering the music, which was ravishing and unexpectedly jaunty at times.
I just want to say I am glad that I heard about this event from the Bampton Classical Opera newsletter, because it was really good, and interesting. And Alexandra Soiza had a very impressive voice!
