Is the Young Vic due for a name change? Should it be called the Young Opera Vic soon? I’m beginning to think so. Since re-opening in its splendid refurbished premises last year – with a community opera, Tobias and the Angel – it went on to stage a children’s opera The Enchanted Pig as its (rather sophisticated) Christmas show last year. At an ENO press conference last month, it was announced that ENO would take up residence at the Young Vic in April next year to offer the British premiere of a contemporary European opera Lost Highway, based on the cult 1997 David Lynch film of the same name, as well as a new production of Harrison Birtwistle’s one-act opera Punch and Judy (to be directed by rising young directorial star Daniel Kramer in his operatic debut, though many of his legit productions have been positively operatic already).
And at this week’s Young Vic press conference on Wednesday morning, artistic director David Lan announced that his second season in the new theatre will kick off with another community music theatre piece, an adaptation of the 1997 film La Vie en Rose, while the Christmas slot will be filled once again by opera – albeit radically filtered through a South African, mostly a capella, lens, as Mozart’s The Magic Flute is reinvented as The Magic Flute Impempe Yomlingo, which will play in rep with A Christmas Carol Ikrismas Kherol. No mention was made at the press conference of the ENO residency, as it went beyond the geographical time frame of what David was announcing; so I did.
But when I raised the subject of David’s operatic ambitions for the theatre, which looks like it is becoming an artistic cornerstone for it now, he said he had the same answer he’d given me last time I asked the question at the ENO press conference – to which I replied, yes, but then I didn’t know of these plans, which makes the thought that this was a deliberate policy even more compelling. In fact, David says, he looks for shows that challenge them as a theatre – “things that we don’t quite know how to do” – in his bid, above all, to always aim to create exciting theatre: “How much excitement can we get onto our stage?” is his credo. Distinctions between different types of theatre are, he feels, a distracting irrelevance; it’s all about creating good shows (and of the last season’s big flop, the restoration comedy The Soldier’s Fortune that he himself directed, he quipped early on that they’ve addressed that problem “by not giving that director another job here”).
It’s certainly interesting that London’s operatic provision is being stretched in this way – beyond the annual Almeida Opera summer season, there’s not much small-scale or chamber opera around, and little room, therefore, for new opera writers to test their musical feet or different approaches to production to be offered beyond that of the major two houses. But its definitely a change of direction for the Young Vic, whatever David may say about it simply being part of a desire to do good shows.
Meanwhile, last night saw a very good show at one of the main houses: English National Opera offered its first-ever production of Britten’s haunting final operatic work Death in Venice, written in 1973. Under the starkly poetic direction of Deborah Warner, the opera – for much of its passage, a one-man internal monologue and meditation on his obsessive interest in a young Polish boy – offers a tour-de-force for singer Ian Bostridge. Warner, with her designers that include regular set and lighting collaborators Tom Pye and Jean Kalman, brings darkly textured detail to some gorgeous stage pictures; while in the pit, the ENO’s young new music director Edward Gardner brings a similar precision to the music.
I don't know where mark Shenton has been for the last 10 years, but to say " beyond the annual Almeida Opera summer season, there’s not much small-scale or chamber opera around, and little room, therefore, for new opera writers to test their musical feet or different approaches to production to be offered beyond that of the major two houses" is shockingly ill-informed. As artistic director of Tête à Tête, "probably the best purveyors of contemporary opera in the country, certainly the most hip” (Independent on Sunday) since 1999 we've presented 20 world premières by 15 composers, the majority writing their very first opera. As chair of the Opera and Music Theatre Forum, the UK's umbrella body for opera companies, I've seen dozens more companies presenting new work, including BAC Opera, Madestrange, Opera Circus, the Clod Ensemble, Gyename, Selfmade Music Theatre, not to mention the rest of the 150 thriving small- to middle-scale opera companies producing more conventional work. Whilst I wholeheartedly applaud and welcome news of the Young Vic's new programme, Mark Shenton is hardly setting it in a properly-researched context.
I obviously stand corrected! Opera, of course, isn't my expertise -- I was writing mainly about a perceived change of direction, or a statement of intention, by a theatre that previously wasn't associated with opera, but whose track record I *did* know; but I was obviously wrong to make a generalisation about the state of small and middle-scale opera provision in this country, which I (naively, with hindsight) thought the Young Vic was plugging a gap on.... which was based purely on the little that has obviously got through to me of the rest! Which proves two things: (1) that there's a bit of a PR battle to get that other work "out" there, where even I might notice it! (2) if there is so much of it about already, I wonder just why we need another outlet in the Young Vic in that case, whose brief hitherto was linked to its name, to bring accessible theatre to youthful audiences.
And exactly why can't work which involves musical storytelling be at the centre of a vision "to bring accessible theatre to youthful audiences" ?