I attended this the other night at the Royal Opera House. Bit of a weird night, if the truth be told. For a start, it was the only event open to the public. The Sitzprobe was happening in the Main Auditorium. And of course, there was an elephant in the room. Well, more precisely, on the main stage, so we didn't get to see it!
The evening was moderated by Sandy Burnett, from the radio, who explained that it had been a slightly strange 24 hours, and in case anybody didn't know, Plácido had cancelled the role of Bajazet. (I suspect that just about everybody did know).
The opening session was delivered by Sarah Lenton, an enthusiastic and captivating speaker. She spoke about the historic background to the work, replete with slides of paintings from the time and pictures from the current production, from its outing in Madrid as captured on DVD. She spoke about the Tamburlaine, or Timur, an actual historic character, and the role of 'the East' including Turkey and Persia in drama and opera of the time.
I wish I had taken notes now because it was a very interesting lecture, and I can't possibly remember enough of it. She highlighted how this work marked a development in opera seria and she focused particularly on how the plot develops in a series of twos; how, unusually for its time, each solo piece is actually sung to someone rather than merely being a soliloquy to illustrate their thinking. It was also unusual in that it almost contains an on-stage death - in actual fact Bajazet disappears into a black hole, so that's a bit ambiguous.
Graham Vick, the Director, was next to speak. I have to confess that I didn't find him particularly interesting. He was followed by Ron Howell, the choreographer, who described quite vividly the thinking behind his contribution. He did not have a set idea of how any character should move, and developed the movements with the singers as they arrived for rehearsals - later in the Round Table, Christine Schäfer who plays Asteria, explained how she had been to rehearsals in big shoes and was finding it difficult to remember to be dainty - as the choreographer put it, to move fast but with small steps.
Ron's talk was interrupted by the arrival of some of the singers - Kurt Streit, Christianne Stotijn and Christine Schäfer - from a break in the Stitzprobe. I was rather amused by Kurt; he did seem very defensive, I don't know if maybe he thought he would get a hostile reception. He explained that he had been contracted as cover and scheduled to sing a couple of performances, and he seemed almost too adamant in his insistence that he hadn't poisoned Plácido and sent him only good wishes. I do hope people realise, that's showbiz, the show must go on, and so on!
The singers couldn't stay for long, because of the rehearsal going on beneath us, and, to be honest, they didn't have much of great significance to say, but they were warm and nice and so on, which is a good thing.
We finished with a demonstration by Rita de Letterlis, the Language Coach, David Syrus the cover conductor, and Gillian Webster, cover for Irene, of how a short phrase of recitative is built up. It's partly about getting the right phonetic sound of the language but far more importantly about the right cadences and emphasis, and then the continuo, from a very basic score, working out how to imbue that with meaning, bearing in mind that it is during the four minutes of recitative rather than the 7 minutes of aria that the drama moves on.
All in all an interesting and reasonably informative evening. This is only the third I have been to, because I so often forget about booking these 'fringe' events in my panic to book actual rehearsal tickets. I did attend one that was held in the Linbury, which meant that far more people could attend when held in the Clore Upstairs. I think maybe I was also a bit reluctant to attend knowing that I don't especially like formal lectures peripheral to main events, but I wouldn't consider them to be overly intellectual, and the tone always seem to be generally light-hearted.
