Stewart Copeland, Anne Dudley and Terry Jones are better known for their work in pop and film than in opera, but for a short time the three come together for an operatic evening care of ROH2’s OperaShots.
In the Linbury Studio, deep in the bowels of the Royal Opera House, OperaShots offers a distinctly contrasting double bill of short new operas: Copeland, former drummer of The Police, has adapted Edgar Allan Poe’s Gothic tale of a murderer gone mad, The Tell-Tale Heart, while Art Of Noise’s Dudley has written the score to accompany a libretto based on Jones’s (best known for Monty Python) satirical story, The Doctor’s Tale.
Of the two pieces, The Doctor’s Tale is the most easily accessible, its broad humour – what’s not funny about dogs howling and patients saying ‘ah’ as part of an operatic score – and welcoming melodies drawing the audience into the story of a doctor banned from practising just because he happens to be a dog.
The discordant opening of The Tell-Tale Heart sets the uncomfortable, nerve-jangling tone for Poe’s murderous tale. Baritone Richard Suart half-sings, half-talks his way through Copeland’s rhythmic, repetitious score, leaping in and out of Soutra Gilmour’s dark, dank set to both narrate and appear in his own tale. Copeland solves the problem of presenting a monologue on stage by including shadowy, half-hidden figures and neighbours’ voices, adding ambiguity about how much is actually being spoken by them and how much lies in the mind of the protagonist who constantly assures the audience he is not mad.
The darkness and blood is washed away the instant Jones/Dudley’s Doctor’s Tale opens on an airier stage. In place of the strict rhythm of Copeland’s opener, we have an opera unafraid to rhyme ‘influenza’ with ‘friends are’. A whole lot lighter than its predecessor, A Doctor’s Tale manages to be endearingly cheeky and silly while still taking a pop at racism. Tenor Darren Abrahams makes the kind of canine carer who would happily be any man’s best friend, while the rest of the cast revel in taking on a multitude of roles, from imprisoned death-row mutts to an unflinching, unlikeable General Medical Council panel.
MA