REVIEW: Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction), Bloomsbury ✭✭✭✭✭

Photo: Richard Lakos Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction)

Pop-Up Opera, Bloomsbury.

10 March 2015

5 Stars

With so much press attention focused on the large opera companies in London and the rights and wrongs of their funding problems, it is easy to forget just how much exciting and original small-scale opera is taking place under the radar. Just as the larger houses were challenged first by the country-house tradition of independent opera, so now the pop-up phenomenon has emerged to find new ways of presenting and re-imagining old masterpieces for fresh audiences. Opera-in-Space, Merry Opera and – here - Pop-up Opera – are just a few of the companies to present impressive seasons in recent years. However, just as with commercial pop-up markets and catering outlets, it is by no means an easy formula to bring off: convenience, accessibility and novelty are all very well, but unless the basic quality and core integrity of the original product is preserved then the project fails. I am very happy to report that this performance of Mozart’s The Abduction (from the Seraglio) succeeds triumphantly in preserving the necessary delicate balance.

This opera of 1782 was Mozart’s first stage work to enjoy real success outside Vienna. It is a lavish, even superabundant display of Mozart’s prodigious talents: this is after all the opera that provoked Joseph II’s remark: ‘Too many notes, my dear Mozart!’ The orchestral writing is more inventively pictorial and exotic than anything Mozart had attempted before for the stage, and each of the five principals receives a cluster of lengthy, virtuosic arias that test technique and emotional expressivity to the limits. Moreover, at points the composer seems to be dispensing with old forms altogether.

He anticipates Figaro in breaking with the deliberate artifice of Baroque operatic tradition and moving the plot forward in sustained real time, fusing music and action in one exhilarating, pacey, onward rush. Given these qualities it is a shame that it is not performed more often (partly because of the orchestral forces required, and partly perhaps on account of sensitivity towards the orientalising comedic satire of Turkish (and indeed Islamic) culture in general); and this reduced scale production is therefore welcome both in itself and also for the way it makes the audience re-think the work as a whole.

The Abduction is particularly apt for simplification and down-sizing because the plot of the original lightweight Singspiel cannot readily bear the weight of the extremes of emotion imposed on it. It is in essence the story of two couples, with one couple the servants to the other, and where the women are held captive in a harem: amidst many twists and turns there is risk of exploitation by an overseer acting on behalf of a remote and mysterious sultan but also the prospect of rescue/abduction by the menfolk. This is more saucy Carry-On romp than high drama, and yet the music often exploits the plangent, heroic contrasts of opera seria.

The production team of Pop-Up Opera finds a pleasing resolution of this potential aesthetic conflict by selecting a format which updates the comedy and brilliantly relocates the over-the-top, self-dramatising emotionalism in a way that makes sense of the whole. We are transported to the brittle world of social media infatuations and celebrities behaving badly.

So we find ourselves inside not a harem but a boot camp of a spa presided over Pasha Selim (a speaker role wittily transformed into the Big Brother Diary Room) and his libidinous henchman Osmin (Marcin Gesla). Here Konstanze (Eve Daniell) has retreated with her secretary, Blonde, (Emily Phillips) to tone her physique ahead of a meeting with Belmonte (Paul Hopwood), her Spanish online date. However, once inside they cannot leave, and the comic diversions begin, much of them initiated by Pedrillo (Tom Morss), Belmonte’s Sancho Panza, at the expense of Osmin.

Antics all-too-familiar from the frothy world of celebrity game-shows take place: threats of torture and dire punishment re-emerge as over-zealous gym routines; laundry and ‘a little therapeutic ironing’ provide the backdrop for music of delicious attempted seduction and exaggerated despair; the self-conscious operatic artifice of spiked drinks and elaborately planned escapes re-emerge as the new sensationalism of reality TV.

None of this would matter very much if the five singers and piano accompanist were not up the demands of the score. Mozart was stimulated to go beyond himself by the sheer quality of the original group of singers for whom he was writing, and this piece therefore stands or falls on the quality of the key performers. It is important to stress therefore that there were no weak musical links, and the whole cast turned out to be adept actors as well, making full use of a variety of props and the lavishly dressed back-drop of the Bloomsbury branch of Robert Kime Antiques.

It was a pleasure to hear the work delivered in the original German, but with witty stylized English captions offering a summary of the dialogue and plausibly presented on screens that purported to be part of the spa routine and social media exchanges.Accessibility and authenticity were operating in appropriate tandem, as they often do not in opera productions. Musical director Berrak Dyer gave a bravura impersonation of Mozart’s accompaniment and provided just the right balance of forward impetus versus points of repose that this score needs if it is to register its full impact.

To be so close up to the action and to such powerful voices broke down the ‘fourth wall’ in a stimulating and invigorating fashion. Without wanting to burden the light touch of this deft and stylish production with too much interpretation, surely this is the way to bring new audiences into opera, who may currently be deterred by the ticket price and the proscenium arch? It is possible to find a happy medium between truth to the emotional logic of the score on the one hand and an updating which entertains and provokes a modern audience that lacks a knowledge of operatic history and convention. The discipline of stripping a work down to its basics and re-inventing it in numerous very different locations night after night recaptures the spirit of repertory tradition that was the foundation of core value and strength of so much of British Theatre, and gives potential lessons from which the grandest of directors and opera houses might benefit.

So if you find yourself near one of the barns, tunnels, pubs, country houses, boats and other unexpected, intimate venues selected by this intrepid troupe in the coming months, don’t hesitate to spend an evening in their excellent company. It could transform the way you think about opera as an art form!

The Abduction runs until April 25th. For more information visit the Pop Up Opera website.