The Italian Girl In Algiers
Brunel Tunnel Shaft Rotherhithe
16 June 2015
5 Stars
A breathless London summer evening, the Mayflower pub at hand for a quick pre-show freshener, and a production of Rossini’s Italian Girl in Algiers in the offing: all seemed set fair for a notable but normal Opera Night…but WAIT…this is Pop-Up Opera, always opera with a difference. Your reviewer together with the rest of the audience clambered over a flood wall, through a narrow, dark opening into the ground, and down a sturdy scaffold staircase, only to emerge Alice-like in the huge, brick drum of the Brunels’ tunnel shaft sunk into the ground as long as 1825 as the first (access) phase of the original Rotherhithe Tunnel. It is a tribute to the pre-Victorian engineering of this cylindrical vault that not a drop of condensation or ground water penetrates the layers of London Bond bricks that enclose this cavernous, little known, and – as it turns out – rather wonderful performance space.
We sit in two blocks separated by a central aisle, much used in the performance, and face two costume racks and a props box, which is gradually unpacked during the overture (sprightly playing in amplified piano sound by music director Berrak Dyer). Six singer-actors appear and gradually are introduced through a series of witty captions projected on the back wall of the shaft, a practice that continues at intervals and to amusing, subversive effect throughout the opera. It’s a thrilling natural acoustic, much better than the Roundhouse, its near architectural contemporary, that really ‘sets the wild echoes flying’ especially in the concerted finales when the singers zing their voices around the walls or come among audience on the aisle and staircase. While you certainly need an audience to soak up the boom, the venue deserves a star in its own right and we can only hope that it will be used more often once a more accessible mode of entry is in place.
And so to the opera…..The Italian Girl in Algiers comes from the start of Rossini’s ‘middle period’, if one can sensibly say that of an opera written when the composer was only twenty one. As usual it was written in a ridiculously short period of time to meet an impresario’s deadline (Rossini said he had known 30 Italian opera house directors, all bald as a result of tearing their hair out in anxiety over deadlines). The plot is an orientalised farrago in which pasha Mustafa (Bruno Loxton) tires of his current wife Elvira (Catrin Woodruff), and tries to marry her off to his Italian hostage and servant Lindoro (Oliver Brignall). However, he has summoned help from his former girlfriend, Isabella (Helen Stanley) – the girl of the title – who comes to Algiers with her current partner Taddeo (Oskar McCarthy) in tow. A multitude of intrigues follow, many of them involving Zulma (Amy J Payne) who is the resourceful attendant no Rossini opera can do without.
This is not heavy fare. With a few exceptional points of repose and reflection this is a whirling comedy full of incident, pratfalls and misunderstandings, which, for it to work, has to move at a very fast tempo musically and dramatically. There is an instant sensuous appeal and fizzing brio to Rossini’s music, which allows for long sentimental melodies for the leads, sparky syncopated accompaniments, and finales that accumulate singers and pace with scintillating style and gathering momentum and weight. Rossini is a characteristic Regency figure, and perhaps his music is best understood aesthetically set alongside the world of Brighton Pavilion, a venue where he in fact performed. The seventeen-course meals of wobbly jellies, spectacular frothy sundaes and spicy terrines served in that palace of stylish vanities are a match for the ‘sneezing quintet’, ‘Pappatacci’ farce and other absurd episodes that pass before us over the two acts and hours of the score. However, in one important respect this opera goes beyond Rossini’s usual practice. In the ‘Italian girl’ herself we have a typical defiant heroine from opera seria, singing arias of virtuous defiance and disdain for her enemies. She provides a contrast to the opera buffa stereotypes elsewhere, all the funnier because a lot of her haughty disdain is governed by outrageous self-interest rather than genuine virtue. She is the gelatin that holds the mousse together.
Pop-Up Opera have very wisely chosen not to repeat their successful formula in Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio (reviewed here a few months ago), and instead have wrenched the plot into the Algiers Casino in contemporary Nevada, with more than a nod to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Mustafa is a rat-pack casino owner, out to dump his gangster’s moll on Lindoro, a hopeless gambler. Isabella, here a doughty, four-time United States-Idol finalist, rides to the rescue as a putative replacement diva, alongside a Taddeo, who this time is a dim-witted drifter whom she passes off as her agent. Zulma is the long-suffering stage-manager of the casino’s regular show. But in fact none of this actually matters very much so long as the final result has wit and panache and gives space for the continuous play of high spirits (one of the captions ironically compliments Rossini for his well-known reputation for demonstrating depth of human emotion!). The music and action must spin faster and faster like the roulette wheel in a casino – a projected image that was regularly before our eyes in this production.
This the whole company delivers in spades, and it would really be very unfair to single out any of the performers for elaborate mention when it is an ensemble triumph (and when there are two casts of which I only heard the first). But given the high technical demands of this music of glittering surfaces, it really needs to be said that Helen Stanley was fully equal to the demands of the steepling, vertiginous coloratura that garland her role, and Brignall negotiated most of his cruelly demanding high notes with style and elegance. The acting as always with this company was outstanding, and director James Hurley ensured that the production was always on the move and busy with natural, well-integrated movement that explored the full range of possibilities in the space. The cast were apparently fully relaxed and enjoying themselves, and therefore our enjoyment was all the greater too.
Please do chase down this wonderful, life-affirming production at one of the several intriguing venues that lie ahead on its current tour – you will not regret it, and it will bring unalloyed joy to your summer’s evening.
The Italian Girl in Algiers runs at the Brunel Tunnel Shaft until 6th October 2015
