A scholar manufacturing relishes the subversive vitality of Bizet’s Physician Miracle with appreciable vigour – Seen and Heard Worldwide

United Kingdom Bizet, Physician Miracle: Soloists of the Royal Welsh School of Music and Drama / Michael Pollock (piano). Dora Stoutzker Corridor, Cardiff. 2.7.2024. (GP)

Forged:
Silvio / Pasquin / Dr Miracle – Laurie Standish-Hayes
Lauretta – Chloe Hare-Jones
Veronique – Imogen Rowe
Le podestat de Padaoue – Jonathan Jolly

Manufacturing:
Director – Isabelle Carlean Jones
Musical director – Tom Blunt
Assistant Musical director – Dora Seaton
Designer – Yuejie (Freya) Li
Lighting designer – Zak Clark

Though Bizet’s Le Docteur Miracle has been produced just a few occasions in recent times, it can nonetheless be unfamiliar to many lovers of opera. I shall, subsequently, start with some background data. It was composed in 1856, when Bizet was 18 and finding out on the Paris Conservatoire, in response to a contest organised by Jacques OffeNBAch. 78 individuals initially entered the comPetitors. From these 78, the jury (whose members included Eugène Scribe and Charles Gounod) chosen 12, who have been then invited to submit a setting of a brand new libretto, ready by Ludovic Halévy and Leon Battu and primarily based on a farce of 1775 by Richard Brinley Sheridan – St Patrick’s Day, or The Scheming Lieutenant. The prize was awarded collectively to Bizet and the now largely forgotten Charles Lecocq. Every obtained a financial award, and their two settings of Le Docteur Miracle every obtained 11 performances (with the identical forged) on alternate nights on the Théatre des Bouffes-Parisiens, which OffeNBAch had established. Bizet’s model appears to have been most well-liked by most who heard each. Bizet’s rating clearly exhibits how properly he had studied the comedian idioms of each Rossini and Donizetti and the standard of his melodic invention.

Each Sheridan’s farce and the libretto of Physician Miracle are variations of one of many main archetypes of comedy, wherein the younger outwit and subvert the authority of their elders. This ‘plot’ could be discovered within the work of the Roman dramatist Plautus (c.250-184 BC), which influenced later dramatists equivalent to Shakespeare and Molière. It later underlies quite a lot of of P.G. Wodehouse’s novels. This type of comedy is on the facet of youth and wit, somewhat than age and ‘prudence’. It values the renewal of life by way of love, marriage and intercourse. It needs like to set its personal legal guidelines not merely to be subservient to the constructions (and strictures) of paternal and/or civic authority; it’s no accident that in St Patrick’s Day and Physician Miracle the daddy who opposes and obstructs his daughter’s love must be, respectively, a Justice and a Justice of the Peace.

In Sheridan’s farce a intelligent Irish Lieutenant outwits Justice Credulous (the unsubtle clue is within the identify!) and succeeds in his wooing of the Justice’s daughter Lauretta. The libretto ready by Halévy and Battu dispenses with a few of Sheridan’s characters, however retains the 4 most important ones, these now turn into Captain Silvio/Silvain, the podesta (i.e.) Justice of the Peace of Padua, his spouse Veronique and their daughter Laurette. Within the Dublin-born Sheridan’s farce, it’s vital that the intelligent younger soldier is Irish, whereas his sufferer is English. That is well-discussed in David Clare’s essay ‘‘I Really feel Bould at All Instances’: Irishness in Richard Sheridan’s St Patrick’s Day and Pizzaro’ (Irish Quarterly Overview, 109, No. 4436, 2020/1, pp. 386-399). There isn’t a such overt ‘political’ motif within the libretto, although one may readily be ‘found’ if a manufacturing of the opera have been set, for instance, within the Paris of Might 1968 in opposition to the background of scholar riots and basic unrest.

This scholar manufacturing of Bizet’s one-act opera – sung in an English language model (ready by who?) – captured the work’s spirit of youthful confidence and riot very properly. It managed moments of sentiment and the extra quite a few moments of battle equally properly. There was loads of bodily comedy and a few adroit use of disguise (no extra believable right here than it’s, or must be, in most farces).

Though I can’t declare that I left the theatre believing I had heard a future operatic famous person, the night was very largely passable in musical phrases.

Bizet’s rating is for 4 voices and an offstage ensemble of clarinet, trombone, bass drum and cymbals. Right here the instrumental help for the singers consisted of only a piano, seen on stage. Earlier than the efficiency started, director Isabelle Carlean-Jones got here onstage to announce that ‘sadly our pianist has broken her hand’ and to inform us that the injured pianist would get replaced by Michael Pollock (credited within the programme because the manufacturing’s répétiteur). Pollock, who teaches on the Royal Welsh School of Music and Drama, has served greater than as soon as as an accompanist on the Cardiff Singer of the World Competitors; he has usually labored with Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Sir Bryn Terfel and has made recordings with Rebecca Evans, Nuccia Focile and Anthony Michaels-Moore, amongst others. Given all this, it got here as no shock that he was wonderful all through Dr Miracle, at all times supportive of the younger singers and by no means speeding Bizet’s music even when it was at its most hectic. The temporary programme offered no data as to who had made the piano discount of Bizet’s rating. I bear in mind studying a evaluation of the 2019 Wexford manufacturing of Physician Miracle wherein a piano discount was additionally used. Maybe the identical one was used on this manufacturing?

The 4 soloists all acquitted themselves properly. As Lauretta, Chloe Hare-Jones was convincing each as a strong-willed and petulant teenager and, later, in her character’s extra romantic moments. She has a lovely soprano voice which remains to be on the sunshine facet. I really feel positive that we will hear extra of her, and of her three colleagues. As her mom, Veronique Imogen Rowe had, appropriately in view of the supposed age distinction, a weightier voice with one thing of the mezzo about it. She was a persuasive stage presence, whether or not in her frustration along with her husband’s failure to fulfill her sexual wants or in her consequent flirtation with Silvio when he was disguised because the servant Pasquin (the identify Pasquin was maybe chosen due to the statue in Rome generally known as Pasquin’s Pillar, which is used for posting disrespectful and mocking verses about numerous figures of authority. The final time I used to be in Rome, a number of years in the past, it carried some splendidly libelous strains about then-President Berlusconi).

Laurie Standish-Hayes made expert and resourceful use of what appeared like a really respectable tenor voice and confirmed himself a vigorous comedian actor, who understood learn how to make his viewers snicker. Jonathan Jolly clearly has a promising baritone voice, although the position of the podestat shouldn’t be one wherein it might be exhibited to its greatest impact. Maybe as a result of Bizet discovered the character unsympathetic, he provides him few alternatives to shine vocally. Not solely is the Justice of the Peace a completely detrimental character, a poor husband (it appears) in addition to a poor and domineering father, however in an all-student manufacturing equivalent to this the singer taking the position has the extra drawback that he has to attempt to sound older than Silvio and Lauretta in addition to his absolutely youthful spouse, when in truth all 4 singers will need to have been roughly the identical age. The 4 labored properly collectively within the rhythmically advanced ‘omelette quartet’.

The staging was fluid and fast-paced. Nearly all of the stage was occupied by the inside of the Justice of the Peace’s condo. I discovered the programme notice’s assertion that ‘On this manufacturing, Isabelle Carlean-Jones take us again to Paris in 1961, the place the Mayor of the 18^th arrondissement, Louis Pradel, is radically against his daughter Laurette’s love affair with the younger soldier Silvain’ considerably puzzling. What’s the explicit significance of 1961 and the 18^th arrondissement? Was Louis Pradel an actual mayor of that arrondissement in 1961? The costumes and furnishings we noticed on stage may properly have belonged to 1961. Nonetheless, I stay unclear as to the importance of the 12 months and exact location to an understanding of this manufacturing. I’d be blissful to listen to from anybody who can enlighten me on this matter.

Although I’ve expressed just a few reservations, none of them have been vital sufficient to get in the best way of my pleasure within the opera’s innate vitality and wit, in music and textual content alike. As such, the entire was a delightfully entertaining confection clearly a lot loved by its viewers. This 77-year-old reviewer was delighted to see and listen to youth triumph, in the most effective traditions of comedy.

Glyn Pursglove