That the composer Francis Poulenc was devoutly Catholic is signalled by his output of choral works so fervent they force you to your knees: a heartfelt if slightly blowsy Stabat Mater, an exuberant Gloria, and a grand opera about martyred nuns. These all resulted from a mystical experience he apparently received at the shrine of the Black Virgin in Rocamadour, south-western France.
But he was also mischievous, a bon viveur, leading a riotously gay (in every sense of the word) life among the artistic elite of mid-20th-century Paris. And nothing proclaims that side of him so decisively as his opera Les Mamelles de Tirésias which has been playing at Glyndebourne.
Mamelles defeats attempts at explanation. It’s a nonsense piece, composed during World War II but based on a 1917 play by Guillaume Apollinaire that was one of the very first things to attract the epithet “surreal” (a term associated these days with the visual arts but first applied to literary ones). Unfolding like a music-hall romp, it features a woman who changes gender (like the Greek mythical figure of Tiresias) leaving her husband to make babies by himself, which he succeeds in doing on heroic terms, producing 40,000 in a single day.
Repeatedly exhorting its audience to refresh the world through childbirth (a declared policy of General de Gaulle in the 1940s) it has things about it that a Catholic audience will recognise as home-turf. For the most part, though, it’s just deliciously absurd. And Glyndebourne does it proud in an enchanting, funny, smart production by the celebrated Laurent Pelly that’s perfection – with a brilliant sense of colour in the designs and manic vigour in the staging that stops short of slapstick. This is far too French chic to be knockabout.
But as Mamelles is also too short to fill an evening, Glyndebourne pairs it with another Poulenc miniature of a different kind: his operatic monologue La Voix Humaine, about a desperate woman being dumped by her lover over the phone. This does in fact share some of the absurdity of Mamelles in that it’s completely OTT: hysterical, neurotic, the emotions amplified to fever pitch, with a lone singer onstage but a symphonic-sized orchestra in the pit, its task largely to slice into her phone conversation with jaggedly grand-operatic interjections. You could call it ludicrous. But somehow Poulenc draws you in, and you don’t laugh: you share this woman’s agony. And as delivered by the magnificent French mezzo Stephanie d’Oustrac, it felt genuine, authentic – no less for the knowledge that she happens to be Poulenc’s great-grandniece.
People who wonder why contemporary opera has to be so difficult should look at what’s been written in America in recent times. Their opera isn’t so afraid of tunes as ours: it has absorbed more of the Broadway musical. Sadly little of it comes this way. It’s taken a long time for Mark Adamo’s Little Women to enjoy the UK stage premiere it got, triumphantly, from London’s Opera Holland Park last month.
Written in 1998, this piece has been a huge success across the pond, partly because of the subject matter (taken from Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel of American sisterhood), but also because of its accessibility. The score is virtually bipolar in the undecidedness with which it veers between opera and musical-theatre; and it might in fact work better if Adamo didn’t sometimes reign in his presiding lyricism in the interests of cultural credibility. But nonetheless there’s beauty in the writing, helped by technical tricks learned from Stephen Sondheim. And with a largely excellent cast at Holland Park, led by the engaging Charlotte Badham as Jo, it was one of the most moving things I’ve seen in opera for a long while. Little Women is a parable of growing up, accepting change, and learning to be human. Mark Adamo’s music has the measure of it. And I hope, now that it’s reached a British stage, the piece is here to stay.
In World War II the Nazis melted down church bells in Prague for armaments. There’s an ongoing programme to replace them, 80 years on, and it came to the attention of composer Julian Anderson who has made Prague and its still-missing bells the underlying theme of his new Symphony No 2, Prague Panoramas. One of this year’s major premieres at the Proms, it’s an impressive piece, descriptively incorporating bell motifs but properly symphonic, not a mere symphonic poem. And played by the BBCSO under Semyon Bychkov, it had serious impact, using a large orchestra with the particularity and refinement that are Anderson’s hallmarks (few contemporary composers do orchestral colour so effectively). But it’s those lost bells that still haunt my mind. The scheme to put them back is being crowdfunded. It strikes me as a worthy cause.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.