Posted on Saturday 19 June 2010
I was at Cardiff’s Gate Arts Centre last Tuesday for an evening of short operas presented by a group of students from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. The main work was an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s tale The Nightiingale And The Rose with music by Tom Floyd to a libretto by David Spittle.
The piece is Floyd’s first work on this scale and its easy lyricism disguises a great deal of expertise. He writes for his chamber orchestral forces with imagination and skill, creating a soundworld which, while reminiscent at times of Benjamin Britten’s chamber operas, is distinctively his own. Best of all he has a natural feel for the needs of his singers. His fluid vocal lines allow the young cast to show off the expressive and dramatic capabilities of their voices while ensuring that the words of the libretto, which carries the dark drama of Wilde’s tale, are always audible. The Nightingale and The Rose is a promising beginning to a career as an operatic composer, although I could not avoid the feeling that a tighter musical structure and some juducious editing would have made for a more satisfying dramatic experience. One can perhaps forgive some self-indulgence in a first major piece but Floyd would do well to keep a tight rein on it in the future.
The second half was made up of short operatic scenes by Alexander Thacker, Stephen Benson and Rebecca Jayne Clarke whose Awakening was the highlight of the whole evening. The awakening in question is that of a woman who has been in a coma for twenty nine years and the opera examines her confused emotions as she struggles to comprehend that she is no longer sixteen and the doctor’s ambigious relationship with his patient. The austere musical language and minimal forces (two characters and four instrumentalists) draw the audience into a dreamlike scene where nothing is clear or certain. A moving and powerful piece and a composer to watch with interest.
The whole event was produced not by the college but by the students themselves. It had a freshness and enthusiasm that were totally engaging and some individual performances that shone. Tom Bates’ supple counter-tenor made light work of the challenge the contrasting roles of the white and yellow rose trees – his exuberant performance as the latter brough him the biggest cheer of the night. Rhiannon Llewellyn, deeply touching in the part of the nightingale, has a clarity and intensity in the upper register that would be the envy of many established sopranos. The middle and lower registers have yet to develop the same intensity but no doubt this will come in time.
But the performance of the evening was Shoshana Pavett’s all too brief appearance as Sylvia Plath in Stephen Benson’s Ariel and the Crow. Her powerful, dark-toned soprano voice is even and well-integrated from top to bottom of a wide vocal range and she met the demands of the part with a musical and dramatic maturity well beyond her years.




