Uncommon voice
Sometimes I get so used to watching the telly in the background of the rest of my life I forget that occasionally – just occasionally – it can step to the foreground, quite gracefully stand centre stage and present me with fabulous innovative culture right in the comfort of my own living room.
Obviously there are always a few select darn good programmes on at any one time, collecting Emmys and BAFTAs like Haribo on pocket money day. But once in a blue moon there’s also the opportunity to see something usually the preserve of the high cultured which the generous powers that be have decided to film and let the rest of us mere mortals enjoy for the simple price of our attention span. Glyndebourne’s Rinaldo by Handel is just such a gem.
Having garnered praise among the opera afficionados this production has been adapted for a modern audience, and it’s what I like to call ‘rootin ‘tootin rubber dominatrix school ma’am meets knights of the Crusades with a stonking plot, magic, adventure and awesome effects’.
“It’s too easy to see opera as high brow and ‘difficult’”
It’s too easy to see opera as high brow and ‘difficult’. Going to the opera has become an aspiration and class divider, as opposed to the true treat it can really be for the senses. By the same token that saw Lenny Henry take to the thespian boards at the National Theatre in A Comedy Of Errors and turn one of the bard’s better known comedies into a chav-filled rumble with proper laugh out loud moments, this production of Rinaldo is brilliantly accessible. Heightened operatic emotions? Don’t worry – it’s what all teen first love feels like – so desperately and colourfully. School yard cruelties cut the deepest, and in using this parallel the story feels remarkably relateable. And it’s for free, on the telly box!
It’s not the first time a popular theatrical production has been filmed in its stage setting and broadcast on TV, but what has made this one stand out for me is the incredible production values. The cast are brilliant; filled with wild emotions, huge vocal ranges and some excellent stage acting which means the subtitles at times simply confirm what we already know through their expressive body language and tormented/gleeful faces. The production itself though, blows preconceptions of what opera ‘should’ be out of the water. I like it when that happens to preconceptions.
This is a long way from the ‘Kill The Wabbit’ that saw Bugs Bunny bring out the clichés of opera. There is a great bike shed set that could rival the fight alley in West Side Story.
It is three hours’ worth of show, filled with bravado, stroppiness, melodrama, gangs, corporal punishment, bullies, sorcery… oh, and some fabulous music sung by strapping chaps and ladies. By the by, sometimes girls play boys, and sometimes those ‘boys’ chase the girls, and then they play with swords, and in all the confusion it’s really quite liberating. And you can put a boy on a flying bike while he sings of chasing after his captured love. It’s the easy way to feel some high culture with mainstream attraction.
Handel’s Rinaldo From Glyndebourne, BBC4, Friday 30 March
