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Venue: Arcola theatre, London
Works by Claudio Monteverdi, Leoš Janá?ek, Libby Larsen, Thomas Weelkes
Producer: Green Opera
Directed by Tobias Millard
The Company: Natalka Pasicznyk, Emily Hodkinson, Shafali Jalota, Katherine McIndoe, Brenton Spiteri
Musical director/pianist: Alex Raineri
Running time: 80 minutes
Dates of run: until July 19
Green Opera’s aim is to put sustainability and nature at its core, while redefining opera for a new era in which art and environmental consciousness unite.
As the first instalment of this year’s Grimeborn Festival at the Arcola theatre, Green Opera’s “Testament” succeeds brilliantly, leaving us with the conviction intense human emotions are an organic part of nature and always have been.
With a minimal set and a running time of 80 minutes, it proves that an operatic experience does not depend on vast scale.
Indeed, the human drama can even be more vivid when there is nothing between the audience and the performers’ power to pull us into stories of joy and despair that straddle more than four centuries.
The protagonists’ pain could seem remote and alien, but the performers, under Tobias Millard’s direction, make it immediate and real.
We begin with a crystal clear articulation of Dowland’s anguished “In Darkness Let Me Dwell”, sung by soprano Shafali Jalota.
It’s an early 17th-century English language overture to the Italian unendurable unhappiness of Monteverdi’s “Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda”, in which Jalota is Clorinda and mezzo-soprano Emily Hodkinson is Tancredi.
While tragic misjudgment devastates humanity, Thomas Weelkes’ madrigal “The Nightingale” is a joyful reminder of the felicity of nature’s enduring cycle.
The respite is brief as Libby Larsen’s “Try Me, Good King” receives its theatrical debut and returns us with a jolt to the arena of human conflict.
As Henry’s unfortunate queens, Katherine McIndoe vaults from an almost saintly Catherine of Aragon to a fierce Anne Boleyn to Jane Seymour to Anne of Cleeves.
She draws us into their plight as they plead for their lives or face the executioner in an operative work whose visceral power derives from its female focus: all of our sympathy is for the innocent victims of abusive male authority.
McIndoe, switching apparently effortlessly into Czech, also plays Zefka, the love interest in Janá?ek’s “The Diary of One Who Disappeared”.
Here the audience sympathy shifts towards the male protagonist Jan, this time the more innocent party, beautifully sung by tenor Brenton Spiteri.
Jan is a simple peasant farmer with a rich, mellifluous voice, until the mysterious Zefka with her “endless eyes” appears in the woodland and he can think of nothing else.
The tension is great, and the emotions are violent, reflected in Janá?ek’s music that combines lyricism with abrasive, discordant passages and in Jan’s shift from tenderly addressing his oxen to threats to whip them.
Ultimately, he makes a decision that is at once ruthless and a matter of survival.
On some levels it is tragic and yet it makes for an unexpectedly upbeat ending: life goes on as nature requires. We find ourselves hoping opera is far from dead, despite swingeing arts cuts, and that such an eloquent, ambitious, disciplined plea for humans to live sustainability and harmoniously must be heard.
Grimeborn Opera: Testament
Venue: Arcola theatre, London
Works by Claudio Monteverdi, Leoš Janá?ek, Libby Larsen, Thomas Weelkes
Producer: Green Opera
Directed by Tobias Millard
The Company: Natalka Pasicznyk, Emily Hodkinson, Shafali Jalota, Katherine McIndoe, Brenton Spiteri
Musical director/pianist: Alex Raineri
Running time: 80 minutes
Dates of run: until July 19
Green Opera’s aim is to put sustainability and nature at its core, while redefining opera for a new era in which art and environmental consciousness unite.
As the first instalment of this year’s Grimeborn Festival at the Arcola theatre, Green Opera’s “Testament” succeeds brilliantly, leaving us with the conviction intense human emotions are an organic part of nature and always have been.
With a minimal set and a running time of 80 minutes, it proves that an operatic experience does not depend on vast scale.
Indeed, the human drama can even be more vivid when there is nothing between the audience and the performers’ power to pull us into stories of joy and despair that straddle more than four centuries.
The protagonists’ pain could seem remote and alien, but the performers, under Tobias Millard’s direction, make it immediate and real.
We begin with a crystal clear articulation of Dowland’s anguished “In Darkness Let Me Dwell”, sung by soprano Shafali Jalota.
It’s an early 17th-century English language overture to the Italian unendurable unhappiness of Monteverdi’s “Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda”, in which Jalota is Clorinda and mezzo-soprano Emily Hodkinson is Tancredi.
While tragic misjudgment devastates humanity, Thomas Weelkes’ madrigal “The Nightingale” is a joyful reminder of the felicity of nature’s enduring cycle.
The respite is brief as Libby Larsen’s “Try Me, Good King” receives its theatrical debut and returns us with a jolt to the arena of human conflict.
As Henry’s unfortunate queens, Katherine McIndoe vaults from an almost saintly Catherine of Aragon to a fierce Anne Boleyn to Jane Seymour to Anne of Cleeves.
She draws us into their plight as they plead for their lives or face the executioner in an operative work whose visceral power derives from its female focus: all of our sympathy is for the innocent victims of abusive male authority.
McIndoe, switching apparently effortlessly into Czech, also plays Zefka, the love interest in Janá?ek’s “The Diary of One Who Disappeared”.
Here the audience sympathy shifts towards the male protagonist Jan, this time the more innocent party, beautifully sung by tenor Brenton Spiteri.
Jan is a simple peasant farmer with a rich, mellifluous voice, until the mysterious Zefka with her “endless eyes” appears in the woodland and he can think of nothing else.
The tension is great, and the emotions are violent, reflected in Janá?ek’s music that combines lyricism with abrasive, discordant passages and in Jan’s shift from tenderly addressing his oxen to threats to whip them.
Ultimately, he makes a decision that is at once ruthless and a matter of survival.
On some levels it is tragic and yet it makes for an unexpectedly upbeat ending: life goes on as nature requires. We find ourselves hoping opera is far from dead, despite swingeing arts cuts, and that such an eloquent, ambitious, disciplined plea for humans to live sustainability and harmoniously must be heard.
Barbara Lewis © 2025.
By Barbara Lewis • music, opera, theatre, year 2025 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, music, opera, theatre