You are writing you doctoral thesis on musicals. Is opera inferior to
musical theatre?
No, not at all! It’s just a different aesthetic. In musical theatre the
singing voice is much closer to speaking than in opera. As a
composer/writer you’re actually able to integrate the use of the spoken
word
into the whole of your expressive palette. However, there are opera
singers now who can adjust their singing to musical theatre repertoire
and
not destroy it. They tend to be American: Dawn Upshaw, Teresa Stratas
and
Frederica von Stade do it superbly. Thomas Hampson is pretty good,
too, in
Gershwin. There are also broader performing demands in top-notch
musicals,
compared to those of opera. In Chicago, for example, the two female
leads
have to be able to sing, give hilarious line readings and dance – and
what
dancing! For me, opera singers’ spoken acting usually only works in
comic
operas. They can be over the top and don’t have to make us believe in
the
characters as human beings, more as types. That’s why a good
production of
Fidelio is notoriously difficult to come by – the dialogue tends to be
weaker than the singing.
What was your first opera?
The first opera I saw on stage was a beautiful production of The Pearl
Fishers. That’s one thing opera does rather well: exoticism. Opera can
create a world that never existed and do it with such a conviction.
This
fantasy potential is a unique strength.
I saw that Pearl Fishers when I was 13. We have some very fine opera
companies, singers and performers in Australia. I saw Lisa Gasteen as
Donna
Elvira on TV around that time too. That production also had a powerful
impact on me; I taped it and I watched it through nine or ten times.
Is Don Giovanni your favourite opera?
If we’re looking at operas without speaking, it would have to be
Rigoletto.
It is so damn fast, zip – zip – zip through. The last act is
devastating,
especially the off-stage chorus as the wind. It still gives me chills.
It’s
so unexpected – and absolutely realistic in terms of sound. Rigoletto
also
has some of Verdi’s best melodies.
I admire the mature Verdi’s pace. In my own work as a composer it’s
something I aspire to. Also his brief way of handling prologues and
overtures: Rigoletto’s is two and a half minutes, Traviata’s is under
three.
That’s a very good skill to have, to be able to set your scene up
musically
and emotionally for an audience in a record-short time.
Would Verdi be close to your ideal opera composer?
Yes, I would have to say so. Although I don’t like having to choose:
composers are such different animals. Unlike Wagner, Verdi was a very
practical man of the theatre, the kind of theatre creator that I like
to
emulate.
I admire Monteverdi enormously, too, because he’s able to make
recitative
the most marvellous music in the world. It’s quite staggering. It’s
very
difficult to make recitative interesting. I write almost no recitative
in my
own work – possibly for that reason…
I think music is one of the most flexible art forms. I think the
composer
should be as accommodating as possible; there is often a difference
between
how you imagine a thing staged and how it is going to be realised.
When I
was writing my musical of Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, I
designed
whole sections that could be easily cut if they needed to be, in terms
of
stage time and getting action across.
How important is the libretto?
A first-rate libretto is indispensable. Part of the reason I like
Rigoletto so much is because it’s based on a play by Victor Hugo. His plots are
always watertight. Le roi s’amuse is designed in such a way that if
one
character gets what they want, everyone else will be miserable – and
that’s
perfect for melodrama.
Does it work better if the opera is based on a play that has already
been
tried out on stage?
Of course, you get the case of Richard Strauss and Hugo von
Hoffmannstahl,
where a lot of the ideas are original. But I think it’s a lot less
risky if
you take something that has already worked in another form. Adapting
to the
operatic form is an art in itself, and good source material doesn’t
necessarily translate well into opera. It has to be a particular type
of
story, and one which suits the composer’s style.
For example, Cosi fan tutte has a quite cynical plot that conflicts
with
Mozart’s personal style, sincerity itself. I would be very interested
to see
what a Prokofiev would make of de Ponte’s libretto. Of course, Cosi
can
work well in the theatre but it always needs an angle or a twist. On
its
own, as a period piece, it’s difficult to bring off, unless you do it
as a
very light, a champagne-light piece… But even that’s a big ask because
you
get such moments of absolute beauty… Anyway, it will always provoke
interesting stagings.
Who are your favourite opera singers?
Among opera singers I admire, I have an especial fondness for Marian
Anderson and Karita Mattila. The latter's Elisabeth in the recent
Châtelet
production of Don Carlos (available on DVD) is ideal. Tenors – I love
Alfredo Kraus in his prime, and the always suave Domingo. The best
bass I
have heard live is an Australian called Donald Shanks, who I think has
now
retired. The resonance of his profondo register was like the lowest
fundamental of Big Ben.
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Tell us about your own music.
I love chamber music and especially string quartets. My heroes of
string
quartet writing are Haydn, Schubert (for Death and the Maiden) and
Shostakovich. The Shostakovich quartets are my late night listening of
choice - the sinewy lines of the slow passages and the driving rhythms
of
the allegros resonate well with insomnia!
I wrote a string quartet in my undergraduate years which was basically
an
exercise in harmony. I wanted to write a piece which used every
possible
relationship between major and minor triads. It took me about three years
to
finish the piece which only ran six minutes. But that concentrated
effort
helped me to forge my own style. The discipline of making flowing
textures
from just four instruments has also been useful.
For my first musical theatre piece, Far from the Madding Crowd, I have
made
a chamber arrangement of the score for piano and string quartet, which
makes
performance a great experience for me. I can use my piano skills and
at the
same time explore more possibilities with the string quartet medium.
Describe your writing process.
I like the discipline of bending your musical form towards a dramatic
situation. You know what events you have to cover; you already have the
plan
and the running time of the scenes. It gets down to quite small chunks.
I do
a rough plan of the scene, how the events are going to be spaced in
time.
You need to have a ‘lyric hook’, a phrase that can be repeated at
crucial
points in the scene. The principle melodic idea is built around that.
Usually my musical imagination runs ahead of my text, which is fine,
because
if you’re going to reuse any melodic material, you’ll always have to
make
words fit music. Then it’s time to sit down and write the rest of the
lyrics
– and that takes four to five times as long to do compared to composing
the
music. Matching the inflection of spoken utterance to the notes of a
melody
takes a lot of fiddling.
…you must absolutely hate translations!
I like the few good ones, like Oscar’s Hammerstein’s translation of
Carmen
as Carmen Jones. I would love to do something like that with Hoffmann;
treating translations like song lyrics rather than translations. You
would
have to give up some of the original details; it would be like writing
an
almost new libretto for the opera.
How did you cast your first musical?
A friend of mine and I placed an ad in PCR magazine, which drew around
70
CVs in response. Auditions were held over a couple of days. I was
very
impressed with the standard of the singing and acting. My vocal lines
can
be quite demanding, not rangy overall, but many phrases cover an octave
or
more, and so call for lots of very smooth register changes.
Were you also the producer of the show?
Sort of a producer: I was looking after all the props. I bought this
blank-firing revolver from a gun shop in Wembley. We needed it for the
final
climax, a shooting. But the gun had to fire twice. We only had 90
minutes of
technical rehearsal on the day, so we weren’t going to trust the sound
people to get the cues right for the shooting. It was actually a
starter
pistol built on a nineteenth-century revolver pattern so it looked
perfectly
authentic. The trouble was we couldn’t find a holster small enough to
hold
it. It kept falling out of all the holsters they had in the gun shop.
Then
I found a mobile phone holder in a street stall, cut it down a bit and
attached it to the belt.
I had a lovely director, Australian as well, Naomi Edwards, who dealt
with
the demands of the melodrama. It’s a difficult piece to bring off
because it
is high melodrama but at the same time very realistic. It took a lot of
bravery to pare down people’s performances, to stop them doing very
much.
She was fantastic.
What are your plans for the future?
I want to write musicals; I believe in commercial theatre. Subsidised
opera,
opera as a status symbol for the rich, is something I have a problem
with.
As a writer I want to reach people of all demographics. I was very
happy
that my musical, Far from the Madding Crowd, based on Thomas Hardy’s
novel,
had a wider appeal than the British middle-class audience that would
have
read the novel. At the showcase in Greenwich, I was approached by
people
from all sorts of backgrounds and ethnicities, all saying how much they
had
enjoyed it. I have a couple of new projects underway and am in the
process
of finishing my doctoral thesis.
What are your hobbies?
Cooking is one of life’s delights for me. I’ve been perfecting korma
lately;
from scratch, with all the spices and almonds. There is also a
fantastic
recipe I know for a warm Thai chicken salad, where you poach the
chicken in
coconut milk. I also love reading, plays particularly. I guess it’s
difficult to draw the line as to what is a hobby and what is work with
me.
The theatre and arts are what I do for my – at times precarious –
living,
but they fill my leisure hours as well.
View Tim's page HERE.
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