OPERA AT IFORD ARTS

“The Saddleback structure at Belcombe Court has a natural parabolic state so it just chucks sound out –it’s perfect for the times and quite spectacular”, says Michael

“This is our contribution to the big return”, says Michael Volpe, the executive director at Iford Arts, referring to the forthcoming summer season at Belcombe Court. Emma Clegg finds out about the productions ahead and his plans for the future

The opera season at Iford Arts this year has been described by artistic director Oliver Gooch as a ‘shot in the arm’, a defiant, creative response to the challenges facing us all. Another shot in the arm has been the appointment in January this year of Michael Volpe, the former chief of Opera Holland Park (OHP), as interim executive director.

The season will be played out in August and September, in the main part under Iford Arts’ new Saddlespan structure in Belcombe Court, courtesy of owners Paul and Caroline Weiland, allowing 200 seats with shelter and around another 200 open to the elements. What more thrilling location to listen to Prokovfiev’s Peter and the Wolf, one of the greatest musical works for children? And the famous double-bill of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, sung in Italian, filled with violent jealousy, passionate love and everything in between?

“The Mezzo Cavalleria and Pagliacci concertrunning from 28–30 August is always one of the great nights in the theatre,” says Michael. “It’s music that everybody knows and loves and if it’s a warm, sultry night, which we hope it will be in August, it gives an even greater atmosphere to what we’re doing. And hopefully people will see it as a great excuse to come along and experience two pieces of opera which are bite-sized punches of drama, as we call them in the business ‘stab and sob’. They are very visceral. And we have got an incredible cast of singers. This is a great experience waiting for people.”

The concert evenings begin with a concert presentation of the most loved parts of Mascagni’s Cavallera Rusticana, called MezzoCav and finishes with Leoncavallo’s masterpiece Pagliacci, telling the fatal story of a troupe of actors. “Creating a visceral experience is at the heart and soul of the Pagliacci production,” says Michael. “The singers we have – Elin Pritchard and Peter Auty – are terrific. Elin is one of the most exciting sopranos around at the moment. And international British soprano Susan Bullock will blow everyone away in the MezzoCav concert half of the MezzoCav and Pag production. It’s a great night of gorgeous music and the verismomadness that we all love. It’s about as instinctive as we could make it.”

The Pagliacci opera on the afternoon of 30 August is different in that it’s a staged performance rather than a concert, and it gives Iford Arts’ New Generation Artists –a bespoke training programme that gives invaluable opportunities to young directors, conductors, designers, singers, musicians, technical staff and stage managers –their very own cover of the stage opera Pagliacci, giving them the chance to work with prestigious director Christopher Luscombe. The ticket prices for this are refreshingly accessible, £29 for under the canopy and £18–22 for uncovered seating.

There are also two performances of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf on 22 August, to be narrated by an actor of note (to be announced), with £9 seats for 5–18 year olds, giving them a perfect introduction to the orchestra in an unforgettable setting.

“Peter and the Wolf stands on its own two feet as a piece of music. People say ‘Oh I know this’, without realising that they know it, picking up on particular motifs. A narrator that really brings it to life adds immeasurably to that whole thing, especially for kids. And it’s a bit like a Pixar movie – for kids but it’s just as much for adults.”

Michael’s connection with opera has its roots in his own

Classico Latino, performing on 21 August, blend the techniques and sounds of classical music with Latin American rhythms and melodies

upbringing. “I grew up in an Italian household, so Italian music like tenor Mario Lanza or Caruso by Lucia Dalla and lots of Neapolitan folk music would be heard on the sideboard gramophone. Then I went to an unusual school, which took us inner city boys and gave us an Eton-style education. So I sang all through my career at school in the choir and the school did lots of operas over the years –Benjamin Britten even came to the school in the late 1950s to help rehearse A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

He explains that his mature love of opera came later, through the process of working on hundreds of shows: “You see its effect at work and you begin to believe in its impact and value. Your average person sees opera as a strange alien art form, and actually it’s the opposite, the most accessible and familiar of all staged art. It’s so direct and so raw, it is extremely rare that people who have never been before have not been completely transformed by experiencing it in the flesh.”

A moving story that Michael relates showing the power of opera is of a group of inner city teenagers experiencing opera for the first time in a television production he presented called Hip Hop to Opera. “We sat them down in front of a singer and a pianist to give them their very first experience of the human operatic voice. There was a lovely clip of this kid hearing this guy sing for the first time and his reaction showed him completely overwhelmed by it. The clip was shared half a million times –it went viral. Because people saw the immediate impact of this on this 17/18 year old kid from Peckham who was interested in drill and grime and hip hop but not classical or opera, and it blew them away.”

So how has Iford Arts gone about reviving its opera in a post Covid world? “This season is very much a return; the world needs what we do and everyone is making a contribution to that in the business. The new Iford Arts is about flexibility and about the industry adapting the way it operates. There’s a strong all-in-it-together feeling for many people. A lot of singers have been quite traumatised about what happened in the pandemic because they were just dropped. And many of them weren’t always supported. Many of them have had to do whatever jobs and work they can find over the last year and that is the dreadful reality. We’ve had to get back to it collectively with a sense of proportion and perspective. That part has been quite energising.”

Michael has taken on his Iford Arts role after more than 30 years at OHP, which he founded and developed, and he feels that the timing of this has brought new opportunities and a need for change. “In the year between me announcing I was leaving OHP and doing it, we had the pandemic. During this time the things that I had always been concerned about in the opera world were lifted up in a sharp relief. I felt that what was happening was a fantastic opportunity to tweak the way that we work as a business, as an industry as an economic model.

“When the Iford Arts opportunity was presented to me I thought it was a good moment to do something very different and put into practice some of these ideas. We were having conversations in the office asking questions like, ‘What if we did it this way?’, ‘How might that work?’, and came up with this fairly radical (for now) approach. It was an opportunity to almost start again. Can we do something different? Can you open it up to new audiences using different points of view and different methods? It’s just the sort of thing that people like me like to do, because it means something.”

“We are in a transition period now. This summer is the Iford Arts that everyone knows and loves, doing what it does. The idea of the new integration is to do fantastic and accessible opera, that’s the basic premise of everything. Peter and the Wolf and the Young Artist production of Pagliacci hint at the way we’re moving as a company. But mainly it’s ‘Hurrah we’re back’ this year.

There is always an emotional connection with opera, maintains Michael: “That’s the wonderful thing about arts –people come to a show and each individual finds parallels within their own perceptions and their own lives. This is the beauty of opera – it’s really a very simple proposition. It’s about the human condition and we’ve all been there in one way or another.” n

The Early Opera Compamny presents Handel ‘s Acis and Galatea on 18 Septmeber

The Iford Arts New Generation Artists p resent a staged performance of Pagliacci on 29 August