After five Opera in Depth Zoom afternoons on Trouble in Tahiti and A Quiet Place, I can't help wagging my finger and insisting I know best when it comes to the last act, at least, of Bernstein's 1983 sequel. There doesn't seem to be an easy solution for the dysfunctional family which tries to get back together after the death of wife and mother Dinah, one of the two solo voices of Trouble, in a car crash.
Perfection isn't desirable, of course, since the aim is for human truth, but when I saw A Quiet Place for the first time at the Linbury Theatre (pictured above by The Arts Desk's very own Bill Knight: Elgan Llŷr Thomas as Francois, Grant Doyle as the older Sam, Rowan Pierce as DeDe and Henry Neill as Junior), it pulled me in and out of belief in its characters. Whereas with Trouble you're gripped by the collisions of Sam and Dinah (Wallis Giunta pictured below) all the way, whether you actually like them or not.
The main sticking point, despite uniformly fine performances, was both the length and the incidents of that third act. As performed at the Linbury, 'Old' Sam asks Francois, the bisexual partner of siblings Junior and Dede, to read what amounts to a suicide note left by Dinah. When the family start quarrelling again, Francois does a big preach on how Dinah made a 'sacrifice' so they could love - intolerable and unconvincing stuff. I'm pretty sure it's in the revised version that instead of an otiose extra aria for Sam and two reams for Francois, Sam reads from Dinah's diary while we hear her voice breaking into fragments from Trouble in Tahiti (which would allow Giunta to come back other than in a coffin). After the quarrel, it's Junior who tears up the manuscript and we jump straight to the last eight minutes.
I appreciate that using the version which is most credible, were the production to be revived, the gorgeous Elgan Llŷr Thomas would lose some golden opportunities in that act. He came to visit our fourth class (pictured below top right with students Susie from Edinburgh and Will from Prince Edward Island, Canada, holding Nicky the Hound from Hell)
and was so clear and honest about the weaknesses, namely that as they did it, Act Three still felt too long. Swapping the original for the revision would shave off at least five minutes...so let's see that.
We also agreed, and he'd made a plea, that there should have been a second interval between Acts Two and Three of A Quiet Place. I think that the still very big sound of Garth Edwin Sunderland's reduced score - four percussionists left and right, after all - would make the main auditorium a better home, too.
The previous week, director Oliver Mears and the wondrous Wallis Giunta joined us, 'Wally' with her adorable six-month old baby Bonnie in tow (Elgan is lost in admiration at how hard she worked, with husband at home in Vienna, bringing up baby and making an opera at the same time).
There, too, we covered a lot of ground, but the final bottom line on which the two singers, director, myself and students are all agreed is that Trouble in Tahiti HAS to come before A Quiet Place. The decision to insert it into Act Two, as Bernstein, Mauceri and co did for Milan and Vienna, doesn't work; and A Quiet Place by itself, as per the Warlikowski production in Paris, makes next to no impact if we haven't met Dinah and the younger Sam.
I'm grateful, all the same, for Nagano's recording, which is so clear, vividly paced and well-performed. One thing's for sure - the later work hasn't used up its lives yet. To be continued.
We've now moved on to Smetana's Libuše, just what we need in terms of shining positivity at this dire time. Likewise lots of Fauré, our focus for last Thursday's Zoom class, when Steven Isserlis found time to pop in for a visit. His centenary series, which had just finished, is a treasury - do watch all five concerts for free on the Wigmore Hall's YouTube channel. It will help keep you afloat in this worst of times.
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