Aida @ Arena di Verona - New Production

While thousands of tourists flock to Juliet's balcony every day, there was one attraction in Verona I was far more interested in visiting, the Roman Arena. 2013 marks the centenary of both the summer opera festival at the Arena di Verona and the first performance of Verdi’s Aida there, an occasion celebrated with a lavish new production by La Fura dels Baus.

While the ancient stone benches high up in the Gods may be the cheap seats, they afford spectacular views over the Arena and Verona beyond, with the Lamberti Tower, beautifully lit up, dominating the night sky. The downside, however, is that sound doesn’t travel that well, so sometimes had to strain to hear the singers.

My only prior knowledge of Aida came from Elton John’s 1998 musical and boiled down to 'Pharaoh’s daughter Amneris loves warrior Radames but he is in love with Aida, who happens to secretly be the princess of Ethiopia, with whom Egypt are currently at war'. This wasn’t really enough to follow the show, especially when it was so hard to hear the lyrics, and the singers performing Radames and the Pharaoh looked so similar.

At the time, I wasn't particularly moved by the music either. There was only one truly memorable piece of music, the Triumphal March at the end of Act One, but that one piece is incredibly rousing and remained stuck in my head for days (the video below is a version by the Metropolitan Opera House).

Luckily the production was so ridiculously extravagant, it kept us entertained for the  four long hours of the opera. While replicas of the original 1913 cardboard pyramids and Sphinx were piled outside the Arena for anniversary performances later in the season, this version of Aida was completely wacky: fire, inflatable sculptures, an aluminium pyramid assembled by crane, acrobats, mechanical camels, men in orange boiler suits with scarab beetle heads riding bumper cars, flooding the stage to make a lake inhabited by dancers dressed as crocodiles... Under the night sky, it was a visual feast that impressed and baffled us in equal measure.

Aida continues to run as part of the 2013 summer season at the Arena di Verona until 8 September: full details here.

Anne Chmelewsky on Through the Looking Screen @ RADAR2012

In Through the Looking Screen we meet Annabel Clarke, a shy young woman who creates a much more confident, 'popular' persona online, and stalks the man she likes on Facebook rather than talking to him in real life. It's a story that will surely be very familiar to many people today, but what makes Anne Chmelewsky's production stand out is that this thoroughly modern tale is the basis of a comic opera. The juxtaposition of new and old is striking, adding an extra layer of laughs as Clare Presland lends her stunning opera voice to phrases like 'Angry Birds, Words With Friends...'. 

Clare Presland as Annabel Clarke, with Elizabeth Challenger on piano

Anne is no stranger to experimenting with opera, having written The Office: The Opera for Comic Relief in 2009, but she admits that it is still a challenge to convince audiences that opera isn't old-fashioned and boring. I spoke with her about those issues, her inspiration and advice for fellow creatives before the show.

Firstly, I asked Anne how she came up with the idea to mix the very new and modern concept of social networking with the traditional form of comic opera. She explained that while at college she wrote The Office: The Opera not aiming to make opera accessible, but just to make it funny. "Talking about staplers and photocopying is just funny if it's sung". As that show was a success, Anne thought she would write another one. "I have a friend who was an amazing opera singer [Presland], who I knew would be really funny in a one-woman show", she explains, adding that the subject of online dating and social networks came from her part-time job in recruitment, where many people in the office spend all day attached to their online profiles. 

"People who are creatives use Facebook, Twitter etc for our work but we forget - not to generalise - how much people in offices use that stuff, to the point where I've seen people - without naming any names! - who meet people on nights out and then Google them the next day and are like 'Ooo, I don't know...', and really trust what they see on the web. The idea was to come up with a character who was totally larger than life, totally into all that stuff, and who trusted what was on the internet more than her own instincts".

When it comes to herself though, Anne isn't a social media addict - unless she has a show to promote of course, like most people in today's theatre industry. The show illustrates how social media is changing the way we interact, and Anne notices this not only in the dating world, but in the arts. She admits it is very easy to become jealous or insecure as people constantly tweet all of their successes and positive reviews, while censuring anything bad. It's important for creatives to remember that Twitter doesn't present the whole truth and not judge themselves accordingly.

Surprisingly, Anne was never a fan of opera, or even musicals, until she began studying opera at music college. Instead, her background is in writing film scores, which is a completely different process, with much less creative freedom. It wasn't until she lived with Clare Presland and began attending her performances, that she really got into opera.

"When I wrote The Office: The Opera, it was as a slight rejection of opera that was too elitist, but that actually got me to watch a lot more opera, and I realised that actually opera is really cool. It's just that sadly sometimes it is performed in places where the seats are too expensive and people can't afford to go, so people have got this view of it as really horrible, and a really unnatural way of singing. But actually, if you go to watch an opera, even if you don't like the story, the singing is always incredible".

Anne explains that her inspiration comes from the masters of operetta, Gilbert and Sullivan, while the score contains a lot of pastiche of classic works. "Musically, it's very traditional", but it is that juxtaposition with the subject material which makes the show work.

While Anne had never had any problems convincing musically-minded friends to attend the show in London, she was shocked by the resistance to her work at Edinburgh Festival. "I'd go and give out flyers to people saying 'It's a one woman comedy about online dating', and they'd say 'Yeah, cool!', until they'd see that it was an opera and be like 'Take your flyer back!'". She had to make a real statement, dressing up in a wedding dress as a desperate dater, to convince potential audiences that her show would be funny and worth seeing. She explains that often people would say they didn't like opera but when asked which operas they didn't like it would transpire that they had never seen any. However, she is positive about the future, with moves like ENO and the Royal Opera House selling cheaper tickets or posting online trailers encouraging new audiences to discover opera for the first time. "People still think you have to wear a ball gown and your seat will cost £150, but it's not true any more". 

Anne did everything herself for this show: story, libretto, music, direction, even stage managing and lighting. Writing modern comic operas seems to be quite a lonely experience at the moment, and Anne wishes that there were more people doing it so they could have "a little collective" who battle against the opera stereotypes together. She has more ideas up her sleeves for future shows though, even if she has to do them alone. However, she is very conscious of falling into the trap of thinking "This is funny because people are singing it in opera voice"; it is essential that her material is funny on its own and not just because of the juxtaposition between opera and real life. While she'd love to find a more experienced librettist to collaborate with, to create a really tight, funny libretto, she realises that in the current climate of limited budgets and  scarce funding, you have to take on every role yourself to just get your show out there, until you can afford more professionals. 

"Sometimes people say 'I really want to be a writer but I'm not sure if I'd find a director, a designer, a stage manager...', that kind of thing. Well, you know what, why don't you do all that stuff yourself to start with, to show your work off. You might even discover a new talent. I've discovered I'm quite good at stage managing - that could be a second career!"

Through Anne's dedication and willingness to all the work herself, as well as a heap of talent, Through the Looking Screen was eventually a success in Edinburgh and drew rapturous applause at the Bush Theatre. Anne says she hopes the show will have a run in the new year, but it depends whether she can convince  more people that a modern comic opera is worth seeing. The audience at RADAR definitely believe that it is.

Cape Town Opera: Mandela Trilogy

The key stages of Nelson Mandela's life - leaving his tribe, leading the revolt against Apartheid in the townships, and imprisonment - might sound like an unlikely subject for song and dance, but the Cape Town Opera's magnificent production perfectly blended the personal and the political, the hardship and the joy to create a captivating, rousing and ultimately uplifting theatrical experience.

Cape Town Opera, the leading performing arts company in South Africa, first created the Mandela Trilogy in 2010. Having recently signed a three year co-operation agreement with the Wales Millennium Centre, they are celebrating by bringing the trilogy to Cardiff for its European première. With a cast of over 40 and the participation of the Welsh National Opera orchestra, this is a spectacular treat for opera fans.

The Mandela Trilogy is written and directed by Michael Williams. Unusually, the music is from three different composers, one for each section. Allan Stephenson matches traditional African rhythms to the scenes of the young Mandela in his home village; Mike Campbell brings to life the vibrant 1950s township life through jazz and Péter Louis van Dijk soundtracks Mandela's imprisonment and eventual release with a more conventional contemporary opera score. Nonetheless, there is a sense of continuity throughout, and the music is consistently impressive. I spoke to Williams after the performance about the thinking behind having three composers. He explained that it is extremely difficult for a single composer to keep the audience interested for two hours, and joked 'There's only one man who can do that and his name's Mozart'. In my opinion, the three parts are set in such distinct locations, requiring such different styles of music, that they needed the complementary skills of separate composers. This is mirrored by three different actors playing Mandela at each stage of his life.

The first part of the trilogy is sung in the local language of Mandela's tribe. There are surtitles, but the music and the performances are so expressive that you don't need to know the words to understand what is happening. The beginning of the show is completely joyous, full of colour, energy and traditional dancing, as the tribe celebrate their brave young men. However, they soon turn serious, decrying their lack of rights in their own land in an incredibly rousing scene. Shortly after, we see the political awakening of the young Mandela, who decides he must leave his village and fight for equal rights, in a particularly powerful, stripped back solo.

Part two then focuses on Mandela's time in the townships at the outset of Apartheid. He has been banned from public speeches, but this does not stop him addressing the people with a message of hope. You can't help but be swept up in the stirring music and performances. At this point you realise why Mandela is such an excellent choice of character for an opera.

No depiction of the 1950s would be complete without a high energy Jazz Club scene. I was blown away by the dancing in these extremely vibrant scenes which made me think that if oppression could be overcome simply by being incredibly cool South Africa would have had no problems at all.

Unusually for an opera, Mandela Trilogy has some extremely catchy tunes; none more so than Freedom in Our Time, which is still stuck in my head now. At the same time, there are more quietly powerful moments like Winning Hearts and Minds - where the three women in Mandela's life sing of how the cause keeps him away from them - which gave me goosebumps. As the fun violently comes to an end, with the forcible removal of the people from the township, the beautiful singing and staging create a haunting scene.

The third part, featuring Mandela's trial, imprisonment and eventual release, has a shift in tone to serious and dramatic. High-octane song and dance is replaced with more austere, contemplatory scenes. One particularly heartbreaking moment is when Mandela almost loses faith, only to be consoled by the voices of the people willing him on. It is in this final part that the incredible acting skill of the cast really comes to the fore.

As Mandela is finally released and takes his place as leader of the people of South Africa, you can't help but be swept up in the excitement. Mandela is one of the most iconic personalities of our time, so we all know how the story is going to end, and yet you're so absorbed in the lives of these characters that the ending feels unexpected and uplifting.

For large parts of the show, I had a huge smile stuck on my face, which is not what I expected from an opera about fighting oppression and imprisonment. For other parts, I was completely engrossed and deeply moved by the personal lives of those so often in the headlines for political reasons. Mandela Trilogy has it all; the story, an incredibly talented cast, electrifying dancing, vibrant costumes and sets, but above all, the music. The music which is constantly changing and yet always of the utmost quality. With never a dull moment, Mandela Trilogy is truly unmissable.

Cape Town Opera: Mandela Trilogy is showing at the Wales Millennium Centre on 20-21 June 2012. Tickets are available here. Their production of Porgy & Bess, set in Soweto, is then showing from 23-24 June, before continuing its UK tour.