The International Opera Awards is an artistic happening in its own right
This year’s International Opera Awards (IOA) ceremony in Warsaw cemented the event’s growing reputation, not just as a savvy annual selection of opera’s finest talent. It was, emphatically, an artistic happening in its own right.
Ceremony came with a strong sense of political purpose. We were in Warsaw’s beautiful neoclassical Grand Theatre, rebuilt in 1965, because last year’s joint winners of the Opera House of the Year, Lviv and Odessa, are still mired in war. It is becoming the practice to host the following year’s awards in the winning house.
When rebuilt from the ruins of WWII, Warsaw’s Grand Theatre was a gesture of Polish defiance. Even while still under the Soviet boot. With 2,000 seats it was the biggest opera house in the world. That title lasted only until New York’s Lincoln Center opened the following year. Capacity, 3,850.
That both Lviv and Odessa are lights on, curtain up, open for opera is an astonishing triumph of artistic defiance, loudly acclaimed by the Warsaw audience. Warsaw was as close as Harry Hyman, the British businessman, arts philanthropist, founder and formidable motive force of IOA, could get to embattled Ukraine.
To a world awash with red carpet, self-congratulatory – “And I want to thank my therapist” – puff-filled, arts awards ceremonies, IOA brought rare substance, fascinating insights, and a remarkable introduction to the host country’s best kept secret. It was fun, too.
The secret. Composer Stanislaw Moniuszko (1819 – 1872). I had never heard of him. Shame on me. In Poland he is a second Chopin. His lyrical music has a folkloric national timbre in the manner of Russian composer, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
The audience enjoyed arias from three operas – Halka – about the tragic love of the title character, a highlander girl, Halka, for a noble, Janusz, who abandons her to wed the daughter of the local Lord. Cad! Sounds like a 19th century potboiler. But it’s more in the weighty idiom of Jules Massenet’s much loved Werther.
The Haunted Manor – 1865 – had the distinction of being banned as dangerously nationalistic by the tsarist authorities of Congress Poland, the state created by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 when the Polish nation was effectively abolished until 1918. As Verdi courted censorship for his Risorgimento politics in 19th century Italy, so Moniuszko sailed close to the nationalist wind in Poland.
And, Paria – 1869 – Moniuszko’s final completed opera. We are in India. The tragic narrative tells of the pariah Idamor, who becomes the heroic leader of an army and goes against Indian social norms in choosing Neala, the daughter of High Priest Akebar, as his bride. Paria was panned by critics at its premiere, but the moving themes of exclusion and the power of social rules resonate now. Paria is an opera for our times.
Beautifully performed arias from each were interwoven with the award category presentations, along with works by Dvorák, Verdi and Yuliy Serhiyovych Meitus – 1903 -1997, a Ukrainian composer of the Soviet era, lauded as the founder of the Ukrainian opera. His early style was modernistic. Later he used more traditional neo-Romantic idioms. His work has been onstage in Ukraine regularly during the ongoing war. A hat-tip to Ukraine’s distinct cultural identity.
The point is that this excursion to Warsaw was carefully crafted as much as a fascinating journey into the musical unknown as it was a recognition of operatic talent. Our Prowadzenie wieczoru (work it out or Google it) for the evening was the estimable Petroc Trelawny, BBC Radio Three’s voice of all things classical.
Or should that be Petroch, Petrawk ….? Last year I shamefully got the spelling wrong, which provoked a bantering email exchange of apology. I discovered at the pre-show reception I had been forgiven.
Trelawny exudes a smooth competence that seamlessly coped with the unforeseeable choreographic crises that afflict all awards ceremonies. If he were an airline pilot, he could announce the plane was about to ditch in the sea and passengers would still be calmly supping their champagne.
Award ceremonies are booby-trapped. Last year in Madrid someone who was not meant to be there stepped up to collect an award. And then, wasn’t who he was meant to be. Unfazed, Trelawny simply asked, “Who are YOU?”. Brought the house down.
This year, the impeccably tuxedoed announcer had to defuse an infinitely more hazardous device. It had been decided that the prizes would be presented to winners by two sets of young girl and boy ballet dancers in traditional dress who strutted in perfect unison on and offstage, like the Rose-Bearer in Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier, carrying the awards in extended arms.
Frequently, forgetful winners overwhelmed by victory emotion attempted to walk offstage before the prize-bearers could deliver the goods. Transforming from BBC smoothie into a Polish Owczarek Nizinny (the national sheepdog), Trelawney ensured the fabulously poised kids were not deprived of their moment in the spotlight. Errant recipients were competently rounded up. No winner left without their prize. And, unlike the 2022 Oscars, no-one decked Petroc.
The full list of awards can be found here. A notable winner was Conductor, Sir Antonio Pappano, who lays down his baton at Covent Garden’s Royal Opera House at the end of this season. Marilyn Horne, the 89-year-old American mezzo soprano won a lifetime achievement award and gave a moving audio address from her home in California.
A nominee in the conductor category, Canadian/Ukrainian maestra, Keri-Lynn Wilson, responsible for bringing the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra to Europe and the USA, was resoundingly cheered, but pipped by Pappano.
Barrie Kosky, the anarchic Australian director, won Director prize and gave an offhand, rambling Zoom address from what looked like a water closet offstage Komische Oper, Berlin. ‘I’m deeply honoured …. What is this, by the way?’
Dutch National Opera won the World Premiere category for its production of Alexander Raskatov’s Animal Farm and a trendy award for Sustainability – because of a sparrow, or something.
Now boasting an eleven-year track record, IOA has raised funds to support almost 100 bursary students – singers, directors, conductors, répétiteurs and accompanists. Scouring the opera world for innovation and excellence is an impressive jury of industry professionals and artists led by John Allison, editor of Opera magazine. The finalists and winners are winnowed down after the closest scrutiny. Every nominee could have been a worthy winner.
Allison has recently expanded the reach of Opera to the US, taking on the heritage of Opera News, the magazine of the now defunct Metropolitan Opera Guild, unceremoniously scrapped by Met Director Peter Gelb in the summer on grounds of cost. Will the turquoise tinted 35-page Opera News branded insert section retain the loyalty of disgruntled Guild members? Only time will tell. Brave start.
HM King Charles III stepped up in the form of HMG, providing a generous reception hosted by his Ambassador to Poland, Anna Clunes CMG OBE, at the British Embassy. What, with my introduction to Mongolian National Opera in Ulaanbaatar by Ambassador Fiona Blyth MBE (niece) a couple of weeks ago and a Manhattan reception for English National Opera this week hosted by Hannah Young, British Deputy Consul General, New York (no relation), I can’t help feeling the Foreign Office is punching well above its weight, promoting UK opera abroad.
I hope David Cameron, our early Christmas bran-tub-dip Foreign Secretary – William Hague was lucky to be left in the barrel – likes opera. I am becoming addicted to FO canapés. An offer. I am prepared to commission a successor piece to Classic FM’s Fantasy on David Cameron, (Cameron’s lament in C Minor),penned on his 2016 departure from No 10. Comeback Kid Cameron would be a stunning, sure to win, entry for IOA’s 2024 newest category, Short-Lived Work of the Year.
Opera Company of the year was Bayerische Staatsoper. So, IOA should be in Munich in 2024. This awards ceremony is an event with growing momentum, thoughtfully presented, a window on the world of opera at which even the occasional opera goer will unearth an unexpected gem. You can watch it here, on OperaVision.
And Another Thing!
American maestro, Joseph Colaneri, Music Director of upstate New York’s Glimmerglass Opera Festival, seems to have 100 fingers, all stuck into interesting pies. So, when he hinted I might enjoy an opera he was conducting at Manhattan’s Juilliard School, Later the Same Evening, score by John Musto, libretto Mark Campbell, I paid attention.
Later on Sunday afternoon I pitched up at the Jay Sharp Theater and was entertained by a one-act comedic masterpiece. The work is inspired by the work of American artist, Edward Hopper.
Hopper’s enigmatic paintings of American life are well summed up by art critic Brian O’Docherty; “They are metaphors for looking – windows – we track the figures down, chase them down. The figures themselves have something to do with being and essence – simply being. The drama is all in the potential.”
Musto and Campbell exploit that potential to the full. Characters step from five iconic Hopper paintings, Room in New York, Hotel Window, Hotel Room, Two on the Aisle, and Automat. Hoppers’ enigmatic moments in time are expanded into back stories and “what happens next”.
They all meet up at a Broadway musical, Tell Me Tomorrow, and their life stories move on from there. Later the same evening a young man who had taken an engagement ring to the theatre, only to find his inamorata was a no-show, meets the usherette from the cinema in the Automat – and they leave the Automat together – walking into another Hopper painting.
Crafted with a light, humorous touch, this was a delight. Colaneri provided a dynamic, engaging performance. The cast of Juilliard students, all keen to shine, simply shone.
A full version of Later the Same Evening can be found, here, on Musto’s website. An unexpected bonne bouche on a quiet, New York Sunday afternoon. Thank you, Maestro Colaneri.
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