BREATHe
with Anna Dennis, Melanie Pappenheim, Rebecca Askew
Directed by Emma Bernard
Lighting Chahine Yavroyan
A first-breath-to-last-breath music theatre piece, for three female singers, with interventions by a girl’s chorus and an adult chorus
An investigation of the way that breathing is affected by emotion and physical effort, and how that affects singing - running, falling in love, dreaming, giving birth, receiving bad news, making a speech, getting ill….. the whole range of life experiences.
*
Inside the outside the
In out
Long short
Deep shallow
Open the close the
Pull push
Speed up slow down
A breath
A hundred breaths
A thousand breaths
A hundred million breaths
Feed on the thick thin air
The air feed the blood heart pump
In out round
The hidden labyrinth
Life support machine
ORDER
Performers: Melanie Pappenheim, Esme Herbert, Nettleham Community Choir
Directed by Emma Bernard
A 20-minute music theatre piece, first performed in the Guildhall, the 800-year-old council chamber in Lincoln, by Melanie Pappenheim and her daughter Esme Herbert and the Nettleham Community Choir, led by Liz McIntosh. At a council meeting, the Mayor, played by Melanie, confident, conservative, cautious, is confronted by Esme who appears from the public gallery to challenge her preconceptions. A piece about maintenance versus renewal, rationale versus emotion.
Prelude
Gossip, make-up, sandwiches.
1 Ritual
Bell, hat, mace, handbag
Mayor:
Order!
Mayor: Councillors:
Stone Bow
Sheep Fold
Cotton Field
Scarlet Green
Up hill Down hill
Measuring out the sword’s length
2 The Mayor’s Statement
Mayor:
Why are we all here?
To adopt to improve to appoint to amend to uphold to approve to agree
To authorize to allocate to scrutinize to negotiate to make enquiries
Mayor and Councillors:
to make appropriate enquiries
Councillors:
To receive to respond to restore to remove to refuse
To revise to respect to retweet to revoke to review
Mayor and Councillors:
Information analysis procedure
Mayor:
To engage to enhance to ensure to advise to support to submit to report
To modify to monitor to renovate to recommend to make recommendations
Mayor and Councillors:
to make appropriate recommendations
Councillors:
To receive to respond to restore to remove to refuse
To revise to respect to retweet to revoke to review
Mayor and Councillors:
Information analysis procedure
Order to keep it in order
Mayor:
To maintain to promote to obtain to oppose to grant consent to refuse consent to withdraw
To audit to action to issue to commission to contribute to consider any impairments
To issue fire certificates to issue demolition notices
To license performances of hypnotism
To register premises for the preparation of fish
To grant consent for the operation of a loudspeaker
To obtain information in respect of contaminated land
To approve egg product establishments
To determine standards
Mayor and Councillors:
To determine appropriate standards
Information analysis procedure
Order to keep things in order
3 Business
Doing democracy to the letter
Voting
Passing of papers
Stamping, signing, blowing
Passing of notes
Item 1: Change of use
H. Samuel to Ann Summers
Primark to Pasty Republic
Nat West to Toni and Guy
Steep Hill to ski slope
Item 2: Parking
Extension of Zone 1G
Misuse of permits
Misuse of scratch cards
Protocol for dealing with irate members of the public
Item 3: Bins
Large item collection
Item 4: Plastic
Single use
Multiple use
Item 5: Deputations
None requested
4 Esme’s Statement
Esme:
To fall to fall in love to forget
Councillors:
To fall in love
Esme:
To recall to remind to redeem
To rethink to reveal to reform
To disrupt to protest to make trouble
To confront to expose to make noise
To speak truth to power to hold to account
To put the cat among the pigeons
Councillors:
Cat...pigeons.....
To keep bees to swim in cold water to break the ice
To sleep in the open to listen to skylarks to watch the stars
To walk in the moonlight to walk in the mountains to walk through dark streets
To search for mushrooms to follow sheep tracks to be lost
To be lost in the woods to be lost in the desert to be lost in the city
To look into the heart
Councillors:
To look into the heart
The Councillors are transfixed. The Mayor is not happy.
Mayor:
Systems...information...analysis...procedure......
Esme:
To grow daffodils to dance the quickstep to play the drums
To paint to draw to sew to weld to blow glass
To skate to throw to run to jump to jive
To bend to flex to spin to twist to shake
To float to flip to fly to glide to dive
To leap without looking
Councillors:
Leap....look.....to leap without looking
Esme:
To make do to do without to forgo
To be silent to be incomplete to be alone
To be alone on the sofa to be alone on the ice cap
To be imperfect to be inconsistent to not know
To be in many places at once
To disappear
Councillors:
To disappear
5 Esme versus the Mayor
The Mayor has had enough of this.
Mayor:
Systems.
Information analysis procedure.
To keep things in order.
Mayor:
To maintain to uphold to ensure to improve
To adopt to enhance to restore to approve
To renovate
Esme:
To fall in love
To disrupt to reform
To walk in the moonlight to walk in the mountains
To paint to draw to sew to weld to blow glass
To skate to throw to run to jump to jive
To leap without looking
To be inconsistent
To innovate
Mayor:
To renovate
Esme:
To innovate
6 A kind of consensus
The Councillors have had enough of this.
Councillors:
To cultivate
To love to make amends to restore faith to adopt children
To love to make amends to restore faith to adopt children to cultivate
Mayor:
To renovate to innovate to cultivate
Esme:
To move to reform to shake to show to reveal to ache to love to respect to make to grow to cultivate
A child dressed as mayor exchanges places with the Mayor.
Child Mayor:
Order! Order! Order!
Bloom Brittania
Bloom Britannia
Libretto by Stephen Plaice
Directed by Polly Graham
Conducted by Chris Stark and Mark Austen
Performed by Chiara Vinci, Abigail Kelly, Laurence Panter, Alice Privett, Marcia Bellamy, Jenny Miller, Simone Ibbett-Brown, Bev Lee Harding, Gwion Thomas, Nicholas Morris, Patrick Kealey and a huge chorus
Produced by Barefoot Opera
A post-Brexit black comedy opera set in a seaside town, Melhaven.
And first performed in a seaside town, Hastings, not entirely dissimilar from Melhaven.
Stephen wrote:
For many families in the Fifties and Sixties, a fortnight at the seaside was the highlight of the annual calendar. Before the advent of cheap holidays in Portugal and Spain, the British coastal towns thrived. They represented a kind of utopia, especially for children. The esplanades and promenades, the floral clock and the amusement arcades, the green-painted Victorian shelters with their pewter roofs and diminutive spires, the music of a military band in the public gardens perhaps, or the tacky, balloon-twisting comedian on the open-air stage - these created a paradisiacal playground that the family looked forward to all year. Such memories still spook in the British psyche. This nostalgia is one of the reasons so many seek to retire to the coast, to recapture that now faded holiday atmosphere. But the Brexit-inspired attempt to retrieve these colourful panoramas is as precarious as the sandcastles we built before the incoming tide. As T.S. Eliot put it - you cannot follow an antique drum. The attempt to do so inevitably results in comedy and farce, as it does for the worthies of Melhaven in our opera, when they bid for the money that will reinstate their town as a venue for the Great British Holiday. The true nature of the seaside towns keeps poking through - the dodgy infrastructure and the underlying poverty, the secret economy and the 'under the counter' politics that actually allow the town to survive. Yet in this hopeless contradiction between surface and reality lies a quintessential Britishness, the ability to create humour out of failure, and to carry on until we can turn it all around. I hope it is this spirit that we have captured in Bloom Britannia.
I wrote:
The music of Bloom Britannia is, to say the least, eclectic.
The hen party that marauds through Melhaven brings pop music (and drinking songs). Pop music is usually considered too simplistic for inclusion in opera, but to make a piece about contemporary Britain with no pop music would be weird.
The busker brings the blues – not a British invention, but a form we have embraced, thanks to the Rolling Stones (and John Mayall and Peter Green and Christine Perfect and…..)
The street-sweeper Martina, who is from somewhere in the Balkans, introduces a folk song in a strange lopsided rhythm. (Lopsided rhythms are typical of Balkan music.) The first beat is longer than the second and third: dooo-doo-doo. It’s clearly a rhythm derived from dancing: the first beat is a long step, and the second and third are short. After Martina has introduced this song, lopsided rhythms begin to infect the music of the opera. The Balkans make their presence felt on the British seaside.
The relationship of Martina and Ellie asks the important question: is it ethical to appropriate the music of other cultures? My own answer to this, as you’ve probably guessed, is yes - if it is done with love and understanding and respect.
The heart of the opera, for me, is the song Jack in the Green. It starts as a conventional British finger-in-the-ear folk song, becomes infected with the psychedelic spirit of the Beatles’ Strawberry Fields, turns violent, dangerous, pagan, ecstatic, and ends in a strange rural euphoria. An investigation into the subconscious of a nation full of love and fear and fury.
And then there’s an a cappella patter song. (Ah, the joy of a cappella. Very uncommon in opera. Perhaps composers feel the singers need constant support, and certainly, a cappella is very exposing. But that is its beauty. The most direct musical communication possible.) The Victorians loved patter – high-speed rhythmic vocals. Now it’s in the hands of Dizzee Rascal, Twista, Eminem.
And then there’s a hint of salsa when Cassie is around, there’s cheesy close harmony from the Larks, there’s a sea shanty, there are glimpses of Britten and Britney, there’s a romantic lament by a queen, there’s a revisit of an iconic baroque song… and throughout the flower ladies sing excitable hymns and the children shout exuberantly…… A mad hotch-potch? Or an expression of a gloriously vibrant diverse British culture?