Keeping it light ...
Post categories: BBC Radio 3, BBC Singers, Light Fantastic
|16:32 UK Time, Thursday, 7 July 2011
BBC Philharmonic/Jon Super
From Burglar Bill to the Pirates of Penzance - Margaret Cameron of the BBC Singers reviews some the choir's Light Fantastic experiences ...
I read in the paper last week that a challenge on the Guinness world record for the largest number of ‘pirates’ in one spot had just been attempted in Penzance, where a total of 8,734 piratically clad people turned out to the event.
Gilbert and Sullivan had their own brush with piracy of a less romantic kind: after problems with companies putting on unauthorized versions of HMS Pinafore in America from which they received no income, they wished to prevent the same fate befalling their new opera, Pirates of Penzance, due to open in New York on December 31st 1879. So, in order to secure the copyright they arranged for a ‘scratch’ performance to be put on the day before at the Royal Bijou Theatre, Paignton by a D’Oyly Carte troupe who were performing Pinafore in the area. They had one day to rehearse, no costumes or set and the performers read from the score. Sounds familiar...
For the BBC Singers, our journey into the murky underworld of crime and derring-do (purely in musical terms of course) began with a concert in Knightsbridge, given as part of BBC Radio Three’s Light Fantastic Festival and conducted by our principal guest conductor, Paul Brough. The central piece in the programme was Joseph Horowitz’s colourful portrayal of a classic bible tale of deliverance: Captain Noah and His Floating Zoo, with a libretto by Michael Flanders. Originally conceived as a light-hearted oratorio for children, the Singers performed it in a full choir version with Richard Pearce on the piano and Michael Bundy striking fear into our hearts in the role of God. Also featured was a lesser known piece by Rutland Boughton – Burglar Bill, (A Choral Tragedy for Mixed Voices). It is a sentimental tale, finely set by the composer, of a cockney burglar interrupted in his work by the daughter of the house, an angelic, lisping child, and the music required the Singers to characterize their very different voices.
It was good for us to locate our inner thespian, as the next day we were headed for Glasgow, where we were to put on a Come & Sing Pirates of Penzance event, with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrew Manze, and thereafter to Manchester to do the same again with the BBC Philharmonic conducted by Richard Davis. We have already put on a number of similar events featuring masterpieces of the choral repertoire and they have proved to be very popular, but this was the first time we were to join forces with an orchestra and attempt a dramatic work. The Singers may be renowned for disciplined singing, generally while standing still, but we were more than ready for a bit of swash and buckle.
One of the many good things about a Come & Sing event is that we get to make music alongside the people who normally comprise our audience. Some of them have been singing the music of Gilbert and Sullivan all their lives (I sat next to a lady who met her husband whilst singing G&S). Others were attempting to follow a score for the first time. They were eased into the day with a vocal warm-up and then the conductors introduced some of the main choral numbers. More detailed work followed in sectionals led by BBC Singers' Rebecca Lodge and Neil MacKenzie. The participants came back buzzing from the experience and ready for a final rehearsal with orchestra and impromptu performance.
Members of the Singers stepped forward to take the solo roles, the actor in them now fully unleashed. Stephen Charlesworth honoured G&S tradition by adding a topical verse of his own creation to the Major General’s famous song, complete with regional variations, including:-
I know the difference between young Cameron and Miliband;
And here in Scotland too, the SNP and Alex Salmond
And for Manchester:-
I know the difference between young Miliband and Cameron;
There's football too, Man City blue and charming Mr Ferguson
We rose to the challenge of getting round Gilbert’s virtuoso patter and enjoyed giving voice to Sullivan’s memorable melodies. All around, faces beamed with the sheer pleasure of listening to both orchestras’ expressive playing of the brilliant score.
Sullivan was delighted by the success of Pirates at its official New York premiere. He wrote to his mother, ‘the music is infinitely superior in every way to Pinafore ‘tunier’ and more developed’. I certainly enjoyed the musical excursion into Sullivan’s ‘tunier’ world and the whole weekend whizzed by with ‘admirable velocity’.
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