Queen of Spades

Will Lacey and I went to the opening of HGO's Queen of Spades last night. Will had seen the production before - it was originally done in Wales by Richard Jones: I'd never even seen the opera. One of those increasingly rare moments when I get to encounter a classic piece that I don't know at all (it's about twenty-five years since that happened with my last Shakespeare!). I know Onegin very well, having worked on and written about the Glyndebourne production - and there were times when this evoked memories of that.... Tchaikovsky clearly had a thing about old nurses putting young girls to bed. But generally this piece is much more nihilistic, fatalistic and altogether strange than the earlier opera.

This makes it an ideal piece for a Richard Jones production - and, as he often does, he's set it in an early 20th century grubby world, with more than a nod to Freud's Vienna and Berg's Wozzeck. There are some stunning theatrical moments - the old Countess dying like Marat in a bath; her ghost returning as a huge skeleton; Herman's nightmare being viewed from above, with the bed vertical on a painted perspective back-cloth. And the tenor, Vladimir Galouzine, is extraordinary. After the first scene, Will whispered "That has got to be the loudest voice in the world". Not only that, but he is also an incredibly intense actor, and, in spite of singing more than everybody else put together, he doesn't sound remotely tired at the end. Wow.

It was also great to see the HGO Chorus doing a different show. They are every bit as good in this as they are in our Xerxes.

Funding for Palestine

We're planning a possible new project in collaboration with Ashtar Theatre in Palestine. If we're to pull this off, we really need to get another EU grant, and the deadline is fast approaching. I'm trying to co-ordinate this at the same time as rehearsing Xerxes. I realised yesterday that there are lots of documents requiring signatures from our partners - and have just spent a couple of hours emailing them all out for printing, signing, and sending on. It's a logistical nightmare with limited time available to pull it off. Technical rehearsals start tonight, but at least that means I get a day off tomorrow and some free mornings over the weekend, when I can work on this. Coffee may become quite important, I think.

The opera is getting more exciting by the day. Sonia and Will are very interesting on the process. Apparently, it's quite rare for an opera director to examine the text with the singers. Most "direction" is actually choreography. So, I gather I'm making some ripples here - though in a good way!

Xerxes in Houston

This has nothing at all to do with Border Crossings: it's completely a freelance job. I'm in Houston, Texas, directing Xerxes for the opera company here. It's the old Hytner production, which I've revived several times in London - but here it doesn't have the status of something from the company's stable, so we are able to be much more free and inventive. I also have the most amazing cast of opera singers I've ever been lucky enough to work with. Susan Graham is Xerxes, and David Daniels is Arsamenes. Probably the greatest mezzo and certainly the greatest counter-tenor in the world. Then there's Laura Claycomb, Heidi Stober and Sonia Prina - every single one of them world-class voices. And nice people with it. Mind-blowing.

I'm enjoying the working relationship with Will Lacey, the conductor. He's very open to a proper creative dialogue, so we can make the music work dramatically, and make the drama work musically. It's a rare privilege to be allowed in to discussions about ornamentations, and to work so closely on the musical, as well as textual, considerations in the Recits. And, in Handel, Recit is the key to everything.

Houston itself is also mind-blowing, but in a very different way. There's little that's picturesque or culturally elegant about the city - it exists because there's oil in Texas, and money all around it. Every day I walk past the old Enron building. Halliburton is here (although the official headquarters moved to Kuwait just as Obama came into office...). The airport is called George Bush International. You get the picture? I do feel quite foreign here!