Just from time to time – in fact rather not often these times – something completely surprising emerges from an evening in a live performance hall. Practically forty many years into an interest in new music which has concentrated on every single type of western music from Gothic to minimalism (possibly not this sort of a fantastic leap!), serious surprises are now really uncommon and frequently come about on hearing a get the job done by a youthful composer, someone just setting up to find a voice. But Xavier Montsalvatge died aged ninety in 2002 soon after a life time extended than most as an active composer, but handful of outdoors his indigenous Catalunya ended up then common with his tunes. Given that going to Spain I have actively sought programmes that showcased his more and more well known output and have been amazed with the eclecticism of his type, typically neo-classical, but normally laced with preferred tunes, folk track and jazz, and from time to time even offering far more than a hint of Bartokian toughness. But absolutely nothing from the piano works and parts for strings I have read up to now could have prepared me for the working experience that was Montsalvatge’s opera, El Gato con Botas, Puss in Boots.
Certainly an opera for little ones and with a textual content by Charles Perrault which faithfully follows the acquainted pantomime version of the tale, we know from the very first rhythmic string figures, with their shifting harmonies and ambiguous keys, that we are to expertise a perform which exists concurrently on different levels, identical in some strategies to Janacek’s Crafty Minimal Vixen, but lighter in its touch, a Miro to Janacek’s Dadd.
The do the job lasts just an hour and has five scenes. In the very first our Puss is lazing on a cushion in entrance of the tv, occasionally featuring her skin-restricted costume with its hanging baubles in languorous strains to the audience. The little ones were being captivated from first to final, mesmerised by this excellent participating character, elegantly and excitingly portrayed and sung by Marisa Martins. More mature customers of the viewers may well have experienced other issues in intellect, these types of is the mother nature of pantomime. It is in this very first scene that her new sequinned, high heeled and pointed boots are presented, along with a cloak to emphasise her pinkness. The king and princess lament the condition of the kingdom. Evidently it really is a dull everyday living when there are no wars or civil strife. Neither are there husbands, it looks. Puss with boots appears and is employed. The miller, a suitor for the king’s daughter, strips to his shorts and can take a swim in the river and instantly will get into problems.
Puss summons her trusty white rabbits who, till now have balletically moved props and rearranged the kindergarten’s alphabetic furnishings. They don snorkels and goggles and rescue the lad. The king is overjoyed and the princess’s eyes are observed to bulge a small. And then the ogre seems to tough items up a little bit. In his lair, he laments the fact that the higher everyday living might have rendered his nose the colour of an aubergine. Puss sorts anything out, of program, whimsically staying away from the lion into which he transforms himself, then wooing the canary which is his subsequent trick and eventually, of study course, working (offstage) with the radio-controlled orange mouse which was the variety she asked for him to choose. Are all ogres that silly? In any case there’s a marriage ceremony and evidently all reside fortunately at any time right after, together with Puss who gets her television again.
So that is the tale. It is pantomime, but it is fantastically completed and it really is loaded with superb imagery. Marisa Martins as the Puss is really fantastic in the job. She has a dancer’s use of the body together with coquettish expressions and interpretive gestures which feel to draw the tunes fairly than abide by it. And she also has that unmistakable expertise to sing beautifully and act evidently easily at the very same time. Enric Martinez-Castignani as the king provides an fantastic portrayal of a bumbling fool whose deafness potentially hides his knowledge. Miguel Zapater as the ogre is fantastic. He turns into a authentic pantomime character who admits he has had a handful of too quite a few glasses of wine.
Maria Luz Matrinez as the princess carries off the obvious naiveté of the character with aplomb and her voice shines in a function that has to bear the sledgehammer imagery of a marriage dress of pure white hung with dazzling crimson balls. How’s that for subtlety! And if David Menendez had stripped down to his swimming trunks to take his dip in the river in an more mature-style opera house, no doubt a segment of the audience would have termed for a diversion of the eyeglasses otherwise permanently educated on Pussy’s pinkness. His playing of the function was a fantastic mix of clown and suitor and his singing was great.
But underpinning all of this was the songs, which was brilliantly expressive, a deceptively basic still eclectic combine of recitative, total orchestra and inventive ensembles. The trombone and tuba figures that accompanied the ogre ended up a touch of genius. The recitatives had been beautifully solid as not quite Mozartian, although the neo-classicism was normally delving into fascinating harmonic shifts. And there was usually the trace of a cat’s paw flick in the strings to permit Puss to attract us all in with that playful flick of the hand and wrist. In the pit the Planet Youth Orchestra played flawlessly and Josep Vincent, who is certainly just one of the brightest and most completed of younger conductors, is certainly destined for world recognition.
This was tunes and effectiveness of the quite maximum regular – and all taking place in this progressively sophisticated small town of La Nucia, just exterior Benidorm. What a great place to stay!
