Opera is Alive

From the Financial Times





Access all arias>By Amy Raphael>Published: October 8 2005 03:00 Last updated: October 8 2005 03:00>>
Rachid Sabitri grew up in Orpington, Kent, with football on his mind. He was small, skinny and promising. As a boy, he pretty much had his life planned out: he would be playing for Morocco in the World Cup in 2002. Life, however, has a habit of springing surprises. When one of his classmates fell ill, Sabitri was asked to take his place in a school play. There was a girl he wanted to walk home, so he agreed. He had to act and sing, to prance around the stage, to risk the wrath of his football mates. He loved it.
In 1996, when Sabitri was 16, he attended a local drama school while playing football semi-professionally for a youth team. He had a choice to make - by 2002 would he be playing for Morocco or appearing on stage? He was accepted at drama school in Guildford and eventually the football dream faded. He took some choir classes, did a music theatre course and later performed in a West End musical.
Although he turned down offers to appear in musicals that demanded Arabic or Asian actor-singers - notably Bombay Dreams - he was flattered when offered the chance to appear in Tangier Tattoo, a new show at Glyndebourne, as an enigmatic character called Idris. "Where I come from, the arts is for ponces," explains Sabitri over lunch in one of the restaurants in the rambling grounds of the Sussex opera house. "Orpington is very much 'Chav Ville'. It's full of uneducated, uncultured kids. I've never seen an opera before - all this is new for me. I was really intimidated before I arrived but now . . . now I'm really excited about Tangier Tattoo."
Sabitri is a member of what Glyndebourne itself refers to as opera's "Missing Audience". At 25, he falls into the 18 to 30 age group that opera has failed to entice through its doors. Although eight years the other side of 30, I too am part of the Missing Audience. I have been to perhaps a dozen operas. In Italy the romance of the occasion made it a fantastic experience, whereas at the English National Opera I was fascinated for a while then found myself surreptitiously trying to tell the time under dimmed lights.
The truth is I'd rather go to a rock gig. There's part of me that for some reason feels ashamed of this, as though I ought to enjoy this particular form of high art more. However, it would take a lot to get me back to opera in this country: maybe a set designed by David Hockney or a classic opera given the modern treatment. Such as American director Peter Sellars' Così Fan Tutti, which is set in the chrome and neon surroundings of a seaside diner.
So if I am reluctant, what of younger people who have never even been to an opera? The truth is they are intimidated by the institution, by the ticket prices, by the posh frocks and bow ties, by the champagne intervals, the old operas sung in foreign languages that may have universal themes but by their very nature don't address contemporary issues. Young people have little reason to make it to Glyndebourne, the ENO or London's Covent Garden.
Glyndebourne, which celebrated its 70th anniversary last year, sees opera in crisis and is trying to address the fact that, in order to survive, the genre has to progress. Not at the expense of the greats - the likes of Mozart, Verdi, Puccini and Janácek - but rather to complement the masters. Which is why, later this month, it is staging Tangier Tattoo.
A self-consciously contemporary story, it is a thriller about forming cross-cultural relationships in the Moroccan city against a backdrop of drugs, guns and sex. Disappointingly, Glyndebourne policy dictates that no one can see shows in rehearsal, so I know only what I am told by the cast and production team or what I can find on the official website. Everyone at the opera house is very hyped up by the idea of Tangier Tattoo, from the good- looking, trendy cast to the director Stephen Langridge, who is more what you might expect from an opera - softly spoken, earnest, with an expensive shirt and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the art form
The word "excited" crops up time and again but, to be brutal, just how exciting is the Missing Audience going to find Tangier Tattoo? By all accounts it's pacy, dramatic and probably very watchable, but it sounds a bit like West Side Story at the opera - a point with which Langridge gently but firmly takes issue.
In which case why not go to the far more accessible West End? The Missing Audience would probably prefer to see Mamma Mia than anything at the opera or, like me, spend the same amount of money on a pop gig (Tangier Tattoo ticket prices range from £5 to £25).
Yet Glyndebourne is determined to get it right. Tangier Tattoo is a direct response to research undertaken by composer John Lunn and librettist Stephen Plaice into the issues voiced by the students and young people they talked to across Sussex. Recurring topics arose: travel, adventure, the thrill and stimulation of meeting people from different ethnic backgrounds and struggling to communicate in a climate of cultural misunderstanding.
Plaice says the brief was to "produce a page-turner for the 'lost generation'" and decided Tangier, on the brink of European and Islamic worlds, was a perfect post-9/11 environment. Tangier Tattoo is the tale of Nick, a backpacking English student who meets and falls for Nadine, an American tattooed with an ancient symbol that means "perfect love". The couple meet outside a café and become caught-up in a drug feud involving a briefcase holding $24,000.
In a bizarre twist, the core of Plaice's story - militant fundamentalists take control of the production of the huge supply of marijuana grown in the Rif mountains to the east of Tangier - turned out to be true. Two years after he started work on the opera, Newsnight reported that jihadists were taking over the marijuana trade. "A spooky coincidence, perhaps, except that it was entirely predictable politically," says Plaice.
It is telling that both Plaice and Lunn's backgrounds are in TV drama. Plaice has written more than 20 episodes of The Bill as well as producing scripts for Ballykissangel, Dreamtime and Murder Squad. Lunn composed the soundtrack to, among numerous others, 2,000 Acres of Sky and Hamish Macbeth. As a partnership, they seem ideal to take opera off its pedestal as the ultimate high culture pastime and push it into the world of popular culture - if popular culture is willing to embrace it.
John Lunn says, quite simply, that "opera has to progress to survive". During our phone conversation, Lunn seems too cool for opera. Whereas director Langridge appears to be pretty much submerged in the world of opera, Lunn knows his pop music and was in an experimental pop group in the 1980s called Man Jumping.
As we start talking, Lunn sounds like he's given up before anyone has even seen his new work. "There are three problems with the type of opera I'm involved with: reaching the 18- to 30-year-old audience; knowing modern music critics will absolutely hate it; knowing the conventional opera audience will call it the death of opera."
If it's so tough, why does he persevere? He responds as though it's an odd question: "It's a great buzz. We have to be able to allow music to change us in some way, whether it's PJ Harvey or Beethoven." Lunn also thinks that works such as Tangier Tattoo can make a difference. "It's a great story and should seduce people on that level. It's full of twists and turns. I've composed lots of electronic music. It's very modern. The dialogue is how we speak - very modern-day speech rhythms. I've tried to make it as clear as possible and everyone is wearing a mic so they don't have to project as much."
I log on to the website and hear the snippets. Here I find examples of world music, electronic, Madonna in an eastern phase and a bit of 80s synth band Depeche Mode. It certainly sound interesting, makes me curious. But there's also the worry that Madonna and opera equals Evita, which isn't a good thing.
There's something about Lunn I instinctively trust, however. He tells a revealing anecdote: "Zoe, the last opera I did with Stephen [Plaice], was like popular music to me. But we took some samples of it to a secretarial college in Croydon and they thought it was weird. And yes, that was slightly frustrating. With Zoe and Tangier Tattoo, we did a lot of research into the community and had long chats with young people. We discovered that few people of that age group listen to music other than when they are getting ready to go clubbing or are actually out clubbing."
The notion of taking the samples to a secretarial college may be funny, but it also illustrates how extreme Glyndebourne is willing to be. In this instance, the target audience just wasn't interested. It sounds like "opera by market research" that still isn't succeeding. Glyndebourne will stage three nights of Tangier Tattoo and then it will go on tour to Woking, Norwich, Milton Keynes and Stoke-on-Trent. Taking the opera to the people is a great idea, but will the public really go?
The last two operas created by the trio of Stephen Plaice, John Lunn and Stephen Langridge were Misper and Zoe. Misper had a supporting cast of 120 children aged from 9 to 13 while Zoe had a cast aged between 16 and 20. Even Langridge volunteers that most of the seats were immediately snapped up by family and friends.
Tangier Tattoo certainly boasts a diverse cast: there are opera singers who have been instructed not to sing opera; musical actors; actors and pop singers. As Langridge observes, "It's not a great slab of modernism, nor is it a kind of postmodern Philip Glass-type experiment. It's just a different way of thinking."
To ensure that everyone knows about this different way of thinking, Glyndebourne has appointed an out-of-house PR company for the first time in its history to promote Tangier Tattoo. Getting Taylor Herring on board is an undeniably smart move where the Missing Audience are concerned. The west London "media and entertainment specialist PR agency" wields a great deal of power in the world of popular culture. Clients include Robbie Williams, Abi Titmuss, Big Brother and TV's Richard & Judy (I can hear regular opera-goers groaning).
Taylor Herring has already worked with the National Theatre on developing younger audiences and managing director James Herring was keen to add Glyndebourne to his roster. "Taking on a project of this nature was too good to miss - we felt it was very important that Tangier Tattoo be credible to avoid a 'yoofing up' backlash. Glyndebourne is a great British institution. It could quite easily sit back on the support of its myriad members; the summer season sells out in hours of going on sale. As such, the company should be applauded for looking forwards with an objective to make opera accessible to all. How many times have we heard critics scoff that opera is the sole preserve of the upper classes?"
Glyndebourne in particular has a tradition that reinforces this image: the picnic. The Glyndebourne Festival runs between May and August when the glorious grounds are open to the audience, who often bring lavish picnics and plenty of champagne. Roland Davitt, who has the lead role of Nick the English backpacking student in Tangier Tattoo, has sung in the chorus at Glyndebourne for years and knows its idiosyncrasies well. "It can be quite stuffy, especially the festival part. You see people bringing butlers to serve them dinner."
Davitt, 29, who was brought up in Dublin and was training to be an accountant before leaving to do a music degree, says he was always into musicals until a singing teacher introduced him to opera. Although Tangier Tattoo is his first lead role, he says it is hard to imagine his family or friends warming to the idea of coming to Glyndebourne. "To them opera is shouting men and screaming women with their hands up in the air."
There is this notion that opera is about big fat guys singing in German. He smiles. "Exactly. But look at Jerry Springer - The Opera. That's irreverent and ironic. It uses the traditional Brünnhilde singer, and it's a cracking show. But I think Tangier Tattoo is trying to be faithful to the opera genre without taking the piss out of itself." As a 30-year-old American, Katherine Rohrer, who plays Nick's love interest Nadine, has a similar perspective even though she has a different background, having been an artist in residence at San Francisco opera house for the last few years. "There is an absolute need for Glyndebourne to keep the art form alive, to take it forwards. And to find a way in which to do that."
Part of Glyndebourne's tactics in selling Tangier Tattoo is by using that old adage: sex sells. Davitt says he had to get to know Rohrer very quickly. "We were thrown in at the deep end in terms of publicity photos. We had hardly met when I had to take my top off, be covered in glycerine and pose on a bed with Kat for a photo shoot. Nice to meet you."
Rohrer is pragmatic. "Whatever sex or sexuality is displayed, it's not the biggest part of this opera and it's certainly not gratuitous." Some of the publicity shots for Tangier Tattoo may show a dishevelled Rohrer nuzzling into Davitt's worked-out chest, but as Davitt himself points out: "If they used a photo of us sitting on a bed looking bored and boring, younger people might think, 'Oh, that's opera, I won't bother.'"
Director Stephen Langridge says the sex is just part of a "damn good story". He is obviously more inspired by the music. "At the front of the piece, an Arabic pop singer comes on stage and sings in Arabic. That hasn't happened on this stage before. And before the Arabic pop singer is the huge shoot out at the cafe. It's all very exciting."
And he genuinely thinks Tangier Tattoo can change attitudes to opera. He was recently asked to attend a conference in Valencia to discuss the new work. All the heads of the big European opera houses are coming over to Sussex to see what the fuss is about. "Glyndebourne and Britain certainly lead the way in terms of considering accessibility for everyone and relying on contact with the community," Langridge says proudly. "It's not a case of saying, 'We're terribly posh but we'll pretend we're not for a bit'. It's a case of acknowledging that we're not reaching a whole section of society and we ought to be serving these people."
It seems that the public is responding, with ticket sales going well. Of course it's not clear who the public is and it won't be until Tangier Tattoo opens, but we do know that the University of Sussex has bought up roughly half of the auditorium on the second night for their students and alumni, a show of loyalty appreciated by the opera house.
After its three dates at Glyndebourne, Tangier Tattoo will tour alongside Le Nozze di Figaro and La Cenerentola. As composer, John Lunn's name looks conspicuous next to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Gioacchino Rossini, but it adds a certain welcome edginess too. Look on the Glyndebourne website under The Festival Season and it says "evening dress is customary". Under Touring Opera Dress Code, it offers "the dress is informal".
The Missing Audience, in their informal jeans and trainers, with their nights in spent watching reality television, action-packed DVDs or nights out clubbing, are opera's Holy Grail.
Rachid Sabitri says he would never pay around £50 to £100 to go to the opera, even now that he is appearing in one. Roland Davitt tries to tell him about queuing up at ENO at 6am for cheap seats, but he doesn't show much interest and I feel the same. I have been infected with Glyndebourne's enthusiasm for Tangier Tattoo and am curious to see it, but would I be so keen if I hadn't met the cast and the crew? Would a brief plot synopsis and a poster prove seductive, albeit a poster of anapparently post-coital couple? I'm still not sure. Opera will never be the new rock for me, but I'm willing to take a chance on Tangier Tattoo.
If I remain a little sceptical, and if Sabitri himself is an opera virgin, what about his old football mates? Is there any chance they will make it to Tangier Tattoo? "I can only judge from my own response to being here: I'm really intrigued how it's going to turn out. If it can engage me, there's hope it can do the same for my mates. It's a leap of faith but, you know, why not?" He grins optimistically. "They might just like it."



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