The Strangest of Angels: a psychological operatic drama
Anna Leese as Nurse Katherine Baillie with Jayne Tankersley as Janet Frame
Photo credit: Petra Mingneau
A skirl of bagpipes opens the new chamber opera The Strangest of Angels, recently premiered in Christchurch. The brief moment locates the work geographically and emotionally, before woodwinds pick up the melody. We’re in the south of our country and the mood is melancholy, full of the nostalgia the pipes convey.
The setting is simple, stark white walls and a geometric pattern that lights up gradually, ominously implying electric circuitry. The bed, with a figure curled defensively under covers, suggests a hospital. And because we already know that writer Janet Frame is one of the two characters, we know who is there, and why.
The simplicity of gesture in the opening is maintained throughout the work as it develops into an exploration of character and relationship and ultimately a psychological drama. The stories of Frame’s unhappy experiences at Seacliff Mental Hospital are well-known from her writings, and from historical material. In the opera, set in 1952, these certainly are part of the narrative, but the main character is a fictional psychiatric nurse, Katherine Baillie, played by soprano Anna Leese. Well-known early music specialist, soprano Jayne Tankersley, plays Frame.
Both singers inhabit their roles brilliantly. Tankersley’s Frame is passive and thoughtful, a foil for her increasingly unbalanced nurse, while Leese develops and reveals Katherine’s complex, conflicted character through a series of anguished disclosures and odd behaviours. The full-blown “mad scene” in the third part of the opera, while shocking, seems also inevitable.
The vocal lines in the first two scenes are spare, often dissonant, offering great clarity for the text. Occasionally a little more variety might have moved the narrative forward, although Young’s sure orchestration allowed instrumental colours to offer emotional commentary on the singers’ fairly plain lines. The chamber-sized orchestra underlined an edgy, disturbing atmosphere. In Scene 2 the two singers reveal their very different characters and styles in a moving duet.
Leese and Tankersley in duet
…very different characters and styles.
Photo credit: Petra Mingneau
Musical interludes separate the scenes. Hymn-like fragments, passionate strings and a lovely cello solo link the first two. Before the 3rd, a cleverly orchestrated wonky tango with grotesque castanets heralds the opera’s passionate denouement. Leese’s Nurse Katherine implodes in a hysterical aria, an outpouring of distress, watched a little impassively by her patient. Tankersley’s Frame reacts to the welcome news that the threatened lobotomy will not go ahead and sings a peaceful and lovely folk song, more tonal than the rest of the score. Her typewriter is returned and the opera ends hopefully with woodwinds hinting at the Celtic themes of the opening bagpipes.
This opera was created through an innovative collaborative process between Leese, composer Kenneth Young and librettist Georgia Jamieson Emms. Leese, well-known to New Zealand audiences as a fine singer, is a doctoral candidate at Otago University researching co-composition between singers and composers. Shortly after moving to Dunedin, Young was awarded the Mozart Fellowship in 2020. Leese approached him about an opera project involving Frame’s story, and suggested Emms, experienced in opera production as singer, translator and adaptor, as librettist.
The three met around a kitchen table in Dunedin, says Young, and “nutted out what we wanted to do”. Leese asked that the work include extended vocal techniques and, as part of her doctoral studies, a role for her in its composition.
Young and Emms then visited Oamaru to research Frame’s story, and went to the site of Seacliff Hospital. The forbidding Gothic buildings have gone but the pair were enormously affected by what Young describes as the “negative spiritual energy” of the site. “I was bent double at one point,” he tells me. “It was so debilitating. And Georgia wept the whole time.”
Anna Leese, who composed the vocal part of the 3rd scene where her nurse character breaks down, with Tankersley as a bemused Janet Frame.
Once Emms had completed the libretto, Young agreed that Leese should set the long section of the final scene where her nurse character breaks down. “She sent me sound files of her singing this wonderful script, I transcribed it and put the orchestral palette around it.” He describes the collaboration as “bloody rewarding”. He shared each section of the opera with Leese as it was written, and she commented with her “singer advice” so he could make small adjustments. “It was a learning curve for both of us.”
Kenneth Young, composer and conductor
…a fine performance.
Photo credit: Petra Mingneau
With Young on the podium, paying close attention to the details in his score, and principals of the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra in the pit, it was a fine performance. Both singers were outstanding; Leese, her strong, beautiful voice combining with passionate expression, was compelling throughout while Tankersley’s pure clarity of tone and gentler musicality were a perfect contrast.
Eleanor Bishop’s sure direction and the simple, eloquent design and lighting by Rachel Marlow and Bradley Gledhill brought the audience a profoundly thought-provoking operatic statement. Fortunately, more performances are planned, the next during the Dunedin Arts Festival in October this year.
NZ Opera is challenging New Zealanders’ preconceptions about what opera is and can be, telling our own stories by commissioning new work at pace. The Strangest of Angels has the expected operatic elements of passion and relationship, but we are far from the 19th century romantic story with a beautiful, tragic heroine inevitably dying in the end. The lavish sets and full-voiced well-costumed chorus are also nowhere in sight. These elements have not been abandoned by the company, who have scheduled Verdi’s Macbeth for later this year, but in an important strand of work NZ Opera is offering more intimate and no less intense operatic experiences in chamber-sized productions like this one. Hats off to them!
The Strangest of Angels, composed by Kenneth Young (with Anna Leese), Georgia Jamieson Emms (libretto), Eleanor Bishop (director), Kenneth Young (conductor), Rachel Marlow and Bradley Gledhill (production design), Nic Smillie (costume design). Cast: Anna Leese as Katherine Baillie, Jayne Tankersley as Janet Frame. Commissioned by Anna Leese and presented by NZ Opera and the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra. World premiere at The Piano in Christchurch, May 27 & 28, 2022.
The Strangest of Angels will be presented by the Dunedin Arts Festival, NZ Opera and the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra on October 12 & 13, 2022. Tickets here.