Culture highlights 2024: A post-apocalyptic Wales and An Enemy of the People
Cath Barton
I love novellas, and in October I was so pleased to have the opportunity to hear Rhiannon Lewis talking in Waterstones Abergavenny about her new book The Significance of Swans with her very enthusiastic editor from Y Lolfa, Carolyn Hodges.
Having heard Rhiannon read from the book enhanced my subsequent experience of reading it. It’s set in a post-apocalyptic world, but this is still Wales, and a joy for that; Rhiannon evokes a sense of place most skilfully, as well as giving convincing voice to an ‘ordinary’ woman who, for all that, is actually extraordinary in surviving in the changed world in which she finds herself.
Just over fifty years on from its première, Benjamin Britten’s last opera, Death in Venice, received its first performance in Wales in March this year, in a new production from Welsh National Opera.
Seeing and hearing it was a highlight of my year for several reasons: the bravura performance by tenor Mark Le Brocq – on stage almost throughout – as the mentally-tortured Gustav von Aschenbach; the beauty of the aerial work by members of Cardiff-based No Fit State Circus; and the shimmer of the production, as if we were in the Venice Lagoon.
The true value of opera
But I nominate it as one of my picks of the year for more than that, for something which is essential to any WNO production, something which is too easily and too often taken for granted and which is now under threat because of the failure of both UK and Welsh Government bodies to recognise the true value of opera – that is the crucial contributions of the WNO Orchestra and Chorus to this outstanding production.
In another memorable musical event, Cardiff’s BBC Hoddinott Hall hosted a concert in November entitled Dancing and Deities. In this the BBC National Orchestra of Wales gave us the sparkling dance of Respighi’s suite La boutique fantasque, based on piano pieces by Rossini. If this was familiar territory, it was made the more enjoyable by the flamboyant, vivacious direction of Italian/Turkish conductor Nil Veditti. And in the second half we heard more from Rossini – his Stabat Mater, not familiar to me apart from the aria Cuius animan sung tenderly by the South African tenor Levy Sakgapane. It is a joy to see and hear such musical talent.
Matthew G. Rees
In this dramatic, domino year of three Welsh First Ministers when the word “pollution” has achieved such prominence not only in politics but in alarm rightly raised at the sullied state of our rivers and shores, the revival by a Welsh theatre company of a play by the Norwegian writer Henrik Ibsen seemed timely indeed.
An Enemy of the People was first performed in Oslo (then Christiania) in 1883. Not a few think it as “relevant” now as it was in Ibsen’s day, if not more so.
Its story concerns a doctor’s discovery of serious contamination in the waters of a struggling town hoping to revive itself as a spa – and attempts by figures in authority and those with vested interests to cover the news up.
Swansea’s Fluellen Theatre company performed the play to full houses at the city’s Guildhall, employing the auditorium of the historic council chamber to good effect.
Amid the marbled pillars in that crucible of old Copperopolis, theatregoers were given a sense of the challenges involved (and the courage required) in speaking truth to power.
Director Peter Richards delivered a compelling production shorn of some of the play’s more repetitive passages. Brendan Purcell excelled as Dr Thomas Stockman, admirably supported by a committed cast.
This was a strong and (in its choice of venue) innovative week for theatre in south-west Wales. Full marks to Fluellen.
On the books front, my congratulations to Newport-based small press Three Impostors on an impressive new edition of Arthur Machen’s novella The Terror. The volume features art by Jon Langford. Some may feel its story – written at the time of the First World War – chimes with the unease of our own times.
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