United Kingdom Philip Glass and Robert Moran’s The Juniper Tree: Soloists, Chorus and Instrumentalists, Northern Ireland Opera / Frasier Hickland (conductor). Grand Opera House Studio, Belfast, 24.2.2024. (RB)
Production:
Director and Set design – Cameron Menzies
Costume design – Arlene Riley
Lighting programmer – Anne Marie Langan
Hair and Make-up design – Nuala Campbell
Movement director – Jennifer Rooney
Production assistant – Matthew Bradley
Cast:
The Husband – James Cooper
The Wife – Mary McCabe
The Son/Juniper Bird – Rachel Heater
The Step-Mother – Jenny Bourke
The Daughter – Petra Wells
The Goldsmith – Paul McQuillan
The Cobbler – Ryan Garnham
The Miller – Desmond Havlin
Mama Bird – Niamh Lavery
Northern Ireland Opera’s new staging of Philip Glass and Robert Moran’s The Juniper Tree is a small-scale chamber production. Most of the cast were drawn from the company’s Artist Development Programme which is designed to nurture and bring on new and emerging talent. The one exception was guest artist, Mary McCabe, who played the wife. The small Studio theatre which forms part of Belfast’s Grand Opera House provided a perfect setting.
Glass and Moran jointly wrote the music for The Juniper Tree in 1985, two years after Glass’s Akhnaten. The libretto by Arthur Yorinks is based on one of the darker fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm. Each composer wrote alternating scenes and utilised each other’s themes to achieve structural unity. One of the most striking things about the work is how seamless and coherent the music sounds given this unusual background. The fairy tale on which the opera is based is particularly dark and disturbing. A mother dies giving birth to a son and the father remarries. The wicked stepmother murders her stepson and serves him up in a stew to his unsuspecting father. The boy’s stepsister buries his bones under a juniper tree, and the child’s spirit returns as a singing bird which then drops a millstone on the stepmother and kills her. The boy is then miraculously restored to life in the bosom of his family.
Cameron Menzies’s production was centred around a geometric shape which encompassed the dark foliage of the juniper tree. The chattering of the birds was heard through the thick foliage and the chorus used exaggerated movements including hand and arm gestures to signal their presence. The key events of the opera, including the death of the mother, the murder of the boy and the death of the stepmother, all occurred within this confined space. The bloody events of the opera were suggested rather than openly depicted although they were still dramatically very striking.
The performers all had whitened faces and dark eye make-up very much in the mould of the replicants in Blade Runner. The whimsical costumes were perfectly in keeping with the source material. The wicked stepmother looked particularly garish with her frizzy red hair and the streaks of red underneath her blouse. Following the death of the son, the father was seen eating his remains with a skeletal hand being used as a spoon. When the son appeared reincarnated as a bird his arms were covered with brightly coloured plumage. As the production went on lighting was used to change the colour of the foliage: there were tinges of purple at the beginning, and at one point it was black before reverting to green towards the end of the production. The production was a masterclass on how to achieve an optimal dramatic impact with limited resources.
The established guest artist, Mary McCabe, brought a rich vibrato and tonal beauty to the mother’s aria. The rest of the cast of new and emerging performers all gave strong, highly accomplished performances. Jenny Bourke captured the dark malevolence of the stepmother; she was particularly impressive in the jealousy aria capturing the stepmother’s descent into dangerous obsession as the music became more and more animated. She was less strong at the bottom of her vocal register and occasionally some words were lost. James Cooper gave an accomplished performance as the father although I would have liked to hear more vocal resonance and a greater variation in tone colour. Rachel Heater captured the subdued innocence of the son before being transformed into the dazzling Juniper bird. Her aria, ‘Mama killed me, Papa ate me. Sister bundled my bones under the juniper. Look, I’m a pretty bird’ was one of the high points of the production. Petra Wells brought a disarming innocence to the role of the daughter and she sang beautifully. The rest of the cast and the chorus all acquitted themselves well.
The small band of six instrumentalists led by Frasier Hickland did an excellent job conjuring up atmosphere. They produced a striking range of colours and sonorities. I was impressed with the way in which they were able to ratchet up dramatic tension at key points in the score.
Overall, this was a compelling performance with some very fine playing and singing.
Robert Beattie