KEY POINTS:
A touring production of Lyell Cresswell's Good Angel, Bad Angel revealed just what can be achieved with a cast of three, a quartet of instrumentalists and a minimal set.
Wellington's Not in My Back Yard company has come up with a workable alternative to big-budget opera in the grand style. Adapted from Robert Louis Stevenson, this grim Yuletide tale involves the murder of a jeweller and its even grimmer consequences.
Cresswell writes with precision and economy; there is a no excess fat on this score. Key moments, such as the villain's singing of a rosier future to come and the daughter lamenting her father's death, are unaccompanied. Craig Beardsworth and Frances Moore enhanced them with a combination of impeccable vocal technique and theatrical instinct.
Accompaniments are ingeniously evocative, carefully moulded by conductor Justus Rozemond. Hadleigh Adams' jeweller contemplated his wealth over pizzicato strings, with mercurial descant from Tui Clark's bass clarinet.
The traditional Coventry Carol laces the score in various guises and instrumentalists often have to convey a character's emotional state - violinist Sanyuri Ando and cellist Paul Mitchell shone here.
Ron Butlin's libretto is loosely based on Stevenson, but Cresswell finds inspiration in the original story Markheim, with Stevenson's "intricate chorus of [clock] tickings" caught in various scorings for pizzicato strings.
The sure hand of director David Lawrence showed in the sustained intensity of the various character confrontations.
Musically, Good Angel, Bad Angel offers approachability without compromise. The carol theme and a revellers' jig are frankly tonal; the jagged lines and metres of Moore's first aria not so far from Bartok. Throughout, the composer extracts a full range of emotional colours from insinuating chromatic lines.
Vocally this production was unswervingly professional. Moore introduced the opera with caustic cynicism ("Christmas Day, my getting-the-hell-out-of-here day") flowering in her later coloratura. Craig Beardsworth had Markheim spring to life through the baritone's attention to nuance and detail. The rich-voiced Adams, though physically far removed from Stevenson's "little pale, round-shouldered dealer", made the eerie Visitant into the sort of chap nobody would want knocking at their door.
