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Over the past few years, Opera Factory has mounted admirable productions of Menotti's shorter operas such as The Old Maid and The Thief and The Medium; next week the company tackles what many consider to be the American composer's masterpiece, The Consul.
Back in 1950, The Consul carried off a New York Drama Critics' Award as well as a Pulitzer Prize. For 269 performances, audiences in Broadway's Ethel Barrymore Theatre thrilled and chilled to an opera that presented the issues of the day in stark, moving human terms.
Menotti's inspiration came from meeting an old Italian woman desperately struggling with New York immigration officials. In his opera, she would become Magda Sorel who battles with the grim bureaucracy of a middle European state on behalf of her political activist husband.
Raymond Hawthorne's sure directorial hand has enlivened many operatic productions over the years and he sees Menotti's opera as being about people sacrificing their lives for the good of others.
"It's a very strong and virtuous theme, as well as being one that appeals to a lot of people," he says. "It is both universal and very much of its time, growing out of the terrible situation after World War II with people wanting to get back to their lands and be reinstated as human beings. The sense of loss, the waiting and not having an identity make it fearfully dramatic."
All this is still with us today, Hawthorne suggests, making the obvious connection with the turmoil in the Middle East. However, the shadow of Germany and its role in the middle of last century also looms inevitably over Menotti's opera.
"I didn't get to Berlin until five or six years ago and when I was there I was in anguish," Hawthorne explains. "It's the most beautiful city now but what happened there in the 1930s and 1940s hangs heavily on it. And a sense of guilt is still carried by the new generation. All these images are unavoidable when you are working on The Consul."
A strong cast is headed by Emma Sloman. "She's a singer who really understands the role of Magda and can realise its physical dimension," says Hawthorne. "Not only does Emma's voice fit so well within a fiendishly difficult part, she's not afraid of communicating the passions of the character."
Hawthorne singles out Magda's aria To This We've Come as one of many personal highlights in the score, along with "that extraordinary last act where this great music just soars up, strongly and suddenly".
Both Carmel Carroll, who plays the Secretary, and Mary Newman-Pound, who takes on the Mother, have worked with him before. "They anchor the production," says Hawthorne. "You can say something to them and they get it off the page and off the score immediately."
Hawthorne is enjoying being alongside the less experienced singers. "They are very committed and know how to work, which is a blessing. All in all, they are a wonderful example of the talent coming on."
These days, Hawthorne prefers concertgoing to the theatre and, for him, music and theatre find the perfect union in opera. "In a work like The Consul, you can see the drama in the music and that's what I am constantly pulling the singers towards. I tell them to listen to the music because it's telling you what is going on in the scene. The music is the subtext. It dictates everything."
PERFORMANCE
What: The Consul, by Gian Carlo Menotti
Where and when: Opera Factory, 7 Eden St, Newmarket, Wed Aug 6-16
On the web: www.operafactory.com; www.iticket.co.nz
