A glorious, desperate love story with a dark twist, set in and starring a memorable river created by a trio of fabulous sopranos, Dart’s Love is a treat for the eyes and ears – and it may even inspire you to try wild swimming for yourself. A magical highlight of the Tête à Tête Festival at Riverside Studios.
The River Dart at Thornhill
Dart‘s Love opens with three sparkling girls suspended on swings over the stage, asleep. Sighs, kisses, gulps, rustles, laughs and yawns emanate from the trio, slowly at first, then building into a pattern, a rhythm and finally a song. The three sopranos (Rebecca Askew, Rebecca Thorn and Hazel Holder) are the voice of the River Dart, sleepy and relaxed, glorying in her own beauty: “fish flash in my crystal waters”. Their voices echo, shadow and lap against one another, and we quickly see they are the river, too, as the lazy motion of their swinging evokes the river’s roll and swell. The use of the trio is in the best tradition of Celtic ideas of female divinity, where what is female is expressed as three: the crone, the matron, and the virgin; and it is also the natural musical habitat of Kerry Andrew, the composer, who is one of the three brilliant singers who make up the Juice Vocal Ensemble. She turns out also to be a talented composer.
It’s surprising, when you think about it, how many operas are about, or feature, water. Rusalka is a water nymph. The Volga surges through Janacek’s Kát’a Kabanová. Der Ring opens in the Rhine. So the idea of an opera about wild swimming should not astonish us: rivers are natural musical subjects, particularly when combined with love, desire and death in the best operatic tradition (and Dart‘s Love gives us all of those). Human beings, moreover, swam in fresh water for thousands of years before swimming pools were invented; yet there somehow remains an air of the revolutionary about wild swimming: an intoxicating gulp of the wild. Kerry Andrew brings us into this world so vividly that, as the Swimmer (the gorgeous Grant Doyle) arrived on the riverbank, I found myself holding my breath as he jumped in.
Dart‘s Love was inspired by the legend of the River Dart: “River Dart, River Dart, every year thou claims‘t a heart.“ We soon see the Swimmer arrive, to the River’s ecstatic delight; then, to her horror, a few minutes later his Girlfriend (brilliantly played by Claire Wild) turns up. The furious River, in a brilliant witch’s tirade, summons every brook, stream, pond and lake to her aid, and drowns the unsuspecting girlfriend. Victorious, the River exults that she again has the Swimmer to herself, in a brilliant display of inhuman, uncomprehending, obsessive love. But the Swimmer, heartbroken, leaves vowing never to return; and the River is left, slowly, to acknowledge her loss. It is a short, but dramatic work.
The music is stunning, full of gorgeous harmonies underpinned by warm touches of electric guitar and bass clarinet, over which the voices float and intertwine. The singing was powerfully good; the balance between the trio and the instruments took a little time to warm up at first, but patience was soon well repaid. Besides the trio and the two solo singers, music was provided by CHROMA (Stewart French on guitar, Stuart King on clarinet and bass clarinet, and Steve Gibson on percussion), with Ian Ryan on piano, conducted by Timothy Burke, all of whom played with real skill and feel, achieving an astonishing array of sounds. The imaginative range of Dart‘s Love is truly exhilarating.
Tamsin Collison’s libretto is brilliant: simple, elegant, noble words, well-phrased and well set, and I enjoyed every one of them. The opera is short, and the libretto is accordingly lean, but she deftly creates character and sets tone in a small space: it is intensely satisfying, rather like a great short story. Tim Meacock’s set design was unforgettable, and the swings were a particularly inspired choice. The costumes – from sparkly dresses to the high-heeled trainers and pink swimsuit worn by the hapless Girlfriend – were perfect. Above all, a sense of real relish and joy radiated from the stage; it was clear everyone loved what they were doing as much as we did! Bill Bankes-Jones, director, has created a fabulous production of Dart‘s Love of which Kerry Andrew can be rightly proud. I can’t wait to see her next one. And, in the meantime, I have a sudden urge to swim…
Read my review on One Stop Arts here
Tête à Tête Opera Festival
Riverside Studios, Hammersmith
