A tent in a meadow in Friesland as an opera theatre: that was the conviction of director Corina van Eijk of Opera Spanga in 1989. She directed Donizetti’s in the backyard of her house in the Frisian village of Spanga L’elisir d’amore where a pond, ditch, drawbridge and bushes formed the pastoral decor.
The premiere went off without a hitch: sunset as expected, nice summer evening. But the next day it started to rain. Instruments had to be covered, singers stood in swampy land. “That is why a tent had to be built, so that we can always continue playing,” says Van Eijk now, almost 35 years later.
In the meantime, the summer operas of Opera Spanga or ‘the Verona van Weststellingwerf’ can no longer be ignored. Always artistically daring, like Donna Giovanni with an insatiable woman in the title role or a Carmen as a super-powered heroine, who nevertheless meets her amorous demise. Opera on location in a meadow makes demands that would be unthinkable in stone opera houses. But that’s the charm. Or, as soprano Aylin Sezer says: “Sometimes you swallow a fly in the middle of an aria or a sheep bleat while you are singing your most beautiful dramatic climax.”
According to conductor Tjalling Wijnstra, no performance is the same. “Every night is different. When the weather is damp and clammy, the bows of the violins become lethargic. That is why many violinists bring two sticks to be able to switch during the break. Dry weather makes the timbre clear. Or take the temperature: we start at half past eight with, for example, 24 degrees and by the end at half past ten it has dropped to 15 degrees. You have to keep voting, it is hard work.”
But don’t think that Van Eijk and her team prefer to be in the concert hall. During one of Tchaikovsky’s rehearsals Yevgeny Onegin held now, the tarpaulin flaps loudly and rhythmically in the strong wind. It seems to interfere with the dramatic love story of the indifferent Onegin who brusquely rejects Tatyana’s budding love.
Before I get up, I listen to the frogs in the ditch
slurry tank
The clattering of sails is reminiscent of the extremely heavy summer storm Poly. Everyone is still very frightened: on Wednesday morning, July 5, Poly almost fatally hit the tent. Farmer Geert put a slurry tank in front of it to break the force and kept the tent under control with the flail of his tractor. The cast and crew tent and caravan park in the yard was badly battered. “Still,” says Van Eijk firmly, “I’d rather have a storm than an artistic director. The freedom of working here on location, far from traditional opera houses, is an enrichment for us.”
The difficult technical conditions lift Spanga’s opera theater to a high level. The charm is that the unpredictable nature co-directs. Sezer, who plays the role of Tatjana, refers to a bat that is precisely at the farewell aria ‘Addio, del passato’ from La traviata zigzag above her head. Baritone David Visser, in the role of Onegin, sings himself “between the tractors and in the smell of engine oil, because the changing rooms are too crowded.” Moreover, he continues, “before I get up I listen to the frogs in the ditch.”
Mezzo-soprano Itzel Medecigo, who sings Tatjana’s younger sister Olga, is convinced that “the entourage of nature, the sunsets that tell the story and the connection with the outdoors are essential to her. In established opera houses, all windows are closed and the air conditioning does not do your voice any good.”
Essential in almost every Spanga version is the difference between inside and outside. That was hot Carmen so, in La traviata and now again. The tent is partly open at the rear and offers a rural view. That is not just local colour. The proscenium, painted in bright colors and geometric patterns, is the domain of the two sisters Olga and Tatjana. In the seclusion of the country house, Tatjana reads her love novels and dreams away from great passions. Onegin rises from that distance, he is a restless traveler who thinks he knows everything about the world. As soon as Tatyana hears his footsteps, she is filled with excitement.
This has been powerfully set to music by Tchaikovsky, who himself wrote the libretto inspired by Pushkin’s verse novel of the same name. Tatyana runs back and forth full of restlessness, Onegin is her dream prince. She sends him a fiery letter, but Onegin rejects her. Then Sezer sings: “Why, why did you visit us? In the remote corner of this forgotten village I would otherwise never have known you, nor would I have been spared bitter torments.”
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19th century machinery
According to co-set designer Edu de Jonge, positioning the tent with sight lines in the distance was quite a task: only the Arcadian atmosphere was allowed to be visible. And to make the set feel nineteenth-century, the designers looked at textbooks of classical theater technique: “I make it snow at the end by rubbing long planks with holes in them against each other, using old-fashioned machinery. Snow comes out of a container hanging above it. This creates the whirlwind of snowflakes.”
Conductor Wijnstra emphasizes the flowing musical lines. The crucial plot twist is that Onegin meets Tatyana again after four years and realizes that he is in love with her after all. He sings to her, but both his text and score repeat Tatjana’s letter scene, only the instrumentation is now more angular. Wijnstra: “The question is, is that cynicism or an expression of love? Or is he in love with the infatuation itself?”
The answer is up to the spectator. Who knows, the elements play a role – or the atmosphere around the operator. Rolling rain, storm or a sultry summer evening: it all gives meaning.
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