Bizet's The Pearl Fishers at the English National Opera, by Huntley Dent

Bizet's The Pearl Fishers at the English National Opera


The Pearl Fishers
An Opera in three acts, by Georges Bizet
English National Opera

Cast:

Leila - Hanan Alattar
Nadir - Alfie Boe
Zurga - Roland Wood
Nourabad - Freddie Tong

Director - Penny Woolcock
Conductor - Rory Macdonald

Not enough pearls. It has become fashionable for opera houses to invite movie directors in for some cinematic sprucing up, hence Rigoletto turned into a Don Corleone clone, Die Zauberflote with puppetry courtesy of  The Lion King, and so on.  But when English National Opera invited independent filmmaker Penny Woolcock to stage George Bizet’s rarely seen Pearl Fishers, she didn’t look to Hollywood for inspiration but rather to something like a public service message from UNICEF. When the curtain rose we had been helicoptered to Ceylon, the right setting but updated and now seriously impoverished. On a wharf lapped by the sea were jammed native washer women wringing out their bright saris, sadhus bathing from a bucket, Hindu devotees performing temple rites, and anonymous stragglers emptied out of a kebab shop on Brick Lane. When two Western tourists show up handing out alms, they get eager takers. I stared doubtfully. Exotic doesn’t mean Third World.  But Woolcock had no political agenda. The extras mingled in Franco Zefferelli fashion, pretending to occupy themselves with everyday life despite the presence of opera singers quayside.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller