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| Simone Riksman and Andrew Goodwin (photo by Peter Hislop) |
Devised and directed
by Christopher Latham
The High Court
October 10
Reviewed by Len Power
The second of 2017’s ‘The Flowers Of War’ concerts is an
opera called ‘The Healers’, devised and directed by Christopher Latham. It has been created substantially from music
by female composers such as the sisters Lili and Nadia Boulanger and Cecile
Chaminade and also includes music from male serving composers who were wounded
or killed, such as E.J. Moeran, Georges Antoine, Andre Devaere, Fernand
Halphen, Arthur Bliss, Ivor Gurney and Australia’s Frederick Septimus Kelly.
It tells the story through music of the love between a
Flemish nurse and a dying Australian soldier, and includes two historical
French figures, Maurice Jaspart, a young clarinettist who lost his arm serving
at Verdun, and the composer, Joseph Boulnois, who served as an orderly, dying
from the Spanish Flu, three weeks shy of the Armistice.
Performed in the foyer of the High Court of Australia in low
lighting to create an atmosphere of a field hospital lit mostly by hurricane
lamps, the acoustic of the High Court added a haunting, dream-like quality to
the show. Singers, Andrew Goodwin,
tenor, and Simone Riksman, soprano, gave fine performances as the wounded
soldier and the Belgian Nurse.
The music was beautifully performed by Christopher Latham,
violin, David Pereira, cello, and Caroline Almonte, piano, with additional
performances in some pieces by Tom Azoury as the amputee Maurice Jaspart and
Catherine McCorkill, both on clarinet.
There was some awkwardness in the occasional moments of
spoken dialogue by the musicians. The
simple hospital setting with red poppies strewn on the floor, the nurses in
white uniforms dotted amongst the audience and the low lighting created a fine
sense of time and place. The linking
dialogue was unnecessary.
A sense of opera was achieved most effectively during the
set of songs by Lili Boulanger, Ivor Gurney and Frederick Septimus Kelly when
the soldier and the nurse declared their feelings for each other through the
songs.
This was a very moving evening of music and a fitting
tribute to the composers, soldiers and nurses of the World War One period to
whom we owe so much.
This review was first
published in the Canberra City News digital edition of 11th October 2017.
Len Power’s reviews
are also broadcast in his ‘On Stage’ performing arts program on ArtsoundFM 92.7 from
3.30pm on Mondays and in ‘Artcetera’ from 9.00am on Saturdays.
