Grimeborn – The Medium / The Wanton Sublime, review: Austerity opera for hipster kids

Musically, this opera is not inaccessible, says Barry Millington, but drama is a problem
Stunningly accomplished: American soprano Hai-Ting Chinn as Mary
Barry Millington27 August 2015

Grimeborn, as its satirical name implies, sets out to offer in Dalston an operatic experience you wouldn’t get at a more prestigious address on the South Downs. The Arcola’s intimate, low-ceilinged Studio 2, with its mere strip of a stage, ensures that no audience member for this double-bill is more than a few metres away from the singer, stunningly accomplished American soprano Hai-Ting Chinn.

In Peter Maxwell Davies’s rarely heard The Medium, the voice is unaccompanied throughout: this is truly opera for the age of austerity. Musically, though, it is not inaccessible. More of a problem is the drama. The title character is a medium or soothsayer of some sort: she begins by pretending to read the palms of three members of the audience. But it’s difficult to tell whether she’s psychologically disturbed, reliving past traumas or simply enacting roles of characters invoked from the ether. Perhaps we’re supposed to be left guessing.

Similar mystery surrounds the central figure of The Wanton Sublime, who represents aspects of the Virgin Mary. Anna Rabinowitz’s text explores the human longings of an idealised, iconic figure, complemented by Tarik O’Regan’s inventive and attractive score, played by the Orpheus Sinfonia under Andrew Griffiths. The handout told us everything we needed to know about the participants — but nothing about the text, too much of which was inaudible.

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