EIF reviews: The Galloping Cure | Jason Max Ferdinand Singers
A fairytale-like opera about the opioid crisis is delivered with enormous power and conviction.
OPERA
The Galloping Cure ★★★★
Festival Theatre, until 12 August
Whether lavish, large-scale opera is the right medium to tackle the global opioid crisis is clearly a moot point. In The Galloping Cure, however, composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek have found a tremendously powerful and – for the most part – convincing way to articulate the issue’s contradictions and complexities, aided in large measure by director Tom Morris and designer Rebecca Ringst’s perceptive and visually breathtaking staging.
Local doctor Theresa is struggling to soothe the pains of her townsfolk, until the charismatic Lucky Mack arrives with a carousel of magical horses. Just one ride – first time free, naturally – brings pain-free euphoria, and even Theresa finds herself endorsing this unlikely cure, until its true cost becomes evident.
Mazzoli and Vavrek’s fable maintains an almost fairytale sense of unreality, though the true subject under discussion is always dreadfully clear – overly so in the third act, in fact, where Grand-Guignol gruesomeness rams home their meaning rather too brutally, and dramatic impetus seems to almost grind to a halt.
That’s the inevitable come-down, however, after the wild, hedonistic excess that closes Act II, evoked in Mazzoli’s pounding, glittering score and the frenzied, kaleidoscopic energy of Lucy Carter’s dazzling lightshow. Daniela Mack is persuasively nuanced as a deeply conflicted Theresa, even if her velvety mezzo is sometimes submerged in Mazzoli’s dense orchestral textures, and baritone Justin Austin ably conveys the threat lurking beneath Lucky Mack’s oily allure. Susan Bullock, too, commands the stage as imperious Ivona, and finds the pitch-black comedy in the opera’s grisliest scene.
Woofing dogs (a nonetheless entertaining Catriona Hewitson and Edward Jowle) and bleating sheep introduce a somewhat jarring note of whimsy that distracts from the focus and intensity elsewhere. Scottish Opera’s Orchestra under Stuart Stratford, however, is on blisteringly fiery form. Despite its less persuasive closing act, The Galloping Cure has much to say on an urgent issue. It’s a work of enormous passion and conviction, delivered with power and insight. David Kettle
Queen’s Hall
The title of the first song in John Stodart’s Choral Mosaic – With Joyful Song – could well have been the overall billing for the Jason Max Ferdinand Singers in their Queen’s Hall performance on Monday. In a joyous and life-affirming selection of what they do best, this powerful group of singers from several different states across the USA, sing with what all choirs aspire to.
Blend, balance, intonation and diction were all spot on under the discreetly nuanced direction of Ferdinand, whose tight control brought every feature of the music to life. If at times higher voices were a shade too shrill, compensation came from the silky sonority of the lower parts.
While the first half was over an hour of joy, praise and many hallelujahs, with the traditional spiritual Battle of Jericho a particular highlight in its light and clearly articulated detail, the second half was more reflective. Giving new meaning to surround sound, it opened with the 27 singers arranged all the way around the stalls seats, allowing individual voices to be heard close up in Ken Burton’s Journey. Ferdinand’s own Safe in His Arms was heartfelt and touching, as fitting to his youngest child’s birth being its inspiration. Carol Main
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