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REVIEW: Dome: Being Both

May 15, 2015

7cea3f33f52a76a1e8f139650d30f83d_0Being Both

Alice Coote

Brighton Dome

Festival

As one of the great vocal artists of her generation, mezzo-soprano Alice Coote is renowned for her Handelian repertory and the portrayal of roles originally written for castrati. With lots of indication of depth and analysis about this most curious habit of mixing up of gender roles bringing insight into the various ways that playing a man playing a women playing a man etc, can affect and influence the singing of some of the great baroque parts Coote promised much. What we got was very little other than a collection of some superb Handel Arias, mostly sung well.

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I have heard Coote sing Handel many times, in many guises and portraying all genders and she has always been superb; stomping around the stage roaring or floating about threading her shimmering diamond voice onto gossamer and letting it hoover around the auditorium. This show in the dome seemed more of an indulgence for her and I am surprised that Director Sarah Waters pandered to such caprices. With a few silent helpers in white and some unoriginal props, a bronze breast-plate, an unused spinning wheel, an apron and chalk board to hang around her neck after taking a good long while to scrawl the words ‘I am’ there was much to distract from the singing.  With three sign painters daubing words on a huge back screen behind the orchestra this added another element of distraction to the show, this eventually emerged as a Louise Hayesque affirmation. We literally watched paint dry Ms Waters….

Harry Bicket was superb, delicately reaching for every nuance and shimmer of this superb music and coaching a delicious performance out of The English Concert, they were on top form and electrified the auditorium from the off.

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So with this crepuscular abstract staging, black costumes and quite a lot of climbing, rolling and bobbing about Cootes did her best to fill the huge stage, but I would have preferred her to be less animated and sing with her usually astonishingly huge verve and excitement and there were not enough moments where I thought she really, really shined.

This humble critic is a huge Handel fan and I wept not once. Not even a tremble, or wetting of the eyes and I was so looking forward to the show, but for some reason it didn’t all gel together. However when Cootes concentrated and let the music dictate her presence she was superb, allowing the breadth and majesty  of her voice to fill the huge space and in the end I just shut my eyes and let the music flow over me.

Being Both was followed by a talk from Alice Cootes which I didn’t attend; I got good feedback about the discussion. She also wrote this very interesting article in the Guardian yesterday about her playing men on stage, so certainly has some seriously insights into gender performance.

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