Riders to the Sea by Vaughan-Williams

[T-C]

My three top English composers are Purcell, Vaughan-Williams and Britten.

Ralph Vaughan-Williams is known as a prolific and many-sided composer, that wrote significant works in almost every musical form. He is known less as an operatic composer, but actually he wrote seven operas.

In 1927 he completed his short one act opera Riders to the Sea. The opera is based on a short play by Irish author John Millington Synge that was performed for the first time in 1904.

This one-act tragedy is set in the Aran Islands. The opera synopsis (with courtesy of Wikipedia...):

Maurya, an elderly Irishwoman, has lost her husband, father-in-law, and four of her six sons at sea. Her daughters Nora and Cathleen receive word that a body that may be their brother Michael, Maurya's fifth son, has washed up on shore in Donegal, far to the north. The sixth and last son, Bartley, is planning to go to Galway fair to sell horses. Maurya is fearful of the sea winds and pleas with Bartley to stay. But Bartley insists on going. Maurya predicts that by nightfall she will have no living sons, and her daughters chide her for sending Bartley off with an ill word. Maurya goes after Bartley to bless his voyage.

Nora and Cathleen receive clothing from the drowned corpse that confirms it as their brother. Maurya returns home, claiming to have seen the ghost of Michael riding behind Bartley and begin lamenting the loss of the men in her family to the sea. Nora then sees villagers carrying a load, which turns out to be the corpse of Bartley, who has fallen off his horse into the sea and drowned. The opera closes with Maurya's lament: "They are all gone now, and there isn't anything more the sea can do to me".

Vaughan Williams set Synge's text essentially intact, with only a small number of changes and the opera was performed for the first time in 1937 at the at the Royal College of Music in London. This is not the first RVW work dealing with sea (I presume many are familiar with his first symphony...) but this opera is a model of summarization: it lasts only 38 minutes, but it leaves a very profound impression on the listener (at least, this is my reaction to the work). It is regarded as RVW best operatic creation.

A few months ago, on the Kultur label appeared a DVD version of this short opera. This is an opera film that was directed traditionally but very effectively by Louis Lentin in 1988 (no Eurotrash here...). The Radio Telefis Éireann Chamber Choir and Concert Orchestra are conducted by Bryden Thomson, which had recorded many successful RVW recordings for the Chandos label. Each and every one of the singers is excellent, but one should mention the amazing mezzo-soprano Sarah Walker singing the role of Maurya. Alas, my English vocabulary is poor so I can only partly describe how much her performance moved me. Her final lament in the end of the opera is sung with algid restraint and with a deep and imperceivable feeling of grief that moved me almost to tears.

I highly recommend this short, but wonderful DVD.

[Guido]

Thanks very much for alerting me to this. I had not even considered RVW as an opera composer before. I have just bought the Vaughan Williams EMI 30CD boxed set, which contains the opera in question, and I think most of the others too. Would anyone like to share their thoughts on the rest of them?

[Dundonnell]

"Riders to the Sea" is a wonderful short opera and one of VW's finest compositions!

I find it intensely moving and, like yourself, am moved to tears by the piece everytime I hear it.

However, the DVD you are talking about received a critical mauling very recently- I think in one of the British daily newspapers.
I cannot, unfortunately, remember which and I am desperately trying to recall what it was about the performance the reviewer disliked so much! It cannot have been Thomson's conducting nor was it Sarah Walker's singing. Whether it was the recording quality or, perhaps, the orchestra.....

If anyone can help?

PS: Ah..found it!

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/cd_reviews/article5081021.ece

The synchronisation is out apparently!

[T-C]

I cannot recall any severe synchronization problems while watching this opera, so I really don't know what this reviewer is talking about.

I was probably preoccupied with the music and the excellence of the performance...
I don't think that anyone who is interested in the DVD should worry.

[pjme]

  If you all hurry, you can witness tomorrow the première of "Riders to the sea" at Lille opera house ! I'ts combined with "Songs of travel". See, it's at these smaller operahouses that one often finds the most interesting performances!

http://www.opera-lille.fr/home.php ( for info on RVW)

Peter

[Dundonnell]

I cannot recall any severe synchronization problems while watching this opera, so I really don't know what this reviewer is talking about.

I was probably preoccupied with the music and the excellence of the performance...
I don't think that anyone who is interested in the DVD should worry.

Excellent

[T-C]

I had not even considered RVW as an opera composer before. I have just bought the Vaughan Williams EMI 30CD boxed set, which contains the opera in question, and I think most of the others too. Would anyone like to share their thoughts on the rest of them?

As I said before, RVW is a favorite composer of mine. I don't recall a work that he composed that I really didn't like, and his operas are no exception. Very briefly:

I like very much his Shakespearian opera Sir John in Love. I have two recordings of it: Meredith Davies (EMI) and Hickox (Chandos). It is another Falstaff opera. Verdi's masterpiece is a model of coherence and summarization in the shaping of the drama, and it is a powerful stage piece. I haven't seen the RVW opera staged, and maybe it is less successful from the dramatic point of view, but it has so much beautiful music in it, which is flavored with English folk music like the orchestration of Greensleeves which later appeared as the Fantasia On Greensleeves.

No less charming is his ballade opera Hugh the Drover, which is even more loaded with folk-like music and is a work full of vivacity. There is an excellent and cheap recording on the Dyad series of the Hyperion Label.

The Pilgrim's Progress, RVW last opera, is a much more serious work on a subject that haunted him for thirty years and he produced several compositions about this subject matter. Again very lyrical and beautiful music, with impressive climaxes and with a deep spiritual touch in many pages. I have the Boult recording, which was recorded in the seventies, but still sounds wonderful.

I have the Chandos recording of his fifth opera The Poisoned Kiss. But this is a relatively new recording and I am not entirely familiar with the opera.

[Dundonnell]

The Boult recording of "The Pilgrim's Progress" is indeed a marvellous recording and interpretation of a masterpiece

I am ashamed to say that I don't know "Sir John in Love" or "Hugh the Drover"-opera(apart from Wagner) not really being my thing