‘Ole’ by Opera UK: 3rd April 2008

Seems this blog is going against chronology… Never mind, I just keep remembering things at random.

I went to see this ‘Opera’ as I wanted to know what kind of thing a Zarzula is. It was a UK premiere of a Spanish-influenced music show, so they featured not only Spainish but also South American music.

Maybe because it was the first showing, or for some other reasons, the performers – dancers and musicians especially – didn’t really give a convincing performance. The Zarzuela (or Zarzuela-ish) show consisted of several scenes, featuring an opera singer as the main character and a couple of dancers. It was supposed to be a lyric-dramatic show like an operetta with a taste of good old Spain. Each scene featured different Hispanic music tunes or songs, including some flamenco repertoires (they didn’t sound like flamenco very much, though).

I suppose the opera singer from Puerto Rico was OK, or could have been better if her colleagues did better. But the dancers were disappointing. It was possibly because musicians had a difficulty learning flamenco rhythm… A male dancer didn’t really dance well. A female dancer failed to convince the audience, especially when she played castanets poorly. She kept doing simple pan, pan, pan, instead of combining pan, ta, ria, tin, etc. effectively. The least impressing thing was she kept producing sounds of uncontrolled ‘clink’: the sounds which were not made by controlled plays but made accidentally.

A brave choreography for a man and a woman fighting was interesting to watch, as it was like a wrestling rather than dancing. Overall, however, the dance performance was not really impressing. It was a pity, but this show could improve.