The opera began with the figure of Esther (Lorna Day),
dressed in white, stood at the back of the performance space singing a Jewish
song. This character, symbolising the faith of the Jewish people, remained
silently onstage throughout the performance before returning near the end. Day
began by singing acapella but the orchestra soon began to play a disconcerting
underscore to the lullaby. This contrast of Day’s delicate singing and the more
abrasive music, which at times drowned her vocals out, set the scene for the
rest of the opera: happiness and life were about to be replaced by misery and
death. As Esther repeated her song, Magda began to reminiscence about how her
and her cousins “were once a family before they came.” After her introductory
performance, which Vallis delivered with sincerity, the scene moved back to
when Magda was young as she and Sara, Hanna, their friend Hans, and Dieter,
Sara’s boyfriend, return home from a night of dancing and singing. As Hans,
David Crane possessed a strong baritone voice and impressed both in this role
and in his later role as a Prisoner. Michael Jones offered strong support as
Dieter but Taylor and Finsbury truly shone as Sara and Hanna respectively.
Taylor was able to give a strong vocal performance against the often
overpowering musical accompaniment. Finsbury performed a wonderful lullaby at
the end of this opening scene which would have broken even the stoniest of
hearts.
From this joyous opening, with light and bouncing
music, things soon turned bleaker. The family are instructed to evacuate the
city and Dieter believes that his position in the German army can protect Sara,
but this turns out to not be the case. A Nazi Officer arrives and forces the
family out onto a packed train heading east. As the Officer, Einar Stefansson
certainly looked imposing but he did seem to struggle to get his bass baritone
voice across against the music which, in places, was similar to Bernard
Hermmann’s theme from the film Taxi Driver – jagged blasts of brass and
thundering percussion. The two percussionists, Tim Williams and Abigail Flood,
were certainly kept busy throughout the performance!
The brief scene which presented the women’s journey to
the concentration camp contained what was perhaps the most distressing song of
the opera, where Sara recounts how people cramped around her in the train
carriage were literally dying on top of her. This sombre scene was then
juxtaposed with a couple of moments which skirted close to venturing into the
grotesque, given the nature of the piece. A song recounting how the deported
Jews were treated well while cameras were there to film was performed while the
three male cast members (dressed in their camp clothes for the following scene)
wore clown masks and danced. While this may have been because of logistics, the
sight of a man in a Nazi guard uniform and one dressed as a Jewish prisoner
from a concentration camp wearing clown masks was somewhat incongruous. The
following song, when the women have arrived at the camp (denoted by a light
projection on the background of barbed wire, simple but effective), performed
by the Camp Doctor (Stefansson), was incredibly jaunty but took on a chilling
hue as he sang of “Life or death” being all the same in the camp.
The subject matter of the opera meant that the ending
was never going to be an entirely happy one and Magda is the only one who
survives. But the ending of the opera, where she is reunited with the ghosts of
those she loved and knew, comes after a stirring song where she sings her
warning of sitting in silence against injustice and division, which was undoubtedly
given extra weight by the recent furore over the treatment of families of
illegal immigrants in America this very week. This coincidence adds to how important
it is that we remember the lessons of the Holocaust and The Path to Heaven does
provide some insight into those dark days and carries an emotional weight
because of it. It did feel perhaps slightly too long and may have benefitted in
places from a tighter focus on the emotional trauma the Holocaust engendered.
Nonetheless, it was a quality production, with the orchestra expertly conducted
by Mark Heron and exceptional vocal work from Taylor, Finsbury, and Vallis as
the leads.Reviewer - Andrew Marsden
on - 21/6/18
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