Paul Corfield Godfrey (b. 1950)
Blithe Spirit (2020/2021)
An opera after the improbable farce by Noël Coward
Ruth Condomine (soprano): Rosie Hay
Edith, the maid (soprano): Emma Mary Llewellyn
Charles Condomine (baritone): Julian Boyce
Dr. Bradman (tenor): Simon Crosby Buttle
Mrs. Bradman (mezzo-soprano): Stella Woodman
Madame Arcati (mezzo-soprano): Helen Greenaway
Elvira Condomine, Charles’s deceased former wife (mezzo-soprano): Helen Jarmany
rec. 2020/2021, Volante Opera Productions Studio, UK
Libretto enclosed
Prima Facie PFCD222 [2 CDs: 127]

A note from Volante Opera Productions:
“We freely admit to you that this recording is not live or a studio recording. We did not have the means to employ a full orchestra to release and record this work. What we do have is the small recording studio we use at Volante Opera Productions with room for only one person at a time in the booth. The orchestra for this recording was created using sampled instrument sets. These instrument sets use samples of real instrument sounds which are then sequenced in the recording software ready to be played. It is a long, slow process preparing the scores this way but with patience the results are as close to real, without having an actual orchestra in the studio, as can be. The purpose of this demo recording is simply to get the piece heard. The ideal would of course be to hear it performed by a full orchestra but until this happens we hope that this recording will serve.”

I have to admit that if I hadn’t read the above note I wouldn’t have suspected that this was anything but a real orchestra playing, and my admiration for the strenuous and time-consuming work that lies behind this result is unlimited. I was not familiar with Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit, premiered in 1941 during the most critical months of WW2. I don’t think his works have had much exposure in Sweden in later years, but of course, Coward is a well-known name and many of his works have been played here in times gone by, including Blithe Spirit. He also visited Stockholm on several occasions. Blithe Spirit has been staged innumerable times, and was also filmed by David Lean in 1945. Often has the story been changed and amended, but Paul Corfield Godfrey and Julian Boyce decided to go back to Coward’s original thoughts, and the only alterations are some abridgements, merely to keep the length of the opera manageable. Singing a text always takes a lot longer than speaking it – and Coward’s witty wording needs to be articulated as clearly as possible. 

Here is a brief overview of the story, to give a taster but not reveal too much of the outcome: novelist Charles Condomine invites the medium and clairvoyant Madame Arcati to his house to conduct a séance, hoping to gather material for his next book. She manages to conjure forth the ghost of Charles’s first wife, Elvira, who makes continual attempts to disrupt Charles’s marriage to his second wife, Ruth, who cannot see or hear the ghost. This leads to a series of complications that become more and more absurd – but entertaining in a surrealistic way. The music, which begins in a light-hearted mood, soon becomes darker, gloomier, and one feels that a catastrophe is near. 

If this feels disheartening at the first glance, I’m sure the sceptical reader will feel something quite different, once he has started listening. The opening with its beautiful and life-enhancing melody is a vitamin-injection of the first order, and has the same effect – at least on this listener – as some of Rossini’s best overtures, or maybe a better simile, the sophisticated  prelude to Verdi’s Falstaff. The music is expertly orchestrated, and it flows effortlessly in a steady stream of notes that is minimalistic but ever-changing. A composer I reviewed some years ago objected to the description minimalism, and maintained that it actually was the opposite, maximalism. Irrespective of label, it is music that is constantly on the move and seamlessly develops into self-contained interludes of great importance and beauty. I even maintain that the orchestra is the main protagonist in this opera. 

One reason for that is that the vocal music mainly carries the action forward in recitatives. Occasionally the tempo slows down and the music is condensed into lyrical scenes, not exactly arias and duets but moments where the human hearts are in the foreground. It should be said at once that there is very little of warmth and humanity in the dialogues between Charles and his two wives but rather plenty of vitriol and pinpricks – so there is very little need for bel canto singing. Instead, the roles need singers with excellent articulation and the ability to characterise. Julian Boyce who sings Charles, has the largest burden and he is truly excellent. His baritone voice is also the easiest to catch while his two wives’ higher pitched voices can be more problematic for listeners with reduced hearing. The most enigmatic of the characters is Madame Arcati, the medium, but she is also the most fascinating and the one who gets the best opportunities for grand operatic singing – but strangely enough in the bonus track, immediately after the end of the opera. The reason is as follows:

In the opera Madame Arcati puts on a shellac record on the gramophone to get in the right mood for her seances. In the original play, Noël Coward wanted a recording of Irving Berlin’s Always, but Paul Corfield Godfrey didn’t feel that the melody gave enough material for variation, and besides that, he didn’t want a melody from a third-hand composer, so he chose Sunsong from an uncompleted musical from the 1970s, which is not, however, heard in its complete form until the exorcism at the end of the opera. For those who want to hear the original song Madame Arcati sings it as an appendix, and Helen Greenaway is magnificent here. The singers are all members of the Welsh National Opera and have all adopted the idiom perfectly. 

I dearly hope that some adventurous producer after listening to this demo will be motivated to stage it. The potential is very obvious as presented here. The libretto, which is enclosed with this issue, is very explicit with stage directions, the recording is also littered with sound effects, doors slamming, trays with drinks falling to the floor etc, and at the very end when the flat is literally being destroyed, pictures falling from the walls, one feels the chaos approaching. Dear reader, turn down the light and treat yourself to a really eerie and ghost-ridden evening. You won’t regret it!

Göran Forsling

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