Gloria – A Pigtale (Hull Truck – tour)

Incredibly, it’s nearly 20 years since I saw HK Gruber’s Gloria – A Pigtale performed in the name of Opera North at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. All I can remember is a general sense of disarming musical fun. It made little impact, I recall; and, mysteriously, the Opera North handbook published in 2003 and listing all productions makes no mention of it!

Frederic Wake-Walker[[/search]], directing Gloria for his Mahogany Opera Company, seems to be thinking in terms of a major re-launch. I don’t know if the text or music has changed: certainly the orchestral instrumentation is the same, as is the use of Amanda Holden’s translation of Rudolf Herfurtner’s libretto. But Mr. Wake-Walker is determined that, though slight in length (75 minutes), this is an opera to be noticed. Indeed, prompted by a Q&A in the programme he even discusses whether it’s a great opera. It isn’t.

The first impression is the witty and distinctive look of the stage (design Mamoru Iriguchi), the forestage ringed by bead curtains made up of sausages, the band ranked above in their white dinner jackets looking like the dance band at the Tower Ballroom. The orchestral prelude, rather in the style of 1920s Paris, sounds good but looks less so, with rickety dances in sausage costume. Then, as the action gets serious, we move on to pigs in tutus. It must have seemed a great idea in rehearsal, but extremely silly things have also to be fun and this production takes its humour too seriously.

The plot of Gloria, incidentally, is a parody of all those tales of the down-trodden female being rescued by Prince Charming. Gloria, the pig with the gorgeous blond tresses, despised by her fellow-pigs for her glamour and her romantic dreams, becomes the chosen one of the Butcher (bad idea) and, ultimately, fairly happily, of the wild boar, Rodrigo – real name Rodney.

There are plenty of funny walks and funny accents; we have glove puppets and inflatable pigs; Hollywood parodies keep breaking in, together with local Hull references. Though it’s rather sweet that the production adapts to its various ports of call, it has a touch of the "Hello, Glastonbury!" about it.

The music trades in pastiche rather than parody, for much of the time to great effect and always superbly played by CHROMA under Geoffrey Paterson. The brass-and-sax-heavy nine-piece also features notable contributions from tuned percussion. What we might call the Nativity Riff builds irresistibly through a sort of fugal doo-wop, the final ensemble’s sense of crescendo owes as much to Count Basie as to Rossini. However, the individual vocal lines for Gloria can be unforgiving and the always excellent Gillian Keith gets fewer words across than we need. In a selfless and talented ensemble Sion Goronwy‘s very human (porcine?) Wild Boar stands out.

– Interview – 'How does Frederic Wake-Walker manage it?'