Finding the lightness in Harry Joy
When the late Richard Hickox offered Peter Coleman-Wright the role of Harry Joy in Brett Dean and Amanda Holden’s Bliss, he’d just been offered the role of the Forester in Covent Garden’s production of The Cunning Little Vixen, which also opens this month.
Faced with a difficult choice, Coleman-Wright decided to go with Bliss “because it was a brand-new Australian piece, by an Australian composer, based on an Australian novel, with Opera Australia, and it was a huge role, a great role to get my teeth into”.
Now having lived with the music for almost two years (he performed Harry’s three big arias, Songs of Joy, with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Simon Rattle in 2008), Coleman-Wright says the music has become second nature. Dean’s orchestrations are “extraordinary”, he says, and audiences will be “amazed” by the orchestral colours and the combinations of instruments.
Although the baritone loves the challenge of new music (“It forces you to use both sides of the brain"), he acknowledges that it’s “always hard for audiences to hear it for the first time and take it on board”. “Bliss’ music is academically demanding – the rhythms change all the time and the pitching is awkward. It’s not desperately atonal but you’re definitely not singing Mozart.”
He learned the score through constant repetition, and in this he was aided by repetiteur Jennifer Marten-Smith. “She’s phenomenal. She helped me to get the whole shape in my head, so I know where I’m going with it. Of course, once the orchestra starts rehearsing with the cast it’s a whole new challenge because you hear the music in a new way.”
As part of his preparation, Coleman-Wright listened to Brett Dean’s other music, “so that I understood the way he wrote”.
Likewise, Dean made it his business to get to know the type of performer Coleman-Wright was. “He came to Arabella so that he could get an idea of where my vocal strengths were. He didn’t change the score to suit me, but I told him that although I didn’t want to sing very high or low all the time, climactically I could do it, and he went with that. It’s a joy having the composer in the room with you.”
Coleman-Wright has worked with librettist Amanda Holden many times. “My very first production at the Coliseum was a Barber of Seville for which she’d done the English translation. I’ve subsequently done many operas with her. She’s great. She’d come to all the rehearsals and listen to how the translation sounds. One voice might find a particular vowel easy while another might not, and she’d change it so it’s easier for a particular voice or way of singing.”
Dramatically, Coleman-Wright was led by director Neil Armfield, with whom he met in the States last December. “Because Harry is so multi-faceted – he’s this nice bloke, then he’s mad, then he’s all self-righteous and sacks everyone, then he meets Honey and turns again – I needed to have some sort of idea of where I was going to go with him. Neil said: ‘We have to find the lightness in Harry, otherwise it could be very, very heavy, and too bleak.’”
To Coleman-Wright the opera is funnier than the novel. “There are some bizarre situations – the Bedlam scene for example – and if you do them right they can be very amusing.”
Technically there are a few tricky moments, the most memorable being when Harry is in his hospital bed, from where he sings a very big scene without much support. “I really have to concentrate to get that right.”
But despite its challenges, the role of Harry Joy is “a massive vehicle” for Coleman-Wright. “Like Cheryl, I’m a singing actor who throughout my career has tried to show diversity as a performer. I’ve done everything from Scarpia and Sweeney Todd to Balstrode. The role of Harry Joy enables me to explore a completely different way of acting.”
Bliss being a brand-new opera, there are no precedents. “You’re creating the blueprint for it. If this work is as great as I’m anticipating and hoping it will be, this production will be part of history.”