Straying from the brief

‘Praising! That’s it!’ Rilke exclaims in one of his ecstatic Sonnets to Orpheus. It seems to be an unconditional injunction, but he hadn’t tried being an opera critic, and I’d like to see anyone even try plausibly to praise either  of the two productions I saw this week. One was new and absolutely terrible, the other was old, neglected and may or may not be good — it wasn’t easy to judge. Tête à Tête is an opera company and enterprise that I have often admired and enjoyed, but its speciality is very brief works, which could hardly be staged alone, and which don’t demand of their librettist and composer that they write an extended piece with all the problems that involves. Inevitably, some of the composers whose work it puts on get the idea that, once a ten-minute piece has succeeded, they might have a go at something bigger, and in the case of Circus Tricks, text by Michael Henry and music by Adey Grummet (or the other way round — the programme states both), they have produced an opera that is slightly less than two hours long.