The word ‘Opera’ brings with it a whiff of belle époque extravagance, and more than a little Andrew Lloyd Webber: women in fur coats, gentlemen in top hats, Edith Wharton novels, or an affectation of class aspirations à la Woody Allen’s Match Point, which features Caruso in Donizetti’s mournful ‘Una furtiva lagrima’ as a leitmotif.
When I call Ellen Kent, the impresario who’s brought large-scale operatic productions to an estimated 3 million people, she admits to being wrapped in a towel, preparing for an ‘army of guests’ at her 15-acre country estate.
Previously an actress and dancer, Kent’s entry into the world of opera (and later ballet) happened almost entirely by chance. When her then-husband went to Europe to report on European children’s theatre for the Arts Council, what he saw there convinced the couple to start a tour of said children travelling all around Britain, supported by the patronage of the great and good, including the likes of Judi Dench. Following the Eurotunnel’s opening in 1991, more and more opportunities for cross-cultural exchange presented themselves, and the pair became further involved with international productions.
When the Rochester (later Medway) City Council asked Kent to contribute ‘something foreign’ to the summer festival at Rochester Castle, Kent decided to throw over the French play she was currently producing – consisting of 7 French actors and 50 goldfish – for something more adventurous. She volunteered an opera production without much forethought. Kent’s research led her to the Romanian National Opera. She went to the current President (the dictator Ceausescu) and asked for an aeroplane. She got it. Ceausescu’s plane brought the whole company – all 200 of them – over in July of 1992 to stage Verdi’s Nabucco on the small stage at Rochester Castle.
Although she didn’t know much about opera, Kent was undaunted by the challenge, ‘I can do anything,’ she thought, ‘I’m a producer’. Though Kent admits she was never ‘super-attracted’ to opera during her youth, her mother, a descendent of the British Raj, was ‘the opera drama queen of Bombay’. Born and raised in India, Kent was transplanted to the small Andalusian farm to which her parents retired. After attending boarding school in Norfolk she later read Classics at the University of Durham. Kent attributes her creative thought process (‘the way my brain works’) to her being ‘a little bit of a maverick’. Dyslexic as a child, Kent didn’t read or write until she was nine and then ‘read and wrote everything’. She trained as an opera singer herself for two years (she has ‘quite a good’ mezzo-soprano with a large range) but is glad she didn’t pursue opera as a career – ‘it’s a very incestuous little world’.
Our conversation is interrupted by a sudden call to a person I can’t see – ‘Don’t shoot my pheasant!’ Apparently, her pet pheasant is off-limits to the hunter she calls to, laughing. Everything else on her estate is game.
Though Kent is now famous for her Eastern European companies, she insists that she was not specifically attracted to Eastern European theatre. She needed a big company at minimal costs, and Romania was where her research led. The political timing was right, Kent says, and everything culminated – accidentally – in great success. ‘I don’t have a master plan,’ she says, ‘I just do it.’
Her productions range between a cast of 70 to 200 people. ‘I don’t do small,’ Kent insists, ‘I do large.’ Nevertheless, the single-set Madama Butterfly, which comes to Oxford’s New Theatre this May, is ‘easy’ to put on. La Traviata, which also comes to Oxford next month, is ‘more of a challenge. I love a challenge.’ It’s hard to scale down, she admits, when beginning with Nabucco and a cast of 200.
Kent’s latest design challenge was an amphitheatre. Her history in Classics fed her interest in Greek and Roman theatre, which led to her ambition to build a miniature Colosseum. The travelling amphitheatre, constructed in 2008 on big wheels with three tiers and columns, is designed as a continuous set against which the operas play. Carmen, Aïda, and Turandot were all performed in the amphitheatre, and the set was changed by swapping statues for each production: Aïda’s Egyptian statues were exchanged for Turandot’s terracotta army. ‘It cost a fortune,’ says Kent, ‘but it looked great.’
One gets the feeling that this is the MO upon which Kent operates. Money is of the utmost importance – and spending is extravagant (thousands of pounds were reputedly spent on the gowns worn in La Traviata) – but the visual effect is priority. And the expenditure is worth it; stage managers report continuous standing ovations. ‘The audience responds to what I do,’ Kent says, and I can almost hear a shrug.
Kent’s website mentions her desire to make opera and ballet less elitist and more approachable, but she says she doesn’t have a programme for this transformation. ‘I didn’t set out to do it,’ she says, ‘I’m not here to educate.’ Her goal is to put on quality shows, and quality entertainment. Her ‘method’, if one can use the term, is her ‘dramatic perspective’. After all, Kent is ‘a drama – not an opera – lady’.
Her productions testify to her tastes and, indeed, she calls herself a ‘Verdi woman’. When I ask why she responds with great enthusiasm, ‘Well, he’s just fantastic. Dramatic music to die for. Aïda is some of the best music ever written.’
Ellen Kent productions emphasize spectacle, and her version of opera seems entirely without sentiment. Music, dance, drama, opera are all just forms, she says, insisting that opera ‘was not done to be precious.’ Kent lists the greats – Verdi, Puccini, and Bizet – as composers who created opera ‘for the masses’. In the same spirit, Kent wants to eschew elitist audiences and create an ‘opera for the people’ which is unabashedly entertaining. She tells me gleefully, ‘I always go for young, pretty people’. Kent wants to make opera like film, reminding me that early Hollywood owed a lot to opera; for Kent, they are equally visual and musical. Audiences ‘love the drama – they come, they cry’.
Kent acknowledges that she has her disparagers. A small snobbish faction mutter about her bringing foreigners (not just the soloists – she brings everybody). But she sees detractors as a small minority. While feeling she’s ‘selling out’ with her ‘cheap and cheerful opera’, they still they give her ‘begrudging respect and begrudging admiration’. Kent, on the other hand, will always play to those who ‘vote with their feet’.
Ellen Kent’s production of La Traviata is at the New Theatre on May 3rd, and Madama Butterfly is on May 4th-5th
