Friday 7 July 2017

Review of MIF's BambinO - the 'opera for babies'


I got into BambinO by special permission – strictly you shouldn’t be allowed to see it unless you have a baby in tow – but since even our Youth Panel wouldn’t qualify for a show designed for the six to 18-month age group, it might as well be a grandad who went to see it.

What I saw was pretty impressive. It’s an hour long, almost, with an Act One, interval and then Act Two, and it tells a complete story, about a little mummy bird who finds she has an egg, which hatches into a baby that then grows and eventually flies away to make its own life.

There are two solo singers (Charlotte Hoather and Timothy Connor) and two instrumentalists (cellist Laura Sergeant and percussionist Stuart Semple, although both also sing at the beginning and end, so there you have a complete vocal quartet, too).

The music, by Lliam Paterson, is very cleverly put together, although his skill with pastiche of baroque and classical opera is so great you begin to look for the parallels with well-known works – especially after a duet for two bird people with the words ‘Pu-Pu-Pu-Pu-Pulcino’ at its heart! Heard something similar to that before …

The opening, growing from a peaceful murmur with the added effect of bird calls, had us entranced from the start. Especially the babies (14 of them, by my count), who were the most attentive and responsive audience I’ve ever seen … most of the time.

The singing is mostly in Italian (a little English, too, I think) but that emphasizes the fact that at this stage in music appreciation the words don’t matter. It’s about slightly larger-than-life people in colourful costumes, acting a story and singing as they do it, and looking and sounding amazing. Which is what grown-up opera is about, too, really.

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