Food and opera have always had an affinity with each other.
This is especially the case for Italian food. Put some Puccini on the stereo
and that spaghetti just tastes better somehow.
At the Wales Millennium Centre (WMC) in Cardiff Bay
Last October, ffresh Bar and Restaurant celebrated its
second anniversary in the WMC and its inclusion in The Good Food Guide 2012. This
year, they are making the most of being under the same roof as the Welsh
National Opera (WNO), with members of that resident company performing at
special Supper and Song evenings.
On 3 February, members of the WNO chorus sang extracts from
the company’s Spring Season (Beatrice & Benedict, Marriage of Figaro and
La Traviata), while diners ate a 3-course meal that included salmon fishcakes,
roast pork belly, and chocolate fudge cheesecake. After drinks in the bar and starters
in the restaurant, Laura Pooley
(pictured), Sian Meinir and Meriel Andrew, dressed in evening gowns and
feather boas, performed a
selection of arias, trios and duets
accompanied by James Southall on the piano. They returned between the main
course and dessert for a second set.
At the St David’s Day Dinner (1 March), diners will be
entertained by harpist Katherine Thomas and
soprano Gwenllion Evans. They will perform popular
Welsh songs and songs by the Cardiff-born composer Ivor Novello (whose statue
can be seen outside ffresh). Executive chef
Kurt Fleming has created a menu full of Welsh ingredients. There will be cockles
and laverbread to start, followed by roast rack and braised shoulder of
Carmarthenshire lamb with faggots, mashed potato and glazed carrots. The
dessert will be a bread and butter pudding with a Celtic twist, using
Bravelli’s Brecon gin marmalade and Penderyn whisky crème anglaise. The restaurant
is used to sourcing Welsh ingredients, through its pioneering Wales
On May 11, the WNO Chorus return
to ffresh for Dinner with Puccini, when they will be performing highlights from
La bohème and Madame Butterfly. As with all the Supper and Song evenings,
a three-course dinner, half a bottle of wine and
entertainment costs £39 per person. These evenings are planned to become a
regular feature at ffresh.
Meanwhile, food often adorns the WNO stage. Acting Deputy
Stage Manager Katie Heath-Jones shared some secrets concerning how food is
prepared for several opera productions in a recent WNO podcast. Although fake
stage food is used, there’s often plenty of real food on stage too. In the café
scene in La bohème, for instance, fresh chicken breasts, fresh French
baguettes, bacon, brie and grapes adorn the table. Mimi eats a crème caramel,
although the red wine is actually a famous brand of blackcurrant squash.
Regular grocery shopping trips are therefore part of the
stage manager’s routine. In their Richard Jones production of Hansel and Gretel,
setting up the food takes around 3 to 4 hours beforehand. There is a table groaning under the
weight of black forest gateaux, jelly, profiteroles and other desserts. During the show it is thrown around the stage, and so there is
also a long and messy clean-up operation afterwards.
La Traviata has a dinner party scene featuring chicken
(though the oysters are fake), bowls of spaghetti are served in The Barber of
Seville (although that steam is smoke put underneath the bowls just before they
come onstage), fish was served in a previous Tosca production (actually a
mashed banana), and champagne flows in Die Fledermaus and, to a lesser extent,
in other productions. The champagne is either a non-alcoholic champagne,
selected for the satisfying pop it gives when opened, or fizzy water with a bit
of food colouring.
When Elijah Moshinsky created a new production of Beatrice
& Benedict in 1994 for WNO, food became a character in the opera. It was
both cooked and consumed onstage. The
director’s instructions were for spaghetti and
Napolitano sauce to be cooked onstage and served to the chorus and principals,
while the auditorium should
fill with the aroma of garlic. Cooking the meal was the responsibility of the
stage manager.
The set features a kitchen, seen through a back window on
the terrace of an elegant Italian villa. A cooker and a hob are situated just
offstage from this. The original tomato sauce recipe was supplied by a member
of the chorus, but because it was a secret recipe from his Italian family it
was never written down and now cannot be replicated.
Beatrice and Benedict was revived a couple of times at the
New Theatre, and is now being staged at the WMC for the first time. It starts
with a feast and there is plenty of food on the table, but on the first night
the pasta did not appear: glasses of champagne were bought out for the chorus
instead. There was apparently some pasta cooked by the side of the stage, but with the much greater size of the arena and modern air extraction systems no aroma reached the audience. This is one aspect of the production that did not successfully transfer from the New Theatre.
When real food is
bought onstage, each individual chorus singer has to be catered for in terms of
allergies and other needs. There are also obvious considerations concerning the
best food to eat while singing. Opera singers can get hungry while on stage: Pavarotti famously had a bowl of parmesan to hand in case of emergencies. The
leftovers, after the chorus has finished, are apparently quickly snapped up by
the crew.
Photo
by Glenn Edwards, courtesy of ffresh Restaurant.
My review of Beatrice and Benedict for Buzz:
ffresh, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay
Katie Heath-Jones ‘Turning up the heat’ WNO Podcast (Jan
2012):
The second
anniversary celebration dinner at ffresh:
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