Q & A with Tama Matheson
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Ahead of our weeklong residency at the Ryedale Festival, we caught up with actor/director Tama Matheson, who has been working with us in preparation of our dramatised concert performance of A Purcell Pageant.
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A Purcell Pageant
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What has been the starting point for your ideas of putting a theatrical layer to our Purcell performance?
Purcell being one of England's chief theatrical composers - he was lauded in his day, and has been ever since, for his superb dramatic sensibilities - it seemed to me crucial to try to capture the spirit of his work by teasing out its theatrical properties. Nearly all the music we have selected for this concert is drawn from his theatrical oeuvre. Indeed, Purcell's theatrical sensibility threads its way so completely through his work that one can trace its influence even in his sacred and orchestral music (an effect one can observe with many other theatrically-minded composers, from Pergolesi to Britten). Purcell's music seems to cry out for some manner of theatrical treatment; indeed, one might go so far as to say his music can't be fully realised unless the theatrical element is emphasised. I also wanted to give the audience a feeling or impression - albeit a whimsical and updated one - of the kind of court pageantry that Purcell himself undertook at the court of Charles II. Thus the jewels of his music would thus be set in an appropriate mounting. Furthermore, I believe very firmly that classical music lives most vibrantly when it is presented in fresh, visceral, and unexpected ways; and that anything which breaks down the barriers of formality and tradition that sit between audiences and performers must help to defibrillate classical music, and make it as vital and engrossing as it was when it was still wet on the composer's manuscript. It seems to me, Solomon's Knot shares this performance ethic very strongly. What attributes do you have at your disposition, given that this is for a dramatised concert performance?
In terms of attributes, I suppose I can only hope that nearly two decades-worth of experience in opera and theatre (oh, how disconcertingly long that sounds!) will help to make this concert a success. One has to be as inventive as possible when trying to make music and staging entertaining and communicative - and I can only hope I have the audience's pulse on this one. We do have a few little surprises up our sleeves... |
Where do you want to take audiences to? What can they expect?
I'm hoping we can transport the audience into that liminal space between life and fantasy, in which the everyday seems to blend into an artistic whole with the thoughts and ideas of ages past. The hallmark of great theatre - and music - it seems to me, is the mental blending of epochs - that satisfying feeling where modernity and history seem telescoped into one timeless matrix of human experience. The searchlight of art can bring out the specks of gold that glimmer throughout history in the unrefined ore of human nature. "We do have a few little surprises up our sleeves..."How did this collaboration come about and have you enjoyed working with us?
I met Solomon's Knot a year or so ago, when I heard them perform Bach's B Minor Mass at the Newbury Festival. I had never, never heard Bach performed so thrillingly, and found myself floating in a sort of artistic ecstasy. I introduced myself to Jonathan Sells after the concert and said I would be keen to work with the company in some way, and we kept in touch over the ensuing months, meeting up here and there to discuss perspective projects. Eventually we found a concert that seemed ideal for the sort of musico-theatrical collaboration we had been contemplating, and this 'Purcell Pageant' is the result. We're just at the start of rehearsals now, with our first run-throughs of music and action beginning as I write, and I'm already incredibly excited. Even the earliest rehearsals can tell that this is a unique and thrilling music ensemble. |
Tama Matheson is an award-winning director, actor, and writer based in London. He studied English at Oxford University, and Drama and History at the University of Queensland.
Tama has directed opera and theatre all over the world, including the Sydney Opera House, Oper Graz, Houston Grand Opera, Melbourne and Perth Opera. He has also collaborated with orchestras, including Melbourne, Tasmanian, and Queensland Symphony Orchestras, as well as the Brisbane Camerata, and the London Mozart Players. Tama has worked at Covent Garden, The Mariinsky Theatre, Teatro Real, Madrid, and Baden Baden Opera, and is currently Artistic Director of the Brisbane Shakespeare Festival, which he established in 2006. As an actor, Tama has worked with companies all over England and Australia. He won the Best Supporting Actor award in Brisbane’s Matilda Awards in 2015 for his role as Michal in The Pillowman, and had received another Matilda for his production of Amadeus in 2013.
tamamatheson.blogspot.com | wordandmusic.co.uk/
Tama has directed opera and theatre all over the world, including the Sydney Opera House, Oper Graz, Houston Grand Opera, Melbourne and Perth Opera. He has also collaborated with orchestras, including Melbourne, Tasmanian, and Queensland Symphony Orchestras, as well as the Brisbane Camerata, and the London Mozart Players. Tama has worked at Covent Garden, The Mariinsky Theatre, Teatro Real, Madrid, and Baden Baden Opera, and is currently Artistic Director of the Brisbane Shakespeare Festival, which he established in 2006. As an actor, Tama has worked with companies all over England and Australia. He won the Best Supporting Actor award in Brisbane’s Matilda Awards in 2015 for his role as Michal in The Pillowman, and had received another Matilda for his production of Amadeus in 2013.
tamamatheson.blogspot.com | wordandmusic.co.uk/