The Palace in the Sky, Jonathan Dove and Nick Dear's community opera for Hackney, was four years in the making. Commissioned by the English National Opera Studio and put on by the company's Baylis Programme, it brought together a whole host of local singers, actors and dancers, as well as choirs and bands from the Hackney Music Centre, the Hackney Youth Steel Band and the Cambridge Heath Salvation Army Band. There was also an ensemble of instrumentalists from the ENO orchestra and a core cast of professional singers.
Directed by Jo Davies and conducted by Stuart Stratford, this was certainly an ambitious undertaking, and when so much enthusiasm had obviously gone into the show, it is hard to be critical without seeming a curmudgeon. But The Palace in the Sky never produced a coherent experience. The premiere on Friday was held up for nearly an hour when a piece of the set fell and injured a member of the cast, but even without that inter ruption, it is hard to believe that the combination of Dear's text and Dove's music could have produced a more convincing result.
The story is perplexing. A property developer, Parlaine (sung by Keel Watson) decides to build a huge tower on the last scrap of wasteland in east London. He intends it as his gift to the community, but his mistress Mila, an opera singer (sparkily done by Sally June Gain), expects it to be their love nest in the clouds. The plans are cursed by Jericho (Robert Tear), a former gangster who lives on the site, and as the tower goes up, the problems begin. The construction workers begin to talk gibberish, communication becomes impossible, and the project has to be abandoned. There is no obvious social or political point. What does the metaphor of non-communication mean? What does it reveal about local communities or the characters? More important, will all those who worked so hard to get the piece on to the stage have taken away anything lasting from the experience?
Dear's text seesaws between the trite and the awkwardly knowing, between lines that are just embarrassing to sing and others that are impossible to get across convincingly. Dove's music is equally diffuse. There are just too many stylistic borrowings - John Adams's Nixon in China is one obvious source, but Bernstein, Reich and Richard Rodgers and others are trawled as well. The vast array of singers and instrumentalists at his disposal create only a random patchwork of effects, which clutter rather than drive the story forward.
