The Daily Telegraph - 24.07.2019

The Daily Telegraph Wednesday 24 July 2019 *** 27

Arts

A Booker

longlist made

to stoke anger

We look at the 13 runners and riders for the

biggest prize in English-language fiction

The best singing I have ever

heard at Opera Holland Park

M

usic of the late Romantic

era, unabashedly wearing

its heart on its sleeve, is

what Opera Holland Park does best,

and after a dodgy start, this year’s

season comes to a close with two

terrific programmes drawing on

that territory. Cilea’s emotionally

affecting melodrama L’Arlesiana, a

favourite here, has returned with

sensitive conducting by Dane Lam

and impassioned performances by

Samuel Sakker, Yvonne Howard and

Fflur Wyn gracing a forceful and

lucid production by Oliver Platt; and

there’s a deeply rewarding double bill

of Wolf-Ferrari’s Il Segreto di Susanna

and Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta.

Il Segreto di Susanna belongs to

that long-lost time when smoking

was considered not only pleasurable

but risqué for ladies, and sexually

alluring too (remember Lauren Bacall

in The Big Sleep?). The premise of

this 40-minute confection, dating

from 1909, is featherlight: a newly

married husband is upset by the

smell of tobacco about the house,

and concludes that it must emanate

from the cigarettes of his wife

Susanna’s lover. Following farcical

misunderstandings, however, it

transpires that she has no lover, and it

is Susanna herself who is susceptible

to the fragrant weed.

It’s a mere frippery, slightly

overextended as such things

always are, but beautifully crafted,

with delicate orchestral colours

that evoke Ravel, and something

of the conversational sparkle of

Verdi’s Falstaff. John Wilkie’s

production is very nicely done,

without overstatement, and Clare

Presland, Richard Burkhard and John

Savournin (as a silent conspiratorial

butler) play their parts in high

boulevard style. John Andrews

conducts with grace and affection:

it’s only a curiosity, but a very

agreeable one.

Opera

Il Segreto di Susanna/

Iolanta

Investec Opera Holland Park,

London W8

★★★★★

By Rupert Christiansen

Absolutely cracking:

Natalya Romaniw

and David Butt

Philip take the leads

in Tchaikovsky’s

Iolanta

I

s this the most political Booker

longlist yet? There are dystopias

(Margaret Atwood’s forthcoming

The Testaments, John

Lanchester’s The Wall), topical

picaresques (Quichotte, Salman

Rushdie’s yet-to-be-released take on

Cervantes), and stream-of-

consciousness rants (Ducks,

Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann); AI

thought experiments (Jeanette

Winterson’s Frankissstein), state-of-

the-nation novels (Max Porter’s Lanny)

and books that give voice to the

marginalised (Bernadine Evaristo’s

Girl, Woman, Other; Elif Shafak’s

10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange

World) – not much room for

candyfloss.

In one respect only, the Booker

judges have avoided controversy: after

years of rows about the Yankee

takeover – Britain’s biggest literary

prize lifted the barrier on American

writers in 2013 – only one author of the

13 here, Lucy Ellman, was born in the

US (and even she has lived in the UK

since she was a teenager). On all other

fronts, it is a longlist precision-

engineered to stoke righteous anger.

Girl, Woman,

Other

by Bernardine

Evaristo

After last year’s

shock of a verse

novel on the

shortlist (Robin

Robertson’s The

Long Take), here

is another: the

emphatically

contemporary,

polyphonic tale of

12 characters,

mostly black

British women,

from a banker to a

gay playwright to

a schoolteacher to

teenage mother.

(Hamish

Hamilton)

My Sister,

the Serial Killer

by Oyinkan

Braithwaite

The only debut

novel on the

longlist, this

sharp, dark crime

thriller feels like a

Nigerian version

of Patricia

Highsmith.

Braithwaite’s

protagonist,

Korede, keeps

being roped in by

her sister, Ayoola,

to dispose of the

bodies of her

boyfriends, whom

she murders in

“self-defence”.

(Atlantic)

Night Boat to

Tangier

by Kevin Barry

One of the most

abundantly

talented novelists

writing today,

Barry gives us for

his third novel

two fading Irish

gangsters in the

south of Spain,

who reminisce in

quick-fire,

music-hall style

dialogue –

reminiscent of

Waiting for Godot

• about what
  went wrong in
  their lives.
  (Canongate)

An Orchestra of

Minorities

by Chigozie

Obioma

Obioma’s Booker-

shortlisted debut,

The Fishermen,

was an elegiac

state-of-the-

nation drama that

fused Greek

tragedy with

Nigerian folklore.

For his follow-up,

Obioma scales up

the canvas from

tragic to epic,

with the Odyssey-

like tale of a man

adrift from

himself and from

modern Nigeria.

(Little, Brown)

Quichotte

by Salman

Rushdie

Rushdie’s 1981

classic Midnight’s

Children was

recently voted the

greatest of all

Booker winners.

How will he fare

with his yet-to-

be-published take

on Don Quixote,

about an ageing

salesman who

falls in love with a

TV star, and

drives across

America in a

quest to prove his

worth to her?

(Jonathan Cape)

The Testaments

by Margaret

Atwood

Atwood’s sequel

to her 1985

dystopia The

Handmaid’s Tale,

which comes out

in September, was

already the most

anticipated novel

of the year, and

this endorsement

will further whet

the appetite of

her fans. All we

know is that it has

three female

narrators, and

picks up 15 years

after the earlier

novel left off, with

the van door

being slammed

on Offred’s future.

(Chatto & Windus)

The Man Who

Saw Everything

by Deborah Levy

Levy was

shortlisted in

2016 for Hot Milk

and in 2012 for

Swimming Home.

Can this most

astute and precise

of novelists finally

scoop the prize

for her latest

novel, out next

month, which

slips between

modern London

and East Germany

just before the fall

of the Berlin

Wall? (Hamish

Hamilton)

Ducks,

Newburyport

by Lucy Ellmann

Ducks,

Newburyport is

not for the

faint-hearted:

longer than

Ellmann’s four

previous novels

put together, it is

the 1,000-page,

single-sentence

monologue of an

Ohio housewife

trying to get her

head around

modern America

while she bakes

endless cherry

pies. (Galley

Beggar Press)

The Wall

by John

Lanchester

Our most brilliant

journalist-

novelist,

Lanchester has a

rare gift for

reconstructing

the chains of

cause and effect

behind the often

inexplicable

events in the

headlines. This

dystopia is set in a

future Britain

with a concrete

wall all along its

coast to keep out

migrants and the

sea. (Faber)

Lanny

by Max Porter

Porter’s ingenious

and heart-rending

debut, Grief Is the

Thing with

Feathers, was a

sensation – and

his second novel

manages to be

just as startling

and moving.

Lanny, the tale of

a strange free-

ranging child in a

commuter-belt

village, captures

the dark and petty

undercurrents of

life in these

islands. (Faber)

10 Minutes 38

Seconds in This

Strange World

by Elif Shafak

Shafak describes

her latest novel as

“the untold story

of Turkey”. The

conceit is that,

after death, the

brain remains

conscious for a

while. In those

final 10 minutes

and 38 seconds,

Leila remembers

her upbringing in

rural Turkey, and

how she came to

work in one of the

oldest brothels in

Istanbul.

(Viking)

Frankissstein

by Jeanette

Winterson

Winterson’s

revivification of

Mary Shelley’s

Frankenstein for

the AI age flicks

between the

melancholy of the

Victorian Gothic

and the ruthless

sterility of Silicon

Valley, as the plot

unfolds in two

time frames,

showing how our

anxieties about AI

tap into ancient

human dreams of

perfectibility.

(Jonathan Cape)

Lost Children

Archive

by Valeria Luiselli

This is the first

novel written in

English by the

rising star of Latin

American letters.

Haunted by the

refugee children

Luiselli met in the

detention centres

on the US-Mexico

border, it unfolds

as a road trip, as

two documentary

makers drive

their kids through

Arizona while

their marriage

crumbles.

(Fourth Estate)

LIAM SHARP

ALASTAIR MUIR

Until Aug 3, in rep with L’Arlesiana.

Tickets: 0300 999 1000;

operahollandpark.com

Hotly anticipated: Margaret Atwood, whose forthcoming novel The Testaments – a sequel to 1985’s The Handmaid’s Tale – is among this year’s nominees

Every

member of

the cast is

superb and

the grand

duet at the

climax sent

shivers down

my spine

Iolanta could have stood on its

own: Tchaikovsky’s last opera, it’s an

intense 90-minute drama, symbolist

in idiom, in which the eponymous

princess is redeemed from what

appears to be psychosomatic

blindness by the transcendent

power of love. Opera Holland Park’s

performance is an absolute cracker.

Tchaikovsky’s stirring score is

honoured by Sian Edwards’s richly

expressive conducting of the City of

London Sinfonia; and Olivia Fuchs’s

staging, imaginatively designed by

Takis, is sensitive to all the libretto’s

weird mystical implications without

being pretentiously tricksy.

The cast is superb throughout,

with gorgeous, generous singing

from David Butt Philip as the

handsome prince and Natalya

Romaniw in the title role. Their

grand duet at the climax sent

shivers down my spine: I don’t think

I’ve ever heard such rapturously

wonderful singing at Opera Holland

Park.

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