The Enchanted Pig by Jonathan Dove at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire

On Saturday night I went to see The Enchanted Pig by Jonathan Dove in The Bradshaw Hall of Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. I should say, at the outset of this review, that I was invited to come to see the opera, and that I was gifted the tickets. The review is, however, entirely my own and represents mine and my family’s views about the opera, and a little about our experience of the venue as well.

The Bradshall Hall, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire

Birmingham Conservatoire moved to its current home in 2017 and the building still feels quite new to me. (I did a few shifts as a House Manager at the old Adrian Boultbee Hall on Paradise Circus in the late 1990s, so the Jennens Road building will remain new to me for some time I think!). We arrived at the Conservatoire in good time for the show as I needed to pick up tickets for me and the family. We entered the building via the door nearest the car park, which was very close by and really convenient. It took us all of about a minute and a half to walk over from the car park, and while this was a more expensive car park, at about £5, than the one over the road mentioned in some of the TripAdvisor reviews, the convenience and safety of the route (especially when bring small children along) I felt was worth it.

Going into the venue there is a cafe/bar on the first floor. The bar clearly serves students during the day as well as concert goers in the evening. We only bought the children a snack, so I can’t tell you much about the prices of the bar, though I can say that it does not accept cash payments, so make sure you take your payment card along with you when you go to see something at this venue. There isn’t a great deal of seating here in this bar area, and most of the seats had already gone by the time we arrived, and for busy concerts there would probably have been a lot of people standing around in the bar area.

I had been asked to collect my tickets from the Box Office and it was hard to see where to go. There was a desk with a sign saying “tickets” on the first floor which had a security guard manning it, who did get the House Manager to help – everyone was very nice and very helpful – but there was no actual Box Office. I found the venue signage to be a little confusing as well given that the show was billed to take place in The Bradshaw Hall, but on most of the venue signage the hall is named simply as The Concert Hall, with the first time you see The Bradshaw Hall being outside the hall itself. Given that the hall is on the second floor, I do think the venue could help visitors out a bit more with their signage. The place was clean and well served by toilet facilities, and the view from the foyer just outside The Bradshaw Hall is a good one! It is a venue I would definitely go to and happily take the children to again.

The Enchanted Pig

So we were there to see The Enchanted Pig, an opera by Jonathan Dove and directed here at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire by Stuart Barker. We went to the final performance at the Conservatoire on Saturday 10 June, but there is another chance to see it at The Dream Factory, Warwick on Sunday 25 June at 7pm.

If you thought opera wasn’t for the whole family, think again.

The Enchanted Pig is a delightful story of animal capers and fairy tale romance, and singers from Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (part of Birmingham City University) are reaching out to schools and families with the magical, fun family show at The Bradshaw Hall….

With its trotters in the worlds of opera and musical theatre, Jonathan Dove’s vibrant work draws on captivating Romanian and Norwegian folk tales coupled with a humorous twist for the whole family to enjoy.

The Enchanted Pig tells the tale of Princess Flora whose world is turned upside down when fate leads her to marry a pig! Mercifully, he is an enchanted pig, curse by a witch, and becomes a handsome prince by night. Flora must travel to the ends of the Earth and across the Milky Way to save her husband from the evil spell.

Is opera for the whole family? – Well, considering the subject matter of this blog, the short answer is absolutely yes. Music is for everyone. It doesn’t matter if we are talking about opera, ballet, orchestral music, hymns sung in church or at school. But what about this opera? Is it for the whole family as the above quote suggests? Again I think the answer is yes. The Enchanted Pig certainly held my attention and the children’s and even my 6 year old got a lot out of the show. She asked a lot of questions as we were going along (we tried to keep her to a whisper and hopefully the people behind us were not disturbed!) and all of her questions were prompted by what was going on on stage – why was that man doing that, what was happening with the puppet, why is she wearing those shoes? She also expressed her views on what the characters were doing – she shouldn’t read from the book of fate! My son was less expressive and inquisitive, but he really liked the music, and watched the trombonist keenly – he is learning the trombone himself. There were quite a lot of humorous touches to the story which were definitely aimed more at the adults, and I certainly heard my husband laughing along to jokes the North Wind and his wife made about marriage…..

The Enchanted Pig was performed by students from the Conservatoire, and the cast was different depending on which performance you attended. There were excellent performances from the cast, with some of them performing several main roles. And I liked the staging, with very few props, and a simple, uncluttered stage. I loved the use of torches spotlighting Puppet Flora as she made her long, long journey all across the Earth and to the Milky Way. I liked that this was a proper opera, that didn’t use lots of screens and bright colours or bright lights to capture children’s imaginations, it let the music and the story do that without trying to distract from it.

For me, personally, I was a little disappointed that the traditional nature of the fairy tales involved in The Enchanted Pig hadn’t been updated – though this is more of an issue with the opera itself than the performance we saw. It started off with The King going off to war, singing about how war is fun – the song was a fun song, but the message behind it – and his daughters were to stay home like good little girls doing as they are told. Having said that I loved the song about the rules the girls should follow and the references to ways girls had come a cropper in other fairy tales. I didn’t like that, as in traditional fairy tales, the girls were married off to someone they had never met before, and of course fell in love with their husbands at first sight, and that of course their suitors were Kings who promised them wealth. The opera was written well before Frozen and Elsa’s very sensible position that you cannot marry someone you have just met. If I were to be really nit picky, I would personally have liked there to be a little updating of the story. I should also mention that there was a little bit of slightly more adult language used in the opera – I noted a couple of times the word “bleeding” was used, “the hairs on his bleeding head” and my husband noticed that one of the characters was called a d**khead, though I did not notice that at all and I don’t think either of my children heard any of those words. But it is worth bearing in mind if you are taking young children to see it.

Musically, I heard a lot of different musical styles in the opera – there was jazz music, moments that sounded rather more musical theatre, there were lovely waltzes that my little girl liked swaying along to. My husband heard echoes of Philip Glass and John Williams. As I mentioned above, my son particularly enjoyed the trombonist’s role in the show. There were surtitles available at the back of the stage next to the orchestra.

We have not long returned from a trip to Disney World where, as you can imagine, pretty much everything is aimed at young children. The place is full of bright colours, lights, larger than life characters and so very many things to look at. Seeing this production not long after a trip where all of the things that you think you need to do to capture children’s attention were so very much on display, and then seeing especially my 6 year old being captivated by a much simpler, less fussy and dare I say it more adult production. There were a few other children in the audience (and I know that as part of their outreach work at the Conservatoire, there was a schools performance of the opera) and all of the children I could see appeared to be engaged in the show. It made me think about how we, as adults, sometimes underestimate children’s abilities to sit through and enjoy something that isn’t all bells and whistles. That we expect that unless something is happening on a screen every 5 seconds that they will be bored and lose concentration. If I had seen this opera on my own, I would probably be writing here that I would recommend it for children of around 11 or 12 and over, but given my children’s reaction to it, especially my 6 year old, I would say it is a whole family opera, especially over 6s. I do think my little girl would probably not have enjoyed it as much a few months ago before she turned 6.

Basically the show was really enjoyable, and if you live near to Warwick and have the chance to book tickets to see this show on 25 June, I would recommend going to see it.