Fair grounds for a musical – Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel

Horsing around: Opera North’s production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel. Photograph: Alastair Muir

A new stage production of Carousel, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic musical, opens this month at the Barbican after critically-lauded runs in Leeds and Manchester.

In a lavish production directed by Jo Davies, featuring a chorus of 30 singers and 14 dancers, the Leeds-based company Opera North will attempt to create a fresh vision of the Broadway show, with contemporary ballet dancers and a meld of operatic and musical theatre voices.

The American classic musical, based on a 1909 play by the Hungarian Ferenc Molnár, was voted by Time magazine as the greatest of the twentieth century, and includes some of the prolific composing duo’s best loved works, such as ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ and ‘If I loved You.’

Set in a New England seaside community, Carousel is a poignant story of true love and the tragedy of feelings left unspoken. Julie Jordan is a mill worker who falls in love with Billy Bigelow, a troubled fairground operator. To improve their fortunes Billy commits a desperate act that ends in disaster, but is then granted one last chance to make things right.

Sarah Tynan, a Walthamstow-based soprano and seasoned performer with the English National Opera, has joined the cast for the five week run in London. Playing the comic character Carrie Pipperidge is no ordinary gig for the singer, who is more used to roles like Tatania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream or Papagena in The Magic Flute.

“There’s a lot more dialogue than what I’m used to,” she says. “And there’s also the comedy you get in musical theatre. I’ve always relished doing a bit of everything, though. The last operatic role I sang was Cleopatra in Julius Caesar, so to go from singing straight opera and a historical tragic figure, to a comic musical part is really stimulating and great fun.”

Compared with singing opera, it’s tempting to think that musical numbers must be comparatively easy to sing, but, according to Sarah, musical theatre presents a different kind of challenge.

“Most opera stuff is a lot higher,” she informs me. “And also for me the speaking, because when you’re speaking it’s a lot lower. So for me the technical challenge is working in a different part of my range as well as keeping the voice supported when you’re speaking and going between speaking and singing.”

In the battle of the musicals, Carousel is certainly among the cream, and with the Opera North production already putting some critics in a spin, this could be as good an opportunity as any to hear ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone” sung outside a football stadium.

The singer adds: “There’s such a huge body of work in opera, so that those that are still done today have been proven over time. I think this piece has stood the test of time in a similar sort of way.

“It’s got a fantastic script, the music’s stunning and there’s just the right amount of comedy and tragedy so that you won’t come out feeling you’ve been thwacked around the head or with your sides hurting from laughing. Rodgers and Hammerstein pitched perfectly which is why I think it’s always been such a hit with audiences.”

Carousel will be at the Barbican from 15 August – 15 September 2012.