On 20 September 1973, about 90 million people turned on their televisions to watch the “Battle of the Sexes” – a tennis match between the loudly chauvinist former men’s champion Bobby Riggs and the reigning women’s No 1, Billie Jean King. She arrived on a litter carried by topless men; he on a rickshaw drawn by female models. He presented her with a novelty-size lollipop. She handed him a piglet.
“The Battle of the Sexes was always an opera,” says composer Laura Karpman in the programme for the world premiere of the orchestral version of her stage work Balls. At its subtlest, the opera gets straight to the heart of how alien that real event now seems. Incorporating video clips of adverts and near-verbatim quotes of the 1973 TV commentary – virtuosically delivered as a kind of slow rap by actor Emma Kennedy in a wig, sideburns and shades – Karpman’s score transforms the shock of cigarettes “tailored for the feminine hand” and female athletes greeted as “little lady” into all-singing all-dancing kitsch.
As the triple entendre of the title might suggest, however, much of this opera is not subtle – and subtlety isn’t the point. Moments of hope sound like Copland. Archive footage of suffragettes is accompanied by a brief splash of Philip Glass-style minimalism. Climaxes are Hollywood-ready, numbers are short, voices are amplified (occasionally to the point of muddiness during big choral moments).
An Emmy award-winning composer for film and TV, Karpman excels at managing pace and keeping the audience entertained. (King herself made a video cameo at the start, assuring us we were “in for a treat.”) Tenor Nicky Spence was the comic ringleader as Riggs, prancing and squealing through falsetto passages, while Lotte Betts-Dean was smoky-voiced and soulful as King’s secretary and lover. As King, Nikola Printz was a powerful, intense presence vocally and dramatically, their generous mezzo carefully controlled throughout amid finely sung smaller roles.
Under Marin Alsop, the Philharmonia alternated with ease between filmic lushness and gamely clapping along to spoken declamation. If they and the singers felt somewhat underused, that was partly due to the otherwise inspired choice to programme Walton’s Façade before the interval. “Fun”-forward music theatre of another era, Façade demands spectacular virtuosity for the rhythmic delivery of Edith Sitwell’s text – delivered with aplomb by Printz, Spence and, above all, Betts-Dean – while the score showcased the Philharmonia musicians at the dapper, snook-cocking top of their game.
