Photo credit: Lizzie Holmes "Radically, rewardingly reinvented" - Così fan tutte at Longborough Festival Opera
Eugene Onegin - Der Rosenkavalier - Die Walküre - Ivan the Terrible - Manon Lescaut - The Cunning Little Vixen - Cosi fan tutte - La Rondine - Die Walküre
Only in the English countryside can you find a summer opera battle like no other. This year the battle of the great G’s in GB has provided an absolute wonder of great opera - occasionally world-class - unrivalled by anywhere else in the world. Glyndebourne, Garsington, Grange Park, Grange Festival, interspersed with Opera Holland Park, Longborough, West Green House, and Grimeborn Opera Festival, all to some degree country opera dying for warm summer nights; and hopefully now without Covid restrictions!! But as your reviewer experienced, some nights can be dark, cold and very, very wet. However, the great British public’s desire for country opera is not diminished in any way by the vagaries of the weather and, despite the pandemic, this year has proved to be inspiring and startling.
Garsington Opera - Tchaikovsky - Eugene Onegin - 05/06/2021
Conducted by Douglas Boyd with a reduced Philharmonia Orchestra and Garsington opera chorus, this performance never really came alive after the 2016 first performance of this production. It was the Madame Larina of Yvonne Howard and the Prince Gremin of Matthew Rose that shone through. The Onegin of Jonathan McGovern struggled in his upper register, but in wearing an unfitting suit he lost the arrogance and pomposity suited to this role. In the end, however, the glory of Tchaikovsky's music won the hearts of the audience.
Garsingston Opera - Richard Strauss - Der Rosenkavalier - 06/06/2021
Bruno Ravella directs a new sumptuous production of Strauss’s most glorious opera, beautifully designed by Gary McCann and updated to 1950. Each of the three acts was a feast for the eyes and the three principal ladies were probably as good as it gets today - the Marschallin of Miah Persson, the Octavian of Hanna Hipp and the Sophie of Madison Leonard. Swedish soprano Persson is one of the leading Marschalins’ of today. Her costumes were ravishing and the vocal nuances and intonations throughout her performance were extraordinary. Hanna Hipp started more slowly but her second act ‘Rose Duet’ with Sophie was emotionally touching even in this Covid inspired socially distanced performance. The Act 3 ladies triumvirate was a real tear-jerker. However, it was the buffo provided by the Baron Ochs of Derrick Ballard, who had settled down vocally, that really shone through and produced the comedy elements that are so necessary at different points in the opera.
The young Canadian conductor Jordan de Souza produced wonderful sounds from the Philharmonia Orchestra and drove the music along with gusto. He was ably supported by assistant conductor Anthony Legge. A truly outstanding Rosenkavalier for Garsington who must surely allow this tremendous production to be shared in other countries around the world.
Longborough Festival - Wagner - Die Walküre - 08/06/2021
Loughborough's music director Anthony Negus who is a true Wagner aficionado has probably never faced anything like this! He and his director Amie Lane had to contend with a socially distanced Covid reduced opera with reduced orchestra and chorus. The 16 strings were seated and played on stage.
Amie Lane’s production was effectively like a concert setting with different scaffolding platforms around the stage. Sophie Rashbrook organised the surtitles with an outstanding translation for this performance, but much credit must go to the artistic director Polly Graham and the head of casting Malcolm Rivers for bringing together an outstanding British cast to meet the demands of this opera. Led by Paul Carey Jones as Wotan who sang with true grit throughout, all the performers were of real quality. The Fricka of Madeleine Shaw was a performance of great substance and fury, and the Brunnhilde of Lee Bisset showed us a great vocal line and strength right to the end. Siegmund was an authoritative Peter Wedd and Brindley Sherratt’s substantial bass voice as Hunding almost meant that you didn’t want him to die after Act 2! The Canadian soprano Sara Marie Kramer as Sieglinde acted as a wonderful foil for her Siegmund.
“This house and women belong to Hunding” barks Brindley Sherratt to Siegmund. Thank goodness today's world has moved on!
Grange Park Opera - Rimsky-Korsakov - Ivan the Terrible - 19/06/2021
‘The Maid Pskov’, later renamed ‘Ivan the Terrible’, was Rimsky-Korsakov’s first of 15 operas. GPO’s rendition is not the definitive 1892 version. It was performed with a prequel about Boyarin Vera Sheloga which tries to explain the story of the birth of the Maid of Pskov. Whilst musically this makes for a longer evening, it does not necessarily add great substance to the core of the opera itself which in its third re-write had become much fuller in its orchestration.
However, gratitude to Grange Park Opera for this performance as Rimsky-Korsakov is hugely neglected in the western world despite Rimsky’s powerful and effective scores. Indeed Rimsky’s re-orchestration of Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov is the brilliant unconventional version usually played today.
This opera was directed by the veteran David Pountney with outstanding support by the designer Francis O'Connor whose modern dressed Ivan - Stalin style - was hugely effective.
The Gascoigne Orchestra - a Garsington import - was conducted by the Russian Mikhail Tatarnikov who produced a musically captivating account of this score, despite a reduced orchestra and chorus - an important loss for this music. Overall, the performance is well sung by its principals with stand-out performances from David Shipley as Prince Tokmakov, Evelina Dobracheva as Olga who sparkled in her higher register but somewhat struggled lower down. Clive Bayley as Ivan, 130 years after Chaliapin’s premier of this role, is singing with a similar shine and authority.
Grange Festival - Puccini - Manon Lescaut - 26/06/2021
This was the first performance ever seen by the reviewer where no live orchestra was present and the music played by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra was represented digitally. The Italian conductor Francesco Cilluffo somehow managed the synchronization between the orchestra and the singers although there appeared nothing easy in this!
The director Stephen Lawless had updated the action to the early 1940s with a bombed-out house as a backdrop. A Nazi collaboration particularly from the swastika wielding armband of the Geronte of Stephen Richardson seemed wholly out of place!
Peter Auty as Des Grieux somehow managed to sing this difficult role with passion and commitment, but he couldn’t match the Manon Lescaut of Elin Pritchard the young Welsh soprano. She had some truly wonderful moments and it is only hoped with this big role she is not being pushed too far too fast. Nicholas Lester sang a lyrical Lescaut and Stephen Richardson was eloquent as Geronte.
Opera Holland Park - Janacek - The Cunning Little Vixen - 13/07/2021
This Covid led performance with reduced orchestra, was directed by Stephen Barlow and designed by Andrew D. Edwards who produced a visually satisfying account of this wonderfully reflective forest fairy tale. The many cast members are led by the outstanding Vixen of Jennifer France who sings deliciously and Julia Sporsen’s Fox who matches her vocally with a swaggering performance. The Forester of Grant Doyle is always rough and haggard and is somewhat undermined by the “stand-in” Poacher wonderfully sung by Ashley Riches.
Jonathan Dove produced a chamber version without losing the heart-rendering lyrical moments from Janacek’s glorious score.
Glyndebourne - Mozart - Cosi fan tutte - 22/07/2021
Glyndebourne led the way in May with an outstanding Kata Kabanova which Opera Spy has already reviewed and followed up with Nicholas Hytner’s beautiful 2006 production of Mozart's Cosi fan tutte.
The production itself is a sea of summer colours, flowers with a touch of ‘afternoon tea’ but this glorious vision is not necessarily matched by the needed comic interaction on stage. Too often the action is quite stiff.
Vocally, the performance was led by the Scandinavian soprano Ida Falk Winland as Fiordiligi, whose outstanding extended range was beautifully interlinked by the mezzo-soprano of the French-Canadian Julie Boulianne as Dorabella, who impressed throughout the evening.
Of the male lovers, Huw Montague Rendall was a confident and expressive Guglielmo. Ferrando was sung by the South Korean tenor Konu Kim, whose substantial voice occasionally lacked the required subtlety until he relaxed somewhat in the latter part of the evening with more expressive phrases on show.
The veteran Alessandro Corbelli was a commanding figure as Don Alfonso although perhaps his voice no longer has its classic shine and bite. It was left to the outstanding performance, both visually and vocally, of the South Korean soprano Hera Hyesang Park who lit up the stage every time she appeared. Although her voice is on the light side, it is eloquently beautiful and her characterisation is substantial.
Simon Iorio is the revival director who works with a rather understated movement line - perhaps Covid required - and doesn’t really allow the comedy to expand until the latter part of the opera. The lighting designer Paule Constable produced a bright and super effective staging, always on point.
Leo McFall conducted the reduced Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Whilst occasionally he seemed somewhat slow, the pace did pick up with the action, and the orchestra under his baton produced outstanding quality sound. Ben-San Lau on harpsichord and Luise Buchberger on the cello sparkled with the continuo contributions.
West Green House - Puccini - La Rondine - 24/07/2021
Covid restrictions brought a huge change to this festival in 2021. As a result of social distancing, performances have taken place on a stage in the middle of the lake. Around the lakeside were four marquees with people picnicking, socially distanced from one another.
La Rondine was one of Puccini’s later operas with its premier taking place in Monaco in 1917 during the second world war. Puccini used many sources from previous operas, both his own and fellow composers, in sourcing his characters. In the end, despite the lovers parting, there is no “opera death”.
In this opera, the extreme beauty of the surroundings always wins through. It was coincidental that the Prunier sung by an excellent William Morgan starts the opera by declaring “no one is safe from the disease”.
The cast was led by the former Samling artist Galina Averina whose beautiful soprano was a match and more for Ruggero sung by the robust Robyn Lyn Evans. The voice of the night belonged to the award-winning Lisette sung by Spanish soprano Lorena Naz Pieto. The performance was delicately conducted by Jonathan Lyness and directed by Richard Studer.
However, the real winner was the audience that not only enjoyed Puccini's opera, but did so in the most incredible garden surroundings with lighting by experts who transformed the whole evening into the 2021 Garden of the Year. An incredible double event.
Grimeborn Opera Festival - Wagner - Die Walküre - 04/08/2021
Wake up Dalston! You have your own Opera Festival - Grimeborn. Normally using the small Arcola Theatre, the 2021 summer production of Wagner’s Die Walküre has moved down the road to London’s Hackney Empire.
The production of Die Walküre directed by Julia Burbach was first seen in 1990 as part of the reduced Ring Cycle that was created by the sadly departed Graham Vick and the composer Jonathan Dove. With the Orpheus Sinfonia, the conductor Peter Selwyn managed to ensure these young players produced sufficient sound and dramatic nuance to enable the audience to experience a satisfactory musical rendition of this huge opera score. Indeed, there were moments where the intensity of Wagner's writing was missing, perhaps more particularly in the first act where the “Sword Scene” was somewhat of a damp squib.
Bearing in mind that this whole production was put together in just 3 weeks, what was seen and heard on stage was somewhat of a miracle.
As the centrepiece of this opera, the performance of Mark Stone’s first Wotan was remarkable. What he might not produce in the growl of the lower bass register was made up in spades by a substantial qualitative lyrical baritonal sound that never lost its focus nor its powerful delivery, particularly in the difficult and different threads needed in the final act farewell to his daughter Brunnhilde. There is more gravitas and snarl to come, but Stone always cuts a substantial figure despite the medallions! Dove wrongly excluded from Wotan’s final act aria with Brunnhilde, sung by the outstanding American soprano Laure Meloy, any mention of the baby being carried by Sieglinde.
The somewhat lighter voices of the Sieglinde of Natasha Jouhl and the Siegmund of the Finish tenor Finnur Bjarnason were a contrast to the authoritative and somewhat brutal performances by Harriet Williams as Fricka and Simon Wilding as Hunding. In this performance, there were only three British Valkyries with Katie Stevenson’s Rossweisse as a standout performance.
With a similar scaffolding and platform production theme to that seen at Longborough, the performance was a fitting tribute to the work of Graham Vick. Whilst producing this difficult show in such a short time seems ridiculously ambitious, it somehow worked and Mark Stone’s performance as Wotan is one of real substance for the future.
