The Duenna, English Touring Opera [ETO], Royal Opera House Linbury Studio, October 2010

What fun this is! When I go to a comic opera I smile sometimes but towards the end of this romp, written by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, I was laughing out loud. Actually it’s more Singspiel than opera, and none the worse for that. The music is delightful, written largely by Thomas Linley and his son Tom Linley, who wrote more of it than anyone else. Young Tom Linley was born the same year as Mozart (1756), but died in an accident when he was 22. He and Mozart met in 1770 and became friends, and as the music historian Charles Burney wrote that year about his travels in Italy, “The ‘Tommasino’, as he is called, and the little Mozart, are talked of all over Italy, as the most promising geniusses of this age.” The music for this charming comedy was written in 1775.

The story is full of misunderstandings and furious assertions of irrevocable decisions, but the essence of the plot is quite simple. The wealthy Don Jerome has a son and a daughter, Ferdinand and Louisa, who are in imminent danger of losing their lovers. One because her father is about to send her to a convent, and the other because Don Jerome rejects Louisa’s choice of the genteel but impoverished Antonio. He wants her to marry the dreadfully silly, but wealthy Isaac Mendosa. The Duenna is Louisa’s guardian in the household, but the two of them change places with hilarious results.

Richard Suart as Don Jerome was absolutely super. Assertive and irascible, he sang and spoke superbly. His diction was brilliant as was that of the whole cast. Nuala Willis as the Duenna was enormous fun, playing her part with relish, and Adrian Thompson as Isaac Mendoza gave an excellent portrayal of a wealthy by smug little twerp who thinks he’s frightfully cunning. Adam Tunnicliffe as the masquerader is on the stage much of the time, and his movements were delightful, helping the drama silently as if he were a single-person Greek chorus.

The Duenna and Don Jerome

The designs by Adam Wiltshire are glorious. The stage set-up with screens, and people appearing in frames to read letters they wrote, is really inspired. Marvellous lighting by Guy Hoare, all directed by Michael Barker-Caven, with the ETO Baroque Orchestra directed from the harpsichord by Joseph McHardy. It’s a pleasure to see English Touring Opera in London, and know that they will be taking this delightful production to other cities. It deserves to be a sell-out everywhere.

Two more performances at Covent Garden are scheduled for October 15 and 16 (matinee), after which it will tour to the following venues: Theatre Royal Bath, Oct 18 and 19; Malvern Theatres, Oct 22; De la Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, Oct 27; Exeter Northcott, Oct 30; Cambridge Arts Theatre, Nov 4 and 5; Harrogate Theatre, Nov 8; Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Nov 27.

Promised End, English Touring Opera, Royal Opera House Linbury Studio, October 2010

In Shakespeare’s King Lear the fool and Cordelia are never on stage at the same time, and in this operatic version of Lear they are the same character, beautifully sung by Lina Markeby. One might expect an operatic treatment of King Lear to be of Wagnerian proportions, yet Alexander Goehr’s version lasts only one and three-quarter hours, including an interval. Some characters have to be cut, but the nasty sisters are still there, and one of them does the wicked deed of putting out Gloucester’s eyes herself. It’s an intense opera, and the meeting of the blind Gloucester and half-mad Lear is a late focal point.

The simple staging worked well under the direction of James Conway, with designs by Adam Wiltshire, in which the faces of the performers are given an eerie make-up with dark eyes. Throughout the opera all the characters stay on stage, while those not involved in the action stand behind a darkly translucent screen, ready to sing as a chorus when required. The singing was all good, with Roderick Earle notable as Lear, Nigel Robson as Gloucester, and Nicholas Garrett as a sonorously vicious Edmund, well-befitting a man who sang Don Giovanni at Holland Park this past summer.

Unfortunately the diction was poor, probably because the singers had difficulty adjusting to the score, and without surtitles it was not possible to know what was being sung half the time. This is a serious flaw because the words are extracts from Shakespeare, selected by the composer and Frank Kermode, and they’re important. Even with the Aurora Orchestra — well conducted by Ryan Wigglesworth — behind a screen at the rear of the stage, the singers still had to project very strongly to deal with the music, and this may not have helped their diction.

The music itself was intense, as it has to be when distilling the work of a great playwright into a short opera — think of Strauss’s Elektra as distilled from Sophocles by Hugo von Hofmannstahl — but I felt no emotional grip as I do with Elektra’s yearning for Agamemnon in the Strauss opera. I think it’s not an easy play to turn into opera, though several people have tried, most notably a 1978 version by Aribert Reimann, which was produced by the ENO in 1989, but that is a longer work with more scenes. On the whole this seems a bit dull, but may come over better on a second hearing.

Two more performances at Covent Garden are scheduled for October 14 and 16, after which it will tour to the following venues: Malvern Theatres, Oct 21; De la Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, Oct 26; Exeter Northcott, Oct 29; The Hawth, Crawley, Nov 1; Cambridge Arts Theatre, Nov 3, 6; Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Nov 26.

Les Sylphides, Sensorium, The Firebird, Royal Ballet, 21 May 2009, return visit

This was a return visit to see a performance with a different cast. Here is the link to the earlier review of the first night.

This time Les Sylphides featured David Makhateli and Tamara Rojo as the principal couple, backed up by Yuhui Choe in the waltz, Helen Crawford in the Mazurka, and the same leading sylphs as before. All were very good, as was the corps, but I thought Rojo and Choe were outstanding. The conducting by Barry Wordsworth was very slow at the beginning, though it picked up tempo later, but the trouble is that his work lacks incision and edge — it is just mellifluous and laboured, or in a single word, dull.

In the other cast for Alastair Marriott’s new ballet Sensorium, to music by Debussy, we had Mara Galeazzi with Bennet Gartside, and Melissa Hamilton with Gary Avis as the main couples. The lighting worked well this time, and the designs by Adam Wiltshire were excellent as before, with white leotards for the principal ladies and light peacock blue for the others. The cast seemed very much in tune with the ballet, and Melissa Hamilton was simply wonderful. It’s astonishing that she’s a mere 21 years old.

The Firebird was once again a blaze of colour, and the corps were terrific. This time we had Leanne Benjamin as a very fine firebird, with Edward Watson as the Tsarevich, Genesia Rosato as the Tsarevna, and Christopher Saunders as the immortal Kostcheï. All did well, and Saunders was very strong in this part, which seems to suit him better than some of the other roles I’ve seen him do.