Bastien and Bastienne, Mozart and Salieri, Royal Opera House, Linbury Studio, October 2012

This double bill by the Jette Parker Young Artists was a delight.

Bastien and Bastienne is a singspiel written by Mozart in 1768 when he was just 12 years old. It is based on a one-act opera Le devin du village by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and deals with two lovers who are brought together by the local devin (soothsayer). Rousseau’s work was produced in 1752, appeared in Vienna in 1755 and was translated into German in 1764 and used in children’s theatre.

Colas talks to Bastienne, all images ROH/ Richard Hubert Smith

The story is that Bastien, strongly sung here by David Butt Philip, has had a dalliance with an attractive woman portrayed by Justina Gringyte in a sexy red dress. Dušica Bijelić as Bastienne, advised by Jihoon Kim as the soothsayer Colas wins him back by feigning indifference. Ms Bijelić sang very well and played her role with panache, while Jihoon Kim sang a very fine bass-baritone. The German diction was good from everyone and strikingly good from David Philip Butt. The production use of railway tracks was rather a good idea, and conducting by Michele Gamba gave a powerful feel for Mozart’s music.

All’s well that ends well

Mozart and Salieri is based on a text by Pushkin written in 1830, five years after Salieri’s death. Rimsky-Korsakov turned this into a short opera in 1897, and at its first performance Salieri was sung by the famous Russian bass Shalyapin. Here this strong baritone role was brilliantly sung by Ashley Riches, with Pablo Bemsch contrasting well in the light tenor role of Mozart. The music contains echoes of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and towards the end Mozart’s Requiem.

Ashley Riches as Salieri

The amusing incident of a badly played and out of tune violin, which one of Salieri’s friends used to poke fun at Mozart — though the trick was roundly dismissed by Salieri — was an entertaining interlude, much appreciated by members of the orchestra. On-stage this was mimicked by a puppet representing Mozart, which we saw lying sideways centre stage at the start. Then at the end Mozart himself lay in exactly the same position. These were clever aspects of this simple but excellent production by Pedro Ribeiro. Designs by Ribeiro and Sophie Mosberger worked well, and I loved Warren Letton’s lighting, particularly at the end of Mozart and Salieri.

Altogether this was a thoroughly good evening, with music played by the Southbank Sinfonia, and the high point was the superb voice and excellent Russian diction of Ashley Riches, as Salieri. Not to be missed.

There are two further performances on Friday at 1 pm. and 7 pm. — for details click here.

The Lighthouse, English Touring Opera, ETO, Linbury Studio, Covent Garden, October 2012

Just after Christmas in the year 1900 a steamer went to the Flannan Islands Lighthouse bringing a keeper to relieve one of the three keepers already there. The Flannan Isles are a lonely spot beyond the Outer Hebrides, and when the steamer arrived the three keepers had vanished into thin air. What happened?

All images ETO/ Richard Hubert Smith

This remarkable chamber opera by Peter Maxwell Davies tells us. Or does it? In the first half three officers who arrived at the Lighthouse tell a later enquiry what they encountered. Everything apparently in order, a meal partly eaten, a chair lying slightly broken, and not a soul to be seen. Their reports on the chair differ, as would any eyewitness accounts, but what they found seems clear enough. Then in part two, after the interval, the three officers, strongly sung and with excellent diction by Adam Tunnicliffe, Nicholas Merryweather and Richard Mosley-Evans, reappear as the three lighthouse keepers.

The three lighthouse keepers

Three people with their own ghosts, each a little worrisome in his own way. Mosley-Evans as the bass is a religious nut, prone to Biblical visions, and in a Peter Grimes type of way sings, “Time to light the lantern shining across the seas of sinfulness”. Is he crazy, or is Merryweather the baritone the crazy one, singing of a heinous crime he got away with as a teenager? The music already got strangely excitable in the first half and in the second half it heaves with emotional energy. Played by a smallish group of instrumentalists it was directed by Richard Baker, who kept the tension going very well.

Tension arises

Because of stormy seas the keepers had been left alone too long, and their equanimity is beginning to crack. Tunnicliffe as the tenor is the first to be hit, and this production, brilliantly directed by Ted Huffman, with designs by Neil Irish, leaves us wondering what will happen next. Lighting by Guy Hoare is superb, with its subtle changes from cold to warm, and in the end it gives a fine impression of a lighthouse beam rotating and playing on a scene that is not quite what it seems.

To find the answer, or at least an answer, as to what happened witness the opera yourself. It’s a powerful work.

Performances continue at the Linbury Studio Theatre, 13th Oct – 7:45 pm; West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, 16th Oct – 7:30 pm; Exeter Northcott, 24th Oct – 7:30 pm; Harrogate Theatre, 1st Nov – 7:30 pm; Theatre Royal Bath, 6th Nov – 7:30 pm; Snape Maltings Concert Hall, 9th Nov – 7:30 pm. For details click here.

Albert Herring, English Touring Opera, ETO, Linbury Studio, Covent Garden, October 2012

This delightful comic opera by Benjamin Britten creates a deftly woven musical tapestry performed by thirteen instrumentalists and roughly the same number of singers. Eric Crozier based his libretto on a tale by Guy de Maupassant, transferring it to a Suffolk town and creating a glorious critique of small town mentality, pomposity and sexual repression.

Albert as May King, all images ETO/ Richard Hubert Smith

The local bigwig Lady Billows presides over the choice of May Queen, but her busybody assistant Florence Pike finds a moral imperfection in every nominee, so they decide on a May King instead, with the flawlessly simple greengrocer Albert Herring fulfilling the role. But he too is human and the twenty-five sovereigns prize is partly spent on a night of dissolution, after which he can finally break away from his domineering mother. Britten never wrote a sequel, but we are left with the impression that Albert could very likely marry — possibly the pretty schoolteacher Miss Wordsworth — and make his escape permanent.

Sid and Nancy

Apart from a disappointing Lady Billows the cast sang very well, and Mark Wilde made a suitably shy and uncertain Albert. Rosie Aldridge sang a strong Miss Pike, giving a wonderful delivery of that line, “Country virgins, if there be such, think too little and see too much”. With no surtitles her diction was admirably clear, a benchmark that one or two other cast members might better strive to achieve. As a lovely Miss Wordsworth in her pretty costume, Anna-Clare Monk was delightful, her rehearsing of the children’s singing most charmingly witty. Charles Johnston and Tim Dawkins provided fine vocal depth and stage presence as the vicar and superintendent, and Charles Rice and Martha Jones formed an excellent team as Albert’s friends Sid and Nancy.

Miss Wordsworth rehearses the children

The spare but effective set designs by Neil Irish, aided by Guy Hoare’s clever lighting allow subtle changes of scene, all within the same framework. Excellent costumes too, and very good direction by Christopher Rolls. The members of the Aurora Orchestra played extremely well under the baton of Michael Rosewall, and I particularly liked the solos on the French horn and the saxophone.

Albert Herring continues on tour at: Linbury Studio Theatre, 10th Oct – 7:45 pm; West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, 17th Oct, 19th Oct – 7:30 pm; Exeter Northcott, 25th, 27th Oct – 7:30 pm; Assembly Hall Theatre, Tunbridge Wells, 30th Oct – 7:30 pm; Harrogate Theatre, 2nd Nov – 7:30 pm; Theatre Royal Bath, 5th Nov – 7:30 pm; Snape Maltings Concert Hall, 10th Nov – 7:30 pm; Malvern Theatres, 13th Nov – 7:30 pm; Buxton Opera House, 16th Nov – 7:30 pm. For details click here.

Heart of Darkness, Linbury Studio, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, November 2011

Wow! This was a remarkable achievement by 33 year old composer Tarik O’Regan, along with a libretto by artist Tom Phillips.

The crew on the boat

They have packed Joseph Conrad’s novella into 75 minutes of gripping musical narrative, starting in London with the old sea captain, Marlow — beautifully sung by Alan Oke — in a moment of recollection, “He was a remarkable man”. This is repeated in different forms, and although nothing is hurried, everything is accomplished. Marlow goes into the heart of Africa, upstream with his crew.

Edward Dick and Robert Innes Hopkins have come up with a wonderful design. The deck of the boat moves up and down on water that seeps through, and the effect is that we are there with them as they move up river. It is all helped by Rick Fisher’s lighting, which is mostly dark, but sometimes brilliantly lit with the crew is in the midday sun, and when the witch-doctor appears later we see a strangely magical projection roiling the air.

Alan Oke as Marlow

The sets and lighting help, but the atmosphere is created by the music and libretto. The tension, the frustrations, “What I really need are rivets”, and when the rivets eventually arrive the crew dance for joy. Bright interludes there may be, but the percussion, strings and woodwind create a sense of the jungle, and the crew pull out their guns, “The jungle has eyes in it”. They survive an attack, instigated by Kurtz, that mysterious man whom we eventually meet, strongly sung by young Danish bass Morten Lassenius Kramp. He looks the part in spades, lying on a table, yet supremely fit and slim when he stands up. A man of vision, or is it obsession — Kurtz and his ivory, “They will try to claim it as theirs. It’s my ivory. I want nothing more than justice”. But as Marlow later sings, “His intelligence was perfectly clear, but his soul was mad”.

Marlow and Kurtz

The opera ends as it starts, on the river Thames in London. Kurtz’s fiancée, sung by Gweneth-Ann Jeffers, reappears and we are back to Marlow’s conversation with her at the beginning. He muses about the ‘remarkable man’, impossible to know him and not admire him. She wants to know what were his last words, and Marlow is stuck. “The last word he announced was . . . your name”. It is almost the end, and as the tide of the music goes out and in, we are left to ponder on the eternal insanity of acquisitive obsession.

The music was played by CHROMA conducted by Oliver Gooch, and I would gladly hear and see it all again. This is the first time I remember seeing surtitles in the Linbury Studio, and they worked very well. Performances continue until November 5 — for details click here.

The Metamorphosis, Linbury Studio, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, September 2011

This is perhaps the most exceptional production in the Linbury Studio for 2011 — a retelling of Franz Kafka’s strange story Die Verwandlung.

Edward Watson as an insect, all images Tristram Kenton

Stated in the simplest terms, Kafka’s novella tells how a young man is transformed into an insect. It’s not clear what kind of insect exactly, but several commentators have referred to it as a beetle, and Nabokov even suggested a particular kind of dung beetle. When I first read the story I found it puzzling, as many in the audience may, but read the original and you will see that this creation by Arthur Pita is a remarkable achievement, aided by music composed and played by Frank Moon. Kafka referred to his work as an ‘ausnehmend ekelhafte Geschichte‘ (an exceptionally disgusting story), and so it is, but it plays at deep levels, reflecting the dehumanisation inherent in a rigid routine of work necessitated by the demand to support a family.

This is brilliantly represented on stage at the beginning as we see the protagonist, Gregor Samsa, travel to and from work. Every day on the way in he passes the same woman who sells coffee and rolls, and on the way back beer and stronger drinks. Every day he buys a coffee in one direction and a slivovitz in the other. His time is not his own, but his money supports his father, mother and younger sister Grete. He’s a caring, supporting son, well illustrated on the second day when he brings home a pair of ballet slippers for his sister. She’s thrilled. Every day, Gregor takes an apple to work, leaving before the family is up and about, and when he returns they settle down to a simple meal. He puts his briefcase away and goes to bed. The movements are all carefully stylised — this is what passes for life. On the third morning the music is more ominous, and on the fourth, Gregor doesn’t rise. The alarm goes off, but Gregor has turned into an insect.

The mother and her son the insect

What happens after that is really the heart of the story. Edward Watson is quite incredible as Gregor — it’s a phenomenal performance. Laura Day is brilliant as his kid sister, who really cares about him and does what she can, and Nina Goldman and Anton Skrzypiciel are entirely convincing as the parents, the elegant but neurotic mother and the slothful father who finds he must go out to work again when Gregor turns into a disgusting parasite. The family take in lodgers, three young men who start to enjoy themselves, dancing with the family to Yiddish music. But then Gregor breaks out from his room, and the terrified lodgers leave. It’s the beginning of the end.

Kafka was never entirely happy with the ending of his story, but it is cleverly portrayed here. In fact the whole experience is very cleverly done, and Arthur Pita has brought in the many aspects of story including the sexual overtones between father and daughter, mother and son. The whole cast is wonderful, with Bettina Carpi as the maid and the drinks vendor at the station in Prague, calling out her wares in Czech, along with Greig Cook and Joe Walkling playing supporting parts. The black spiders crawling into Gregor’s room to torment him were very effective, and it is remarkable that Edward Watson can do this six days running, with two performances on Saturday.

See it while you can. There are still tickets for Saturday evening, September 24 — for details click here.

Seven Angels, Royal Opera House, Linbury Studio, July 2011

At the entrance to the auditorium was a display of brochures by the Friends of the Earth, and an Energy Bill petition ready for signing. This is a story about the desecration of the environment, told in the form of gluttony and the abandonment of boundaries in the bringing up of a spoiled young prince.

Yet it’s supposedly based on Milton’s Paradise Lost, and the seven angels are lost, forgotten and abandoned by God, Satan, and Milton himself. They no longer know who or what they are, so they construct a story, and transform themselves into the characters of the story. This much can be understood by reading the programme, but while the singing was loud the words were not always helpful, and this earnest endeavour is without a clear development in Glyn Maxwell’s libretto or Luke Bedford’s music. Certainly the music is good, if somewhat sententious at times and lacking in tempo variations, but the staging with the orchestra behind the singers made it hard to hear quieter passages. For instance at one point in the second half, the sound of the singers flipping the pages of the books was louder than the music itself.

The prince gorges himself, all photos Alastair Muir

Ah, yes, the books. Sitting carefully upright against one another on stage they were tipped over like dominoes, a feature that eventually felt a bit tiresome, and in the second half the books were piled up to make a long wall across the front of the stage, blocking the orchestral sound for those of us in the front few rows, though the singers were heard very loudly indeed. The prince ate the pages of the books, and part of the stage opened out like a book in two different ways, one showing a flourishing tree, another showing a dead one. In the second half a gigantic book on the pile of regular books was opened to release silver helium balloons, later black ones, and later nothing at all.

Obviously a great deal of thought has gone into this production by John Fulljames, but nothing gripped me. There were lots of clever ideas, and the performers expressed huge emotion in their facial gestures, but this alone cannot create good theatre. That can only come from the internal structure of the composition, and perhaps this would work better as an oratorio with the orchestra communicating more directly with the audience.

Making an opera on the worthy but politically correct theme of environmental preservation — instigated, according to the programme, by a visit to the millennium seedbank at Wakehurst Place in West Sussex — is surely not easy, but it reminds me that composers of successful operas have often battled the poets who act as their librettists. The theatrical element is essential in opera, and I’m afraid I missed it here.

This work is performed by The Opera Group and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group conducted by Nicholas Collon. It premiered four weeks ago at the CBSO Centre Birmingham, and there are two further performances at Covent Garden, on July 14 and 15 — for details click here.

Clemency, Linbury Studio, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, May 2011

In Genesis Chapter 18 three unknown men visit Abraham. He welcomes them warmly and gives them food. In return they tell him that his wife Sarah will have a child, though “it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women”. She laughs, but the Lord promises to return a year hence when she will have a son. The men then rise up to go and destroy the twin cities, but Abraham negotiates — not an easy task when you’re dealing with omnipotence. He asks for clemency if there be but fifty righteous within Sodom, and the Lord agrees. Then Abraham reduces the number to forty-five, then forty, thirty, twenty, ten, and always the Lord agrees to relent. In the end, however, we move to Chapter 19, and Sodom is destroyed.

Grant Doyle as Abraham, all photos Stephen Cummiskey

This opera by James Macmillan deals just with Chapter 18, powerful and riveting stuff. Here is the Sumerian god Enlil, angry and willing to destroy as he did in the flood story, though in that ancient Sumerian tale the wise god Enki contrives to preserve life, by advising one man to build an ark. In the Biblical narrative, however, there is only one God, embodying multiple natures, and Genesis 18 is fascinating in the role Abraham plays, almost as if he were Enki, whose Sumerian name means earth lord. Of course Abraham is not a god, though he does later become lord of many flocks and a great household.

Doyle with Janis Kelly as Sarah

In this opera, however, Abraham and Sarah still live very simply, and the beginning was entirely silent, the only sound coming from the running water that Sarah is using to wash vegetables and prepare dinner. Eventually Abraham sings unaccompanied as if chanting a prayer, and at the end of his chanting the orchestra enters. Gradually the opera picks up momentum, and the three men enter. It might seem from this slow start that we are being prepared for a long evening, yet the whole thing lasts less than an hour, and Macmillan’s harmonious music creates a strong impression. This is a composer who has the ability to remain quiet and subdued but yet bring forth the full weight of the orchestra when it suits him.

His new work Clemency is one I would be very happy to revisit, but it’s not easy to catch the words as they are sung, so I recommend getting there early enough to read through the short libretto by Michael Symmons Roberts, which is included with the programme. It’s also worth reading Genesis 18 before you go. As many people will know, this is the 400^th anniversary of the Authorised King James translation of the Bible, hence the Biblical topic, and it’s an excellent one to choose.

The music was beautifully played by the Britten Sinfonia conducted by Clark Rundell, and Grant Doyle and Janis Kelly sang strongly as Abraham and Sarah, as did Adam Green, Eamonn Mulhall and Andrew Tortise as the three men. The set design by Alex Eales is a triptych with Sarah’s kitchen in the left frame, and the three visitors appear only in the centre, reflecting the three-in-oneness of this story. The strangers are three, yet they act as one, and in the Biblical narrative it is sometimes God who speaks.

Performances of this ROH2 co-production with Scottish Opera continue at Covent Garden until May 14  — for more details click here.

Songs from a Hotel Bedroom, Linbury Studio, ROH, Covent Garden, November 2010

Kurt Weill is the composer of two operatic works that I like very much — The Threepenny Opera (Berlin, 1928) and Street Scene (New York, 1947) — along with lots of glorious songs from other stage works. I was delighted to hear many of those songs in this drama created by Kate Flatt and Peter Rowe, with choreography by Ms. Flatt.

The main idea is a love affair between Parisian chanteuse Angélique, and American song-writer Dan. Their relationship catches fire in various hotel bedrooms, but is doomed in the more mundane world of careers and the prospect of homemaking. What I particularly liked about the show was the clever use of two tango dancers, who express the protagonists’ emotions by their movements, demonstrating physical passion and ardour, or distancing and yearning, after each song is over.

Nigel Richards and Frances Ruffelle, photo by Caroline True

Frances Ruffelle sang Angélique with a wistful melancholy, and her voice had a gloriously smoky quality with a cutting edge that was quintessentially Weill. Nigel Richards came over forcefully as Dan, but I thought his voice was too strongly miked-up at times. The tango dancers, Amir Giles and Tara Pilbrow, were wonderfully sensuous, helped by Kate Flatt’s excellent choreography, and the atmospheric lighting by Anna Watson that allowed the singers to fade away as the dancers came on, making the combination of the two very effective.

As for the songs themselves, I loved the early ones from the 1943 musical One Touch of Venus with lyrics by Ogden Nash. She did a great job with Foolish Heart, followed by the duet Vive La Difference, and later by I’m a Stranger Here Myself. Other songs followed, including One Life to Livefrom Lady in the Dark with lyrics by Ira Gershwin, and It Never Was You from the 1936 musical Knickerbocker Holiday. When he returns to her, with not much time left to live, she sings To Love You And To Lose You from the even earlier musical Johnny Johnson. These songs, and more, are all Kurt Weill and were very well played by the band whose members were all in costume and joined in the action on stage. The production helps to bring the songs to life and makes for a charming hour and a quarter, with the singing very well complemented by the choreography and lighting.

I’m delighted the Royal Opera House has put this on. Performances continue on November 4, 5 and 6 (mat. and eve.) — details here.

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.