The Fairy Queen, Glyndebourne, July 2012

A  Midsummer Night’s Dream as Gesamtkunstwerk, with actors, singers, and dancers in Purcell’s remarkable semi-opera, is given here in an eclectic production by Jonathan Kent combining the seventeenth century with modern times — linked of course by the fairies.

Titania, changeling, fairies, all images Richard Hubert Smith

It all starts in a Restoration drawing room with a Restoration version of Shakespeare. His play within a play is extended by musical interludes and four musical masques, the one before the long interval showing the delights of sensual love. This involves giant bunnies having it off every which way, including reversing roles in a pantomime that would confuse the children. But there is a pantomime spirit about the whole thing, including the way Finbar Lynch plays Oberon, and when conductor Laurence Cummings appeared for curtain calls at the end his bunny tail and huge white feet reflected the great enthusiasm and energy he had already shown in the orchestra pit, producing a lively performance from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

The lovers united by fairy magic

Anyone who has been to the Globe Theatre will be used to hearing bits of music and dance with the plays, but here it entirely takes over from time to time, and Kim Brandstrup’s imaginative choreography was a joy to watch. That is the one thing I would happily have seen more of, but on the other hand anything more in this production would surely tip it over the top. As it is, Paul Brown’s designs gave me more than I bargained for, and when the seasons came on towards the end, Autumn looked like a Mayan god. It was almost too much. That was followed by the best vocal performance of the evening by bass David Soar as Winter — he was super.

Puck and fairies

Other fine performances were given by actors Jotham Annan as Puck and Penny Downie as Titania. Annan’s lithe body made it look as if he could transport himself anywhere in the forest, and Penny Downie gave a rendering of Titania that reminded me of the quality Judi Dench brought to the role in a recent production. The Rude Mechanicals are cleaners whose abrupt appearance in the seventeenth century drawing room was something of a coup de theâtre, but this production was not short of such sudden theatrical changes in costume.

The double wedding

So many changes, so little time, but this is not a short work, so be prepared for laughter and confusion.

There will be a cinema screening on Sunday, July 22, and performances continue until August 26 — for details click here.

The Flying Dutchman, English National Opera, ENO, London Coliseum, April 2012

Sudden darkness in the auditorium … the orchestra struck up, and we were treated to great power and sensitivity from the baton of Edward Gardner. The silences were silent, the quiet passages quiet, and the loud passages with the chorus came over with huge force.

All images by Robert Workman

This new production by Jonathan Kent starts in the overture with a little girl being put to bed by her father Daland the sea captain. She dreams of the sea … the wild, windy sea, shown in video projections designed by Nina Dunn. Then as the opera gets underway we see huge designs by Paul Brown filling the stage from top to bottom, with lighting by Mark Henderson embracing the video effects and giving beautiful colour changes during Daland’s lyrical dialogue with his daughter, when salvation beckons.

Clive Bayley as Daland

In the end when the Dutchman chides his would-be saviour, Senta for her apparent unfaithfulness he silently vanishes from the party throng, she smashes a bottle . . . and it’s all over. She dies and he is redeemed.

Entrance of the Dutchman

James Creswell as the Dutchman exhibited superb restraint and nobility, both in voice and stage presence, and with Clive Bayley portraying Daland as an engagingly earnest father to Senta, this was a cast rich in wonderful bass tones. At the higher register, Stuart Skelton was a brilliant Erik, the young man in love with Senta. He is a star in the ENO firmament. As Senta herself, Orla Boylan gave a somewhat uneven vocal performance with some strong moments but a flaccid stage-presence.

Senta at the party

The Dutchman has been wandering the planet for countless years, and in Jonathan Kent’s production we see him dressed in a costume from two hundred years ago, contrasting with the girls working in a modern assembly shop where a costume party turns wild, threatening a gang rape of Senta . . . but suddenly the Dutchman’s ghostly crew sing powerfully from off-stage, scaring the living daylights out of the revellers. This is the same director who has produced Sweeney Todd now playing in the West End, so perhaps a bit of the Sweeney darkness has invaded Wagner, but that’s no bad thing, and the chorus carried it off superbly. They were wonderful.

The Flying Dutchman is the first of Wagner’s operas in the regular canon of ten, and this was the first time Edward Gardner has conducted any of them. I look forward to more!

Performances continue until May 23 — for details click here.

The Turn of the Screw, Glyndebourne, August 2011

The clarity of this production, and this performance, was exceptional. From the first words of the Prologue to the last words of the drama when the Governess asks the limp body of Miles, “What have we done between us?”, the whole story was laid bare.

Governess and children, all photos by Alastair Muir

The scene with the governess travelling by train to the big house where she will look after the two children was beautifully done, with projections of moving countryside through train windows. You feel for the governess, for her uncertainty, “If things go wrong, what shall I do? Who can I ask, with none of my own kind to talk to?”

Flora and Miss Jessel, Miles and Quint

The central feature of this Jonathan Kent production is a large frame of windows, including a French window, that can revolve, be lifted, and rotated out of their frame. The windows help separate the world of normality from otherworldly forces, and in the scene at the lake they lie horizontally over the body of Miss Jessel, as if she were under water before rising up to spook the governess. The previous death of Miss Jessel and Peter Quint is represented partly by branches of a dead tree where Quint sits when he urges Miles to steal the letter, and the many scenes in this opera are formed by bringing stage props together by rotating various annular regions of the stage, sometimes in opposite directions. These are clever designs by Paul Brown, helped by Mark Henderson’s lighting, and I particularly liked the final scene of Act I where Miles is in the bath and Flora is washing her hair. She puts her head in the basin and remains utterly still while Quint appears to Miles. It’s as if time stands still. It’s as if these ghostly appearances exist in a wrinkle of time, inaccessible to Mrs. Grose the housekeeper, but they are disturbances that reveal themselves to receptive minds.

Governess and Miles

This is a chamber opera, with thirteen instrumentalists from the London Philharmonic playing beautifully under the direction of young Czech conductor, Jakub Hruša, the music director of Glyndebourne on Tour. The cast worked together as a team, all with excellent diction, and it’s impossible to pick out single brilliant performances. Toby Spence gave great clarity to the prologue and was a charismatic Quint; and Giselle Allen was a creepy looking Miss Jessel, with her long, untidy, black hair, and spine-tingling voice. Miah Persson was a wonderful governess, pretty and sure of voice, albeit plagued by anxiety, and Susan Bickley was strong and equally sure as Mrs. Grose. This wonderful team of adults was complemented by Joanna Songi as Flora and Thomas Parfitt as Miles. As a woman in her very early twenties, Ms Songi came over very well as a ten year old girl, and Thomas Parfitt played a boy of his own age (12) with superb clarity and voice control. This was as close to perfect a performance of Britten’s opera as one is ever likely to get, and is not to be missed.

 Performances continue until August 28 — for details click here.

Tosca, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, June 2011

Sex, politics and religion — heady stuff when Sarah Bernhardt played the title character in Sardou’s 1887 play La Tosca, and Puccini saw her do it. He immediately wanted to turn the play into an opera, but there were problems with the rights, and he was soon busy with Manon Lescaut and then La Bohème. Eventually he managed to return to Sardou’s play and in January 1900 produced one of the greatest operas ever.

As Floria Tosca in this performance, Martina Serafin sang and acted beautifully, and Marcello Giordani was a superb Cavaradossi. Unfortunately in the dress rehearsal I attended, Juha Uusitalo was disappointing as Scarpia. I admired him immensely in October 2008 as Jokanaan in the Met’s Salome, but here he was strangely lacking in stage presence, and failed to exhibit the menace that this forceful and much feared police chief should have. After all this is based on real events, and Sardou specifically set the action during a period of less than 24 hours, from 17 June 1800 to dawn on June 18, when Napoleon was about to liberate Rome from the rule of Naples.

The two levels in Act I with Scarpia in the foreground.

This political and personal drama is well served by Jonathan Kent’s production with its designs by Paul Brown, and well aided by Mark Henderson’s lighting, which starts very darkly in all three acts before gradually brightening, suiting the theatrical development in each case. The production has one or two unusual aspects: Act I is set on two levels, allowing Scarpia to sing on his own near the Attavanti chapel, while the choir and congregation are on the upper (ground) level; and in Act II after Tosca has killed Scarpia she finds the letter of safe-conduct not in his hand, but in the breast pocket of his jacket, stained with blood.

Martina Serafin as Tosca at the end of Act II

Scarpia’s henchman, Spoletta was brilliantly sung by Hubert Francis, whose acting and presence were stronger than that of his master, and the Sacristan in Act I was superbly portrayed by Jeremy White. These excellent performances of minor characters bring huge authenticity to the drama, but the main plaudits go of course to Serafin and Giordani, along with Antonio Pappano in the orchestra pit. Act III starts beautifully quietly — this is wonderful music, and Pappano directed it with immense sensitivity — but the repeated coughs in the audience were distracting. The Royal Opera House needs to think how they might alleviate this irritating problem — how would they manage it if this were a live cinema relay?

Performances of Tosca with the current cast continue until June 30, followed by two further performances on July 14 and 17 with Angela Gheorghiu as Tosca, Jonas Kaufman as Cavaradossi and Bryn Terfel as Scarpia — for details click here.

I shall report on the Gheorghiu/ Kaufman/ Terfel cast after the July 14 performance.

A Month in the Country, Chichester Festival Theatre, October 2010

At the end of this Turgenev play most people depart, leaving Natalya alone in her boredom and unhappy marriage.

Janie Dee and Michael Feast as Natalya and Rakitin

In the meantime it always looks as if things might work out more happily, particularly if Natalya’s relationship with Rakitin — who adores her and lives in the household — can stabilise itself. Rakitin is the character closest to Turgenev himself, who enjoyed a forty-year relationship with the celebrated singer Pauline Viardot, even living in her household, and Michael Feast played the part superbly. Utterly convincing, he elicited my sympathies, as did Phoebe Fox as Natalya’s foster-daughter. She gave a beautiful portrayal of intelligence and sincerity in the face of Janie Dee’s mercurial and histrionic Natalya, showing a woman scarcely under control as she battles with her repressed desire for the young tutor who has been with the family for less than a month.

Jonathan Coy gave a fine portrayal of Natalya’s husband Arkady, who simply doesn’t grasp what’s going on, and Joanna McCallum was excellent as his widowed mother, delivering her final speech with superb gravitas and sensitivity. Kenneth Cranham was wittily absurd as the local doctor, speaking with evident conviction when he describes himself as a “bitter, cunning, angry peasant”. This doctor is happy to avail himself of the opportunity to dine in the pleasant surroundings of the estate, well represented in Paul Brown’s designs with excellent lighting by Mark Henderson. The slightly worn appearance of the house helped give a sense of impending doom, and as Donald Rayfield writes in the programme, “after . . . watching A Month in the Country you realise quite how painful is the catastrophe that has struck the characters”.

Will the new tutor enliven everyone’s life, or cause everything to crash to the ground?

Of course the catalyst for this catastrophe is the young tutor, supposedly a lively and attractive young man, but played here by James McArdle as an unattractive Scottish oik. Was that the director’s intention, or simply the actor’s natural inclination? In any case it seemed odd that either Natalya or Vera could fall for this fellow — but with that one reservation aside this Jonathan Kent production gave a convincing sense of the underlying emotions fuelling the slow-motion train wreck into which some of these characters are propelling the others.

Performances of this Brian Friel adaptation of Turgenev’s play continue until October 16.

Don Giovanni, Glyndebourne, July 2010

This production starts with a bang. The audience, seated in a lighted auditorium, is suddenly plunged into blackness as the first chord comes thundering from the orchestra. Then as the stage gradually lights up during the overture we see a cubical building of stone slowly rotating, showing different facets, and I thought of Dr. Who’s tardis. This turned out to be right on the mark, as the building later opens out to reveal various sets, the last of which shows a long table adorned for dining in a raked and dissolute room. The Commendatore appears from beneath, and drags the Don to hell at the front of the stage. This Jonathan Kent production is cleverly lit by Mark Henderson, and the designs by Paul Brown suggest a spooked version of La Dolce Vita in late 1950s Italy.

The End of the Party in Act I, Glyndebourne photo by Bill Cooper

Within this context, Gerald Finley is the perfect Don, suave and brutal. His killing of the Commendatore is done by dragging him to ground and clobbering him with a brick. After that, both he and Luca Pisaroni as Leporello performed with an insouciance that gave the impression either one would happily shop the other if push came to shove. Their singing had a clarity and attack that made them seem a nasty pair of scoundrels, and with such performances the rest of the cast could be almost passengers, yet there was some excellent support.

The Don with Zerlina, photo by Bill Cooper

Guido Loconsolo performed well as an unusually assertive Masetto, with his two-tone shoes and youthful physicality, and Anna Virovlansky as Zerlina was prettily seductive and absolutely infuriating in her flippant responses to him. Kate Royal sang well as a mousey Donna Elvira, still in love with the Don but clearly incapable of attracting his attentions, apart from her angry assertions of his callous inconstancy, and William Burden was a very fine Don Ottavio, restrained yet powerful. Brindley Sherratt sang well as the Commendatore, and Anna Samuil did her own thing as Donna Anna, singing out strongly for her fans in the audience, yet never quite integrating with the rest of the cast.

The Commendatore crushes the Don, photo by Bill Cooper

This was, at least for me, a super production, and the first orchestral bang at the start was followed by another when the wedding party suddenly poured forth from the cubical structure, and a third at the start of Act II. My only complaint was that the Act II fight where the Don beats up Masetto was poorly done — the blow knocking Masetto to the ground was very wide of the mark — but this is something that should be rehearsed by fight director Alison de Burgh before every performance. However, Vladimir Jurowski did a superb job with the orchestra, which played with immense feeling for the light and shade of Mozart’s score.

Performances continue until 27th August.