La locandiera, Bampton Classical Opera, 16 September 2025

St John’s, Smith Square

Mirandolina – Siân Dicker
Fabrizio – Samuel Pantcheff
Lena – Rosalind Dobson
Baron Ripafratta – Osian Wyn Bowen
Count of Albafiorita – David Horton
Marquis of Forlimpopoli – Aidan Edwards

Director, designer – Jeremy Gray
Assistant director – Harriet Cameron
Movement – Karen Halliday
Costumes – Pauline Smith, Anne Baldwin
Lighting – Ian Chandler

CHROMA

Andrew Griffiths (conductor)

Images: Bampton Classical Opera
Baron Ripafratta (Osian Wyn Bowen) and Mirandolina (Siân Dicker)

My second Salieri opera of the year: it is not so often one has opportunity to say that, although (depending how one counts) it is arguably not my first time either. At any rate, the bicentenary of the composer’s death has afforded opportunities one can only hope will lead to others after this year. Bampton Classical Opera has long been an advocate for Salieri, this its fifth production of one of his operas. This spring, the Salzburg Landestheater’s revival of the 1795 Il mondo alla rovescia proved a revelation. Now BCO has turned to a considerably earlier dramma giocoso, the 1773 La locandiera, written with Domenico Poggi, after Goldoni, when the composer was but a Mozartian 22. (I know I should try to avoid mentioning him in this context, but it rarely proves possible.) Truth be told, this early work is far from a masterpiece, nor do I think it compares with any of his operas, however early, though it may simply be that I know them better and/or am reflecting mere personal preference. La locandiera is, however, competently written, was more than competently performed, and, with what I presume to have been judicious cuts, certainly did not outstay its welcome, affording a cold September London evening a reminder of the departed Cotswold summer in which Jeremy Gray’s production would have seen the light of day at the Bampton Deanery. 

Moreover, musical comparisons with Bohuslav Martinů’s frankly trivial Mirandolina, based on the same play and seen at Garsington in 2009, stand very much in Salieri’s favour. I shall admit to having wondered to begin with, both with respect to work and orchestral sound. Whether it was my ears adjusting or something akin to an objective improvement, I am not entirely sure; perhaps it was a little of both. At any rate, it would be churlish to harrumph unduly at the small number of CHROMA players, since the alternative would likewise have been not to hear the opera at all. For the most part, Andrew Griffiths set reasonable and varied tempi, proved supportive to the singers, and vigorous playing imparted a keen sense of drama and onward motion. At least as important, a sense of increasing musico-dramatic involvement, as we got to ‘know’ the characters and their predicament, that sense doubtless born of a duly operatic combination of virtues: work, singing, staging, and orchestral/overall direction.  

Count of Albafiorita (David Horton), Marquis of Forlimpopoli (Aidan Edwards)

Gray’s production stood in a recognisably Bampton line, without in any way seeming off-the-shelf. I suspect the English country environment helps suggest something of its own ilk: the world of Agatha Christie, blazers, tennis, and witty one-liners (rather, in Gray and Gilly French’s translation, rhyming couplets). The transposition fitted well the noble-and-servant world of Goldoni; it enabled plentiful colour, action – never a dull moment – and reference in a nicely resourceful staging. A momentary visitation from the future, ‘Se vuol ballare, signor barone’, rightly raised a few chortles and reminded us how many opere buffe sprang ultimately from similar soil. That ‘other’ composer probably came closest, if with considerably greater musical sophistication, in La finta giardiniera, and the dramatic situation itself probably stands closest there too. I could not help but think a little more might have been done with gender and sexuality, as was certainly the case in the Salzburg Mondo alla rovescia. Baron Ripafratta, suspicious to an absurd degree of women, might have been ‘unpacked’ a little, as we now like to say. Perhaps, though, there is something to be said for treating a little-known work more or less straight, as it were. 

Lena (Rosalind Dobson), Fabrizio (Samuel Pantcheff)

I have stressed ‘situation’, because that felt like the beating heart of the evening’s entertainment: not entirely unlike a ‘situation comedy’, albeit without the reruns. From that, though, stock characters could not only step forth, which in able vocal performances they certainly did; they could also perhaps shed a little of their stock nature in the specific magic of actual performance. At the hub was the landlady herself, Mirandolina, in a spirited, properly knowing portrayal by Siân Dicker, well matched in every respect by Samuel Pantcheff’s Fabrizio. Our not-quite, not-yet Susanna and Figaro – ok, I give up for now; teleology wins – displayed excellent chemistry, born equally of stage encounter and lyricism, as well as duly outwitting a trio of male aristocratic buffoons. In their vocalism, though, Osian Wyn Bowen, David Horton, and Aidan Edwards all hinted – without over-egging their respective puddings – at greater frames of reference, not least through excellent line and phrasing. Only on one occasion did one of them sound parted, and that was soon forgotten. Rosalind Dobson’s Lena offered a fine animating presence too; my only regret was that she did not have more to sing. Here, then, on the cusp of autumnal blues, was served a landlady’s lyrical tonic—and far from only that.

The Medium/The Wanton Sublime, Grimeborn Festival, 27 August 2015

Studio 2, Arcola Theatre

Hai-Ting Chinn (mezzo-soprano)

Orpheus Sinfonia

Andrew Griffiths (conductor)

Robert Shaw (director)

Gillian Argo (designs)
Tom White (lighting)

What an evening for Hai-Ting Chinn, taking the starring and indeed only role not only in Peter Maxwell Davies’s The Medium but also in Tarik O’Regan’s The Wanton Sublime, here receiving its first European performances! She must have been on stage for not far short of an hour and a half, singing for most of that time. I was a little surprised to hear her described as a mezzo; to my ears, she sounded much more of a soprano. What was not in doubt, however, was her accomplishment as a singing actress; nor, indeed, her accomplishment as a vocalist, not least in the unaccompanied Medium, written for Jane Manning. Called upon to alternate between Sprechgesang, rapid coloratura, hymn singing, and much else besides, Chinn managed both to remain in control and to convey meaning. A more ‘conventionally’ sung part in O’Regan’s work nevertheless offered plenty of opportunity for development, within its relatively short duration; much was made, capitalising upon Gillian Argo’s necessarily spare yet telling designs, of the conflict between different aspects of Mary’s – yes, the Virgin’s: ‘I am a virgin’ – character.

Davies’s work, if perhaps a little over-extended, presents a welcome continuation, albeit from a female standpoint, of some of the preoccupations of the slightly earlier The Lighthouse. Theology, religious fanaticism, fraudulent representation and self-representation, even some of the downright insanity of the composer’s earlier work: they co-exist, conflict, even fuse in a largely compelling three-quarters of an hour. The voices in the medium’s head whose urgings she feels compelled to act out, almost to give birth to, offer an intriguing ‘period’ lace introduction to the contemporary – New York, I presume – reimagining of Mary as Virgin in an equally uncomprehending world of The Wanton Sublime. Undressing and re-dressing (in what, before its obliteration before over-use and misuse, one might once have called ‘iconic’ blue), more of a sexual being than she is generally given credit for, this Mary has much to intrigue, although Anna Rabinowitz’s libretto perhaps tries a little too hard to be ‘streetwise’. O’Regan’s score, expertly played by the Orpheus Sinfonia (violin, viola, cello, double bass, flute/piccolo, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, two on percussion) under Andrew Griffiths, progresses alternately by angular, but not too angular, action passages and frozen, more melismatic passages of reflection. There is thus perhaps something filmic to what we hear as well as to what we see. Recorded voices – Mary’s own – surface too: largely confirming, but perhaps also questioning. Much to ponder, then, from a fascinating evening at the Grimeborn Festival.

 

La finta semplice, Bampton Classical Opera, 17 September 2013

 St John’s, Smith Square

(performed in English, as Pride and Pretence)

Rosina – Aoife O’Sullivan

Don Cassandro – Nicholas Merryweather
Don Polidoro – Robert Anthony Gardiner
Giacinta – Caryl Hughes
Ninetta – Nathalie Chalkley
Fracasso – Adam Tunnicliffe
Simone – Gavan Ring

Jeremy Gray (director)

CHROMA

Andrew Griffiths (conductor)

 

 

Bampton Classical Opera’s annual visit to St John’s Smith Square this year offered La finta semplice, the twelve-year-old Mozart’s three-act opera buffa to a Goldoni libretto as modified by Marco Coltellini. Coltellini had settled in Vienna in the early 1760s, having been appointed as Metastasio’s successor as court poet. Libretti included that for Tommaso Traetta’s 1763 Ifigenia in Tauride, in some ways a precursor of Gluck’s reform operas, incorporating as it did many elements of French tragédie lyrique into the typically more Italianate Viennese opera. Indeed, Gluck would set Coltellini’s Telemaco in 1765, and Salieri his Armida in 1771.

 

La finta semplice, composed in 1768, came between those two works. Though rehearsed in Vienna in 1768, it was not performed, seemingly the victim of Leopold Mozart’s failure to gain a contract, Mozart’s father having acted upon Joseph II’s suggestion – Joseph was now Holy Roman Emperor, and Co-regent of the Habsburg lands with Maria Theresa, though she still very much wore the imperial trousers – that Mozart might write a work for performance by the court opera. Intrigues that would not have been out of place in Amadeus thwarted the expected performance, and the Mozarts abruptly returned to Salzburg, where La finta semplice would be performed the following year at the Archbishop’s Palace, probably on 1 May. We can be reasonably sure that that performance, employing local musicians including Michael Haydn’s wife, Magdalena Lipp, as Rosina, was the only one during Mozart’s lifetime.

 

Though occasionally staged since, it remains a rarity. My only previous theatrical encounter with it having been during the heavenly anniversary year of 2006, when Salzburg staged all of Mozart’s operas, though this particular opera received an anything-but-heavenly staging, recitatives being ditched in favour of a gameshow format, in which a squeaky-voiced woman clad in a bright yellow jumpsuit shouted directorial inanities. Michael Hofstetter’s conducting of the Camerata Salzburg was not much better, abrasively harrying an orchestra that bore all too readily the wounds of its Norringtonian passion. (Though I have proved unable to bring myself to return to it, the production is available on DVD, lest the reader think it a figment of my fevered imagination.)

 

It was, then, with eagerness that I travelled to Westminster for a second chance, sad perhaps that the opera was being offered in translation, yet grateful that it was to be performed at all. The ‘new English translation’ by Gilly French and Jeremy Gray was one of those translations more akin to a new ‘version’: not a problem if it works and proves a thoroughgoing recreation, but in this case tended more towards the merely silly. Words and sometimes whole couplets seemed chosen more on account of the opportunity for an attention-seeking rhyme, such as ‘boozing’ and ‘snoozing’, than because they were dramatically fitting, let alone faithful. Nevertheless, when making a mental comparison with the jumpsuit gameshow ‘version’, one could breathe a sigh or two of relief. Gray’s staging, insofar as one could tell, given its transporting from Bampton to Westminster, offered manic – sometimes a little too manic – action against a vaguely surrealistic backdrop. In that, it was doubtless consistent with the conception apparent from the translation of kinship to farce, though I am not sure that it thereby displayed any real appreciation of Goldoni’s buffa form, Coltellini’s revisions, or indeed Mozart’s music. Partly for that reason, I shall not delve more deeply into the plot; synopses are readily available, and in the circumstances, the musical performance became more evidently the thing.

 

Certain overheated moments apart, though, it did not particular harm either. Andrew Griffiths was able as conductor to show a far keener appreciation of the score, pacing it well, offering both contrast and, especially during the second and third acts, a proper sense, even at this stage in Mozart’s career, of dramatic development. Griffiths yielded where appropriate, without succumbing in any sense to the mannerisms that so bedevil present performances of eighteenth-century repertoire. If there were occasions when one missed the sound of a full orchestra, the CHROMA ensemble offered for the most part finely honed, sensitive playing: stylish without affectation. Charlotte Forrest deserves special mention as the excellent harpsichord continuo player. A young cast offered an ensemble that was definitely more than the sum of its parts, not that they were negligible. If in many cases some numbers proved more strongly sung than others, there was a high level not only of promise but accomplishment.   Aoife O’Sullivan’s account of Rosina, the baroness, was perhaps the high point, its musical sensitivity matching that of the players. But a general sense of commitment and exuberance went a long way.