The Rape of Lucretia, HGO, 22 April 2026

Jacksons Lane Theatre

Female Chorus – Olivia Rise Tringham
Male Chorus – Daniel Gray Bell
Lucretia – Emma Roberts
Tarquinius – Stephen Whitford
Collatinus – Oleksii Zasiadko
Junius – Maximilian Catalano
Bianca – Mia Serracino
Lucia – Nikki Martin

Directors – Eleanor Burke, Alex Gotch
Designs – Jennifer Gregory
Lighting – Cheng Keng

HGO Orchestra

Oliver Cope (conductor)

Images: © 2026 LaurentCompagnon

The Rape of Lucretia remains considerably less popular than its predecessor Peter Grimes, but it is to my mind the more interesting work (in Britten’s operatic œuvre second only to The Turn of the Screw). It is, to be sure, more problematical, whether straightforwardly in subject matter or in the ever-disconcerting – to many, downright offensive – Christian moralising of the close, but its musicodramatic construction is more sophisticated, if at times a touch overdetermined in its apparent determination—not only musically to illustrate as many aspects of the libretto as possible but also to treat them as motivically and even harmonically generative. Even that, though, ends up a fruitful part in questions of relationships between words, music, and staging. 

At any rate, this marks another triumph for HGO: excellent in every respect. Perhaps first and foremost, given the nature of the enterprise, every member of the cast shone vocally and dramatically, whether individually or as part of an ensemble both tightknit and protean. Months of hard work have once again paid off handsomely, in an evening all who attended, let alone participated more actively in, will remember for some time. As Lucretia, Emma Roberts had far from the easiest role (not that there necessarily is such a thing). Unsullied virtue may come across as a little bit dull, however admirable. Her dramatic trajectory was planned and projected with great skill, engaging sympathy as well as admiration early on, and grasping the final moments of her life with an uncommon terror and horror that registered all the more powerfully for their lack of exaggeration, all securely rooted in text (of opera and production alike). Stephen Whitford’s Tarquinius trod with similarly uncommon security the tightrope between engaging just enough sympathy to portray the prince as a character at all, and ensuring the horror of his deed and his steps toward it engaged and repelled as they should. He was ‘panther agile and panther virile’, but also crucially a person who was far from sure about what he would do, and who could well have backed out of that: doubtless credit to Eleanor Burke and Alex Gotch’s production too. 

Olivia Rise Tringham and Daniel Gray Bell complemented one another intelligently, dramatically, and movingly as male and female Chorus, their interaction with characters emphatically onstage a welcome addition of human and dramatic complexity. Their way with words – and there are many of them – was irreproachable, both in themselves and in their relationship to music in their vocal lines. Oleksii Zasiadko offered a dark-hued, compassionate Collatinus, nicely supported by Maximilian Catalano’s alert, developing conception of Junius. Mia Serracino as Bianca and Nikki Martin as Lucia distinguished themselves, both in performance and from one another in Lucretia’s household, anchoring the events in a world that might well have remained as it was yet could not, ensemble singing here as elsewhere key to that transformation. All of these young singers showed themselves to possess equal aptitude for and commitment to the dramatic stage. I imagine we shall have good opportunity to see and hear all of them in this context as well as in the concert hall in the years to come. 

I should be similarly surprised if we do not conductor Oliver Cope and the excellent instrumentalists of the HGO Orchestra. There was no need, of course, for any orchestral reduction, however sensitive, in this case. Rather, Britten’s chamber opera could extend itself in visceral claustrophobia – I think such a thing is just about possible – throughout the Jacksons Lane auditorium. The creepiness and atmosphere were well captured, as were moments both of horror and of wonder: the false dawn of Roman sunrise, for instance. Above all, here was the dramatic engine of the entire work, in detail as well as throttle, as well as uncomfortable, even unbearable reference, that fatal late passage with cor anglais solo allusive to and evocative of a Bach Passion or cantata and its theological hinterland in the way direct quotation could not be. Quite what Britten could do, long before Death in Venice, with percussion alone was brought home with equal power. All ensemble members were crucial dramatic participants, as if in a piece of incipient music theatre, Cope’s direction fatal yet human. If I have a cavil – it is really more of a suggestion – it lies with the lack of titles. I can well understand the desire for immediacy, but in such an acoustic, it is not always possible, excellent diction notwithstanding, to discern every word unless one knows it already. It might be worth considering, even for opera in English, as much to help the singers as the audience. 

The production navigated a fruitful, productive balancing act between ritual and realism. Set, I think, at more or less the time of composition, in the wake of the Second World War and its horrendous violence, that was present, as was every possibility to draw connections with the horrors of our own age, without making it the point in itself. This was still very much a human tragedy, perpetrated and endured by human beings, in some cases at least making choices of their own. A simple set sufficed in both starkness and versatility. Tarquinius’s attempt to wash himself before departing, violently to scrub his bare skin of the ‘desire’ that lay within him was horrible yet crucial to watch. His night-time pacing within a small maze had one feel there was a real prospect of another outcome, though of course ultimately there was not. The extinction of Lucretia’s orchids, lit and preserved in boxes throughout until sending her message to Collatinus, proved a moment unanswered and unanswerable. 

A programme link to Solace Women’s Aid is well worth reproducing here, for any who might need the services of or wish to contribute to London’s largest domestic abuse and sexual violence charity.  

Eugene Onegin, HGO, 8 November 2024

Jacksons Lane Arts Centre

Images: © 2024 Laurent Compagnon 

Eugene Onegin: Ambrose Connolly
Tatiana: Nicola Said
Lensky: Martins Smaukstelis
Olga: Katey Rylands
Prince Gremin: Wonsick Oh
Mme Larina: Erin Spence
Filipyevna: Hannah Morley
Zaretsky: Conall O’Neil
Monsieur Triquet: Quito Clothier

Director: Eleanor Burke
Associate director: Finn Lacey
Designs: Emeline Beroud
Lighting: Trui Malten
Movement: Alex Gotch
Fight director: Rich Gittens

HGO Chorus and Orchestra

Oliver Cope (conductor)

Eugene Onegin (Ambrose Connolly)

HGO’s new Eugene Onegin is not only one of the most impressive productions I have seen yet from the company; it is one of the most impressive of the work I have seen for quite some time too. It would be easy to dwell on what it is not: it is not a lavish big-house staging with big ‘names’; it has a tiny one-to-a-part orchestra; and so on. That focuses attention in different ways, to a certain extent intrinsically: one hears things differently in arrangements, of course, an intriguing case in point being the way one perceives the band almost diegetically during the ball scene. Acting at close quarters offers a very different, in many ways more intense experience too, visually and aurally; one learns much from the detail of facial expressions that would be missed by the greater part of an audience elsewhere Yet none of that would count for very much at all, were it not for the excellence of staging, performances, and ensemble. Almost as if one were attending a performance of, say, Schoenberg’s Society for Private Musical Performances, one begins to wonder whether one needs the ‘original’ experience at all. There is room for both, of course, and must be; HGO’s raison d’être is to offer singers at the start of their professional careers opportunities to sing in full-scale, interesting productions before London audiences. Yet it is testament on this occasion to the success of this first night, that I did not feel remotely troubled by having missed Covent Garden’s new staging and having gone to this instead. 

Eleanor Burke’s staging sets the work maybe 30 or 40 years ago: it could be just before or just after the fall of socialism, or whatever it is, but that is not really the point. Even in the final act, skilfully evoking with, as elsewhere, minimal resources, what might be some sort of St Petersburg art show, founded in new prosperity (for some), again the point is not so much political as the passing of time. Time and regret are crucial to the work, of course, as to the production. There is nothing pretty, let alone prettified, about the countryside in which this opens; one can well imagine its protagonists would feel some relief on leaving it—save if, like Lensky, they were dead; or, like Tatiana and Onegin, they endure other miserable fates.

 

These are lonely people, trying to pretend otherwise, trying to make their way in the world, and relying on various crutches – alcohol, drugs, sex, and above all each other – to do so. That again, does not in itself become the point, but rather contextualises the drama and permits it to emerge. Another such crutch lies in literature and in the world of art more broadly. Onegin initially hands Tatiana a book, later returned to him. She writes her letter in it, and that appears to mark some stage in growing up as well as more obvious awakening. Whether ultimately it helps them make sense of themselves and their situation is perhaps questionable, though. Tragedy lies in the consequences of what they do there and then; they cannot always simply learn from their mistakes, since it will often be too late.

 

Olga (Katey Rylands), Tatiana (Nicola Said)

For once, one does not find everything, or indeed anything very much, a metaphor for Tchaikovsky’s homosexuality. The strong direction gives the overt drama a new lease of life and one believes in these characters as themselves, Lensky and Olga as much as Onegin and Tatiana, the troubled community in which they grow up too, different characters sketched intriguingly, becoming a chorus when called upon, yet clearly having lives, problems, and personalities of their own. The most real connection – at least before it is all too late – may still lie between Onegin and Lensky, but the devastation felt by both, again realising that they too have destroyed what they had, something that cannot be put back together, seems very much to be what it overtly seems to be. That does not mean other paths might not be or have been followed. A splendid cabaret turn from Quito Clothier’s Monsieur Triquet – very well sung too – acts as a beacon of fascination, awakening, and perhaps liberation for the assembled company. What happens when he and Onegin disappear after the ball, returning for the duel, could doubtless be read in another way. Again, I am not sure that is the point, though, and it has not granted them neither enlightenment nor fulfilment. It merely points the way to the pill-induced disorientation, laced with probably unsatisfactory sexual experimentation, Onegin suffers in his time of wayfaring on the way to St Petersburg: a metaphor for whistling one’s life away, as much as the thing itself. 

M. Triquet (Quito Clothier)

Ambrose Connolly and Martins Smaukstelis presented a contrasted and complementary pair as Onegin and Lensky, dark and blond, introvert and extrovert, brooding and apparently fun-loving, capable of shocking, volatile exchange in the whirlwind transformations of the ball, here Tatiana's disastrous eighteenth birthday party. Onegin’s flirtation with Olga, cruelly mocking Lensky, can rarely have felt so overtly real, Smaukstelis in turn seeming to retreat in collapse to his childhood. This was accomplished by excellent acting and singing, their Russian (insofar as I can judge) matching their command of vocal line. Moving unmistakeably, yet not without regret, from girl to woman, Nicola Said’s Tatiana likewise matched dramatic, verbal, and ‘purely’ musical qualities to a degree that would have impressed on any stage. Katey Rylands illuminated Olga’s particular path, first fun-loving and yet ultimately as nagged with doubt and regret, to complete an outstanding central quartet. A Prince Gremin will almost always stand out, his aria such a Tchaikovskian gift. That does not negate the moving excellence with which Wonsick Oh presented it; far from it. Erin Spence’s Mme Larina and Hanna Morley’s Filpyevna were entirely convincing in their new setting, unquestionably more than stock characters; so too were Conall O’Neill’s dark and dangerous Zaretsky, and the broader chorus out of which he stepped.

Lensky (Martins Smaukstelis)

Oliver Cope’s musical direction was equally crucial to the evening’s success of the evening. To conduct such a performance is at least as stiff a test as with full orchestra; Cope passed with flying colours, as did his band of soloists, whose cultivated chamber playing metamorphosed seemingly without effort into statements, clashes, and tragic entanglements of full-scale Romantic emotions. Interplay between public and private was located above all here in the orchestra, not least given the fruitful scenographic limitations on such a stage. Pacing and balance were well judged, in the service of an excellent musicodramatic continuity impossible to divorce from what was unfolding ‘onstage’. Clearly a consequence of dedicated, intensive collaboration, all was more than the sum of its considerable parts. Highly recommended.

Agrippina, HGO, 13 May 2023

Jacksons Lane Arts Centre

Agrippina – Astrid Joos
Poppea – Biqing Zhang
Nerone – Katie Macdonald
Claudio – George Robarts
Ottone – Francesco Giusti
Narciso – Hamish McLaren
Pallante – Gheorghe Palcu
Lesbo – Sonny Fielding
Giunone – Lydia Shariff

Ashley Pearson (director)
Sorcha Corcoran (set design)
Alice Carroll (costumes)
Catja Hamilton (lighting)

Douglas Baker (projections)

HGOAntiqua Orchestra
Thomas Payne (conductor)

Claudio (George Robarts), Poppea (Biqing Zhang)
Images: Laurent Compagnon

Cannily marketed as ‘the coronation that goes wrong’, HGO’s Agrippina proved quite the tonic for a May that has still seemed hesitant to acknowledge the coming of spring. Handel’s early opera, written in 1709 for the Venice Carnival, emerged as a considerably stronger work than it did in a starry, somewhat irritating production I saw four years ago in Munich. (Later that year, it came to Covent Garden.) In the small theatre of Jacksons Lane Arts Centre in Highgate, HGO presented a work which, whatever its flaws, cohered and remained open for the audience to bring to it what it would.  

I say ‘whatever its flaws’, because they seemed far more apparent in Munich than in Highgate, so perhaps the flaws lay more with this listener than with the work. Not all the arias are top-drawer Handel; some, in light of the composer’s notorious ‘borrowings’, are barely Handel at all. Few, however, outstay their welcome—or did here, whereas the leaden conducting I heard in Munich led to more than a little consulting of my watch. There, redistribution into two acts had seemed a mistake; here, if perhaps not ideal on paper, it really did not matter in practice and proved an eminently practical solution to a real problem for a modern company, especially one with limited reserves. One must take the genre for what it is, of course, and I doubt I shall ever be convinced that Handel as dramatist is not better deployed in his oratorios, but here the story was told clearly and with intelligence and wit. If I find it impossible to banish Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea from my mind when considering these characters, that is my problem rather than Handel’s. Ashley Pearson and her team’s resourceful production made a little go a long way, projections of social media both conceptually framing the action and marking its progression through time and changing circumstances. Poppea’s following through the power of the image and Ottone’s public esteem on account of acknowledged valour were conveyed with uncanny fidelity through (post-)modern means. Above all, though, the accent in a small theatre lies on Personenregie, and this was keenly, powerfully accomplished throughout.

Agrippina (Astrid Joos), Nerone (Katie Macdonald)

Every member of the young cast contributed to that sharpness of individual characterisation and its place within a greater whole. In the title role, Astrid Joos’s vocal portrayal reminded us that, beyond the scheming, this is a woman fighting with what she has—and who would doubtless be fighting in quite a different way under a different gender dispensation. Biqing Zhang's Poppea presented a similarly rounded portrayal, making her way as she could and, arguably, must. Katie Macdonald captured well the sulky immaturity of Nerone through tone and gesture, deploying coloratura equally well to highly dramatic effect. George Robarts offered a nicely ambiguous Claudio: one never knew quite what to make of him, which was surely the point. Gheorghe Paicu and Sonny Fielding’s sharply etched Pallante and Lesbo, as well as Hamish McLaren’s countertenor Narciso, rounded out the intrigue and its sharply (not in pitch!) shifting terms. For me, though, the more ‘continental’ countertenor of Francesco Giusti as Ottone made perhaps the greatest impression. Fine stage presence was married to a more earthy, even masculine tone and projection than often you will hear, conveying valour and vulnerability in equal measure. Juno’s was very much a guest appearance, perhaps an ‘also starring’ moment. Lydia Shariff a goddess and she knows it—as do the mortals, however elevated, before her. It was a splendid thing to have and enjoy this moment, rather than regret its excision, but then one could have said the same of so much else.

Ottone (Francesco Giusti)

Thomas Payne’s direction of an excellent small band of period instrumentalists both drove and reflected the action. My preference may lie with a modern orchestra, but such were the excellence and commitment of playing here, I could for once quite appreciate the arguments for this alternative. With every player essentially a soloist as well as an ensemble member, there was, moreover, an almost modern sense of music theatre to the enterprise, heightened by proximity of orchestra and stage. For, whatever my particular favourites, this was above all a company effort, company extending beyond those performing to all involved in HGO’s collegial enterprise. As David Conway, HGO’s chairman, said at the beginning, it is here, not in the Arts Council’s absurd vision of opera in car parks, that the future of the art lies.

 

Ensemble, headed by Juno (Lydia Shariff)

Venus and Adonis/Dido and Aeneas, HGO, 20 May 2022

Cockpit Theatre


Venus – Elizabeth Green
Adonis – Conall O’Neill
Cupid – Ralph Thomas Williams
Shepherdess – Hannah Savignon-Smythe
Huntsman – Matthew Secombe
Shepherds – Garreth Romain, Angelo Fallaria, Fabian Tindale Geere

Dido – Katey Rylands
Aeneas – Sonny Fielding
Belinda – Julia Surette
Sorceress – Helena Cooke
Second Woman – Isabelle Haile
Witches – Olivia Carrell, Abbie Ward
Spirit – Hannah Savignon-Smythe
Sailor – Matthew Secombe

Jessica Dalton (director)
Kate Goldie Cheetham (choreography)

Tom Turner (lighting) 

HGOAntiqua Orchestra
Seb Gillot (conductor)

Images: Laurent Compagnon, @LaurentCphotos 
Dido and Aeneas

Two operas from the English dawn of the genre: a winning combination, if not so frequently encountered as one might expect. Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas is, of course, universally considered a landmark in the histories both of English music and of opera: ‘Tristan and Isolde in a pint pot’, as Raymond Leppard once called it (and I have probably quoted at least once too often). Blow’s Venus and Adonis, still earlier and more closely tied to the Stuart court masque tradition, will doubtless always be less popular; it has many of its own virtues, though, which arguably emerge all the more clearly when one has such opportunity not only to compare but also to contrast. 

HGO’s Venus, directed by Jessica Dalton, begins aptly enough in the office of a modern dating bureau, an obvious yet telling location for Cupid to initiate his Prologue proceedings, essentially a programme of instruction (as becomes more apparent still in the second of the three short acts). Shepherds and shepherdesses try out, consider, and swap partners—probably inconclusively. Then the action returns to more or less where it ‘should’ be: a mythological setting that is probably ancient, but really could be anywhere, suggesting a ‘universality; that will be part, though only part, of our consideration when answering the puzzling—and puzzlingly little asked—question as to why we are so interested in the art of the past at all, and how it comes to speak to us. Various second-act dances—perhaps more masque than opera, even by this work’s standards—are well choreographed and danced, such as might well have pleased the man who above all had to be pleased: Charles II. Often, less is more; here, something straightforward and stylish eminently fits the bill. 

Venus (Elizabeth Green), Adonis (Conall O'Neill), Cupid (Ralph Thomas Williams)

Questions of performance and meaning are complicated further, of course, by a performing art such as music, indeed perhaps especially so by music, more so than spoken drama, in which we can cling to the fiction—we hardly have an alternative—that our ‘instruments’ remain the same. We do so, to greater or lesser extents, when it comes to voices, but greater controversies issue with respect to other musical instruments. Today, again somewhat puzzlingly, opera appears to have decided upon a mixture of ‘period’ musical practices and more  ‘contemporary’, or at least ‘modern’, theatre. This is not really the place to question that; it is a complex question, and much is a matter of business too, as well as allied pragmatics. What we see and hear is generally said to work, and we (nearly) all want something that works rather than something that does not. Such questions and others, related, are nevertheless worth reminding ourselves of, though, at least from time to time; for surely history interests when it renders strange, as well as when it renders familiar, and these things are likely to change according to what is (and is not) more common practice.   

For Dido, we return to an office. I admit I had not at all gathered Dalton’s concept, prior to reading the programme. Apparently, the action takes place ‘in the halls of a modern political institution, something a little like the UN perhaps, or the EU’, and Dido is a political leader. I am afraid it all looked rather like a provincial sales office to me, perhaps having an ‘away day’. It is probably not worth retelling my misunderstanding beyond that, other than to say that the witches appear to be cleaners, understandably offended by the mess people had made, and that Dido eventually swallows some pills, no pyre in sight. I was clearly not on the right wavelength, yet in retrospect can see a degree of overall framing between the two works, the loneliness of online dating replicated in that of Dido’s suicide and the inability of others to see in time what had happened.   

Dido (Katey Rylands) and Aeneas (Sonny Fielding)

Musically, however, one could enjoy a parade of excellent, increasingly confident young singers, all of them worth our attention, providing a sense of company both in dramatic interaction and in their coming together (some of them) as small chorus in both operas. Elizabeth Green’s Venus and Conall O’Neill’s Adonis were both beautifully sung, with excellent attention to verbal as well as musical matters. Ralph Thomas Williams’s Cupid made for a lively and mischievous cat to set among the pigeons. Katey Rylands and Sonny Fielding offered a Dido and Aeneas who grew considerably within the small confines of Purcell’s operas, the former’s Lament deeply moving in the best of traditions, the latter’s dark tone nicely suggestive of wounded masculinity. Again, verbal and musical acuity were finely matched. A fine ‘supporting’ cast had no weak links; I shall mention Isabelle Haile and Matthew Secombe as singers who especially caught my ear. 

Using his own, specially prepared editions, Seb Gillot led a small ‘period’ band in performances that loved to dance, but also to engage in dramatically generative gradations of recitative, aria, and much that lies between (whether in more Italianate, French, or English styles), as well as in affective tonality (perhaps especially strong in Dido). In Dido, Gillot provides music for much of what has been lost, though not the mythological prologue. The additional music works well, and permits a fuller, speculative experience—as in that of, say, Benjamin Britten’s edition—of what might have been. There is imagination If I was initially surprised to hear an oboe in the Overture, my ears adjusted: so much so that there was at least one moment later on when I could have sworn I heard a wind instrument, only to look and see that a viola had tricked me. There is probably an unflattering name for such an aural condition, but here we should take it to indicated a committed performance whose small scale did not preclude greater and amply realised ambition. The darker harmonies of Dido were certainly present, portraying Venus intriguingly and productively as the more distant from us. Form, vividly apparent, helped accomplish this too. This may not always be the way I hear Purcell or Blow in my head, but it would be surprising if it were. I learned much from listening, which is all I can ask.

I shall be hearing—and seeing—Dido again next month in very different circumstances, as part of a double-bill with Bluebeard’s Castle, directed by Barrie Kosky. There is room for all, and I do not doubt that memories of this performance, as well as others, will frame and inform how I respond to that too. However unfashionable it may be to speak in such terms, Dido and Aeneas is an imperishable masterpiece; every encounter should be a joy. This, in its well-chosen context, was certainly that. As for my misunderstanding of the staging, I shall ascribe it to tiredness at the end of a long week.

Le nozze di Figaro, HGO, 5 November 2021

Jackson’s Lane Theatre

Figaro – Louis Hurst
Susanna – Shafali Jalota
Count Almaviva – Thomas Chenhall
The Countess – Camilla Harris
Cherubino – Esme Bronwen-Smith
Don Basilio, Don Curzio – Martins Smaukstelis
Doctor Bartolo – Hector Bloggs
Marcellina – Becca Marriott
Antonio – Owain Evans
Barbarina, Second Bridesmaid – Astrid Joos
First Bridesmaid – Phoebe Smith
Chorus – Anna Simmons, Angela Yang

Julia Mintzer (director)
Benjamin Anderson (assistant director)
Carmine de Amicis (choreography)
Charles Ogilvie (set designs)
Ruben Cameiro (costumes)
Jancy Dancinger (sound and lighting design)
Ben Poore (dramaturgy)

HGO Chamber Orchestra
Thomas Payne (conductor)

Images: Laurent Compagnon

HGO (formerly Hampstead Garden Opera) has been one of the musical heroes of the pandemic. Last year, it brought opera back to London with Holst’s Savītri; this year, it was one of the first to bring it back again, with Cavalli’s L’Egisto. Now, in a new production from the director of Savītri, Julia Mintzer, and in a return to the company’s ‘home’ at Jackson’s Lane Arts Centre in Highgate, we have perhaps the most beloved opera, most central to the repertoire of all: The Marriage of Figaro. 

It used to be said that one could not go wrong with Figaro, at least in terms of staging. Don Giovanni was the director’s graveyard, largely because directors ignored its theology and treated it with one-sided psychological realism. Latterly, though, a good few stagings have shown it is possible to make just as much a mess of its predecessor. Not this one, though, far from it; its path proves thoughtful, surprising, and in the best sense provocative. Had I been asked during the interval where it was heading, I should never have guessed. There was a welcome dose of matters that lie beyond individual rationality—the socio-political and what I think we can call the Freudian. That did not come, however, at the expense of the basic necessities of character delineation and development, whose expression is of course the achievement not only of the production team but of the young artists on stage too. What matters is how things come together—and they came together very well.

Initially, we seemed to have a more or less conventional updating to an English country estate of the early twentieth century, which dating became clearer, as the work progressed, to the time of the Great War. As soon as one truly watched and listened, though, it became clear that this was far from conventional. An eye for period detail, creditable in itself, also suggested haunting by the past—perhaps even by the broader Enlightenment project that had led there and of which this opera may be considered part. The Count’s injuries—we see him either with cane or transported by sedan chair—would seem to have been sustained in prior action, relived a little too enthusiastically by the guard (Antonio) on the estate. Figaro, as his valet, shared in some of that haunting too. The Countess mourned her youth, of course, but may also have been mourning a civilisation that has collapsed and yet which all onstage, in their way, continue manically to celebrate. Laudanum helped, or probably did not—but was widely available to all. 

And so, the delirium of war, when it came, was both a natural development and that which has most been feared. The strobe lighting chaos it wrought at the close of the third act—marriage ceremonial itself—is psychological as well as political, throwing up the characters, their affections, and their impulses, and seeing where they land. The fourth act worked out some at least of the consequences. Its final scene needed to celebrate similarly: both as reasoned necessity and as something that, like the final number of Cosí fan tutte, rang hollow and yet true. English titles generally offered straightforward translation, sometimes supplemented by updating and commentary: perhaps in some sense also visualising workings of the unconscious. 

The score, slightly cut beyond the norm, was presented with commendable alertness and cultivation by a small band of soloists (two violins, viola, cello, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, timpani, and synthesised harpsichord) in an arrangement by Jonathan Lyness, conducted by Thomas Payne. Tempi were often, though not always, brisk, yet eminently capable of flexibility too, the Countess’s final words given notably slowly (indeed, as we shall see, tragically). There were a few occasions when instrumentalists and singers drifted apart, but Payne ensured that they came back together quickly. There seemed every reason to expect minor first-night infelicities to be ironed out later in the run.

 

Heading the cast were a fine Count and Countess Almaviva. Thomas Chenhall as the former was proud, virile, and crucially wounded within and without. His third-act aria proved uncommonly successful in conveying the crucial seria element to the Count’s musical identity. Camilla Harris’s Countess truly had one sit up upon her vocal appearance—what wonderful cunning on Da Ponte’s part to save his trump card until the second act—in a performance as beautifully sung as it was intelligently presented. Louis Hurst’s Figaro and Shafali Jalota’s Susanna were keenly observed throughout, properly animating the entire action from within. As Cherubino, Esme Bronwen-Smith captivated though force of personality and similar attention to detail. Martins Smaukstelis did likewise as Basilio, an intriguingly chameleon-like portrayal, boasting notable ease in Italian as well as a finely expressive face. The very different, more diffident impression presented by his Don Curzio confirmed the individuality of portrayal. All the cast contributed, though, to a fine ensemble performance very much greater than the sum of its parts. Hector Bloggs and Becca Marriott carved out a Bartolo and Marcellina of genuine depth, no mere buffa caricatures. Owain Evans and Astrid Joos made much of their roles as Antonio and Barbarina, as even did the Bridesmaid (Phoebe Smith) and additional chorus members (Anna Simmons and Angela Yang).

Could there, then, yet be emancipation, even liberation? Perhaps, if only in the moment. A nice touch, pregnant with meaning, was the Countess assuming Susanna’s (presumed) soubrette voice, a mere caricature, to Susanna’s horror. There remained a social gulf between them. Basilio’s final leap into the arms of Antonio suggested other possibilities, not least in the wake of wartime chaos. That said, the weight of past, present, perhaps even future could not be disregarded. Long after the final chord, one remained haunted by the devastation on the Countess’s face following her closing (false) benediction. In this Freudian Figaro, God is dead, which calls into question her words of forgiveness and implicit redemption and is certainly not the case with Mozart and Da Ponte. If, however, they can still offer something in the moment, as well as recognition that things are never quite so straightforward as schematic explanations of human behaviour would have us believe, the work and its authors, above all Mozart, remain productive and provocative as ever.

L'Egisto, HGO, 5 June 2021

The Cockpit

Egisto – Martins Smaukstelis
Climene – Astrid Joos
Lidio – Alex Pullinger
Clori – Caroline Taylor
Hipparco – John Holland-Avery
Amore – Helen Lacey
Semele, Bellezza, Hora Seconda – Charity Mapletoft
Venere, Dedra, Hora Quarta – Oliva Carrell
Dema – Emily Kyte
Volupia, Didone, Hora Terza – Helen Daniels James
La Notte – Laurence Gillians

Marcio de Silva (director, lighting)
Madeline de Barrié (assistant director)
Christian Hey (designs)

HGO Baroque Orchestra

Marcio da Silva (music director)


HGO (formerly Hampstead Garden Opera) led the way after the first lockdown with opera’s return to London, in the guise of an outdoor performance of Holst’s Sāvitri at Lauderdale House. Five miles or so away, at Marylebone’s Cockpit Theatre, it proved if not quite the earliest, then one of the earliest, to return to the fray this time round, with Francesco Cavalli’s (and Giovanni Faustini’s) L’Egisto of 1643.


The second of Cavalli’s collaborations with Faustini, L’Egisto proved influential and popular beyond Venice, travelling to Naples and many other nascent centres of opera across the Italian peninsula. It even travelled with Cavalli to Paris, to be performed in 1646 at the behest of Cardinal Mazarin, determined yet frustrated in his every attempt to establish Italian opera on a permanent basis in the French capital. (Mazarin would later commission Cavalli’s Ercole armante for Louis XIV’s marriage to Maria Theresa of Spain, though neither opera nor théâtre à machines was ready in time. It would be performed two years later, in 1662, Cavalli’s Xerse quickly substituted—and highly popular.) The renaissance in Cavalli’s fortunes, if not quite initiated by Raymond Leppard, then nonetheless incalculably in his debt, saw L’Egisto among the earlier Cavalli operas to return to the stage, Leppard realising the work for Santa Fe in 1974 and Scottish Opera eight years alter. Marcio da Silva, acting both as stage and music director, now gives a reading for our time, doubtless less lavish than Leppard’s, but our moment is hardly one given to lavish operatic presentation. Rightly or wrongly, it tends to favour ‘original instruments’ and a less ‘interventionist’ approach than what Jane Glover described, in her review of Leppard’s score, as ‘look[ing] upon the surviving material rather as a lump of modeller’s clay, which he [Leppard] moulds skilfully into shapes which he knows will please modern audiences. In so doing, he departs from original practice, often quite violently.’


There was certainly no such violence here, whether in the pit or on stage. Given in the round, the boundary was not in any case entirely distinct, though there was no dramatic mixing of function to match that combination of roles in our dual director’s case. The ebb and flow of the score and its realisation—or whatever we want to call it—by Marcio da Silva and Cédric Meyer very much complemented the scenic action, presented in some ways simply, yet far from neutrally. A small yet colourful band—harpsichord, organ, lute, baroque guitar, two violins, gamba, cello, two recorders, and sparingly employed percussion—did not suggest, at least not in this small, socially distanced theatre, that Cavalli’s music cried out for more. Rather, it furnished a crucial harmonic backdrop of imagination, against which the human voice could be heard and human gesture seen. If I cared less for the folk-like excursions now expected in early opera performances of a certain school, they were rare and clearly relished by the players, whose pleasure it would be churlish unduly to begrudge. With Sebastian Gillot, assistant music director, at the keyboard, much was possible and realised in aural tapestry, but also much was offered in support to the singers, the continuo ensemble flexible enough to be reinforced with a minimum of fuss where necessary.


A staging that relied on distance, on separation, and on mischief and anguish in their wake was doubtless developed with our current predicament in mind, yet fitted very well with a plot in which two couples, separated, must find, recognise, and learn to love one another again (though do they?) The passing of a single day, respecting the old dramatic unities, is symbolised by the passage of the sun above (this Egisto a descendant of Apollo, not the Aegisth we know from Elektra). Curtains of separation that could be seen through, or not, did much that was necessary. Singing to and past each other, touching or, more often, failing to do so, spoke to us clearly yet far from clinically. Touches of blood-red brought colour with dramatic impact predicated on an overall economy of means. Elements of cross-dressing reminded us of where Cavalli, much to Leppard’s sorrow, ended up: ‘plots … of such a ridiculous complexity that it is doubtful if anybody could ever have known, or cared, what was happening on the stage once the disguises had got under way’. But with Faustini, as Leppard remarked in the liner notes to his recording of L’Ormindo, Cavalli ‘responded to the best libretti with his best music’.


To make it so, of course, requires not only sensitive continuo realisation but also sensitive—and dramatic—vocal artistry. Here a number of singers excelled, showing considerable stage gifts too. Martins Smaukstelis was first among equals as Egisto, wounded, external heroism and inward anguish expressed by all manner of subtle gradations. Astrid Joos as Climene and Caroline Taylor as Clori offered complement and contrast in their soprano roles, expression lying very much within the precision of their performances. Helen Lacey’s Amore schemed and sulked by turn, vocally and visually. This was, however, very much an ensemble piece, with all involved, musical and directorial teams alike, contributing to the musico-dramatic whole. Recommended—even without the bonus of drinks brought to your seat. There are two, alternating casts; I saw the second.

Sāvitri, HGO, 11 August 2020

Image: © 2020 Laurent Compagnon

The Lawn, Lauderdale House

Sāvitri – Esme Bronwen Smith
Satyavān – Alex Aldren
Death – Theo Perry
Dancer – Laura Calcagno 

Julia Mintzer (director)
Eleanor Burke (assistant director) 
Anna-Lou Mary (choreography) 
Ryan Wilce (company manager) 
Charles Ogilvie (props) 

Chorus

HGO Orchestra

Thomas Payne (conductor)

Opera returns to London. As we know it? Yes and no—but then, is that not always the case? Convention dictates that one does not review dress rehearsals, but what is convention in times such as these? More to the point, I have permission to write and should not have dreamed of doing so without. HGO (formerly Hampstead Garden Opera) and its ever-enterprising impresario David Conway deserve our deepest gratitude and heartiest praise for merely conceiving of this project, let alone for bringing it to the garden stage with such zest and conviction. 


First performed in 1916, another time of troubles—also, as now hear ad nauseam, shortly prior to another pandemic—Sāvitri, more importantly, was conceived for outdoor performance, ‘or else in a small building’. No small building here, though a fascinating large building, Lauderdale House, made for a lovely backdrop to events on the lawn below. Theatrical hustle and bustle between rehearsals—arriving just after the first, I saw the second cast—brought to mind of another opera premiered that year, Strauss’s Ariadne, at least in the final version we all know and love. A bird flew overhead, sang cheerily, and: action… 


Birds of the forest, perhaps the Indian jungle, we heard. A woman wrote in red on glass. A man, unseen, singing with perfect pitch and diction, evoked something beyond, physically and metaphysically. Music, drama, opera were reborn before our eyes and ears, both the oneness in veil of illusion of Holst’s Mahābharata piece and that of the endlessly reborn and reinvented bastard progeny of an Athens that never was. In Julia Mintzer’s thoughtful, elegant staging, we were able to make connections, yet never pushed unduly. Sāvitri in her struggle with the Death that would take her husband could stand for the creative act itself, both abstract and concrete (Holst), but also in a time of pandemic could lead our thoughts elsewhere, whether particular or universal. ‘The world has now become a grave.’ 


Were those English, imperial memories we saw and heard? Perhaps, given the summery lightness of costume, orientalist harem pants and all. Above all, however, these were bodies, physical in their fear and trembling, archetypal in the stylised shaping of Anna-Lou Mary’s choreography. Space was rethought, Satyavān approaching our vision from behind, Death heard and occasionally seen from around us, even from within the house: the word, long and lingering, its musical shadows, as well as the character. Yet that use of space flowed, like Holst’s score, Straussian artifice put to one side in favour of something winningly ‘natural’, whatever the undeniable art and craft involved. Likewise Thomas Payne’s keen conducting, alive to the ebb and flow of Holst’s chamber orchestral subtleties—and its harmonies. Harmony, the greatest glory of Western music, Schoenberg’s final word: how we have missed you these long months ohne Musik. 


For the small female chorus sounded as if discovering music for the first time. The primal, wordless sounds from the Burning Bush in Moses und Aron came to my mind, however simpler the particular means; Evensong too, albeit the distinctly superior version of the college and cathedral choirs singing Holst’s own Nunc dimittis (1915, as I later discovered). The Death of Music, even of Anglican music, might yet be stopped, as Sāvitri conquers Death and saves, in quiet ecstasy, her beloved. Chords could be heard in all the evergreen freshness of, say, Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music, and yet built and rebuilt in different ways, the ninths and beyond—that word again—of Holst’s imagination gently yet surely staking out their own territory. ‘Art thou the Just One? Art thou Death? Or art thou but a blind spirit, knowing naught of what is round thee? Give me life!’ Music is death, yet is far more than death, just as it is maya, yet far more. Holst, like the Schopenhauerian Wagner, knew that—even as he distanced himself, or thought he did, from that most overbearing of operatic predecessors. We may wait a while for our next Meistersinger, just as for our next Moses. Art, however, will find a way, not only along those paths, but along others not yet seen. We must find a way too.