Dido and Aeneas, Guildhall, 9 June 2025

Milton Court Theatre

Images: David Monteith Hodge
Dido (Karima El Demerdasch)

Dido – Karima El Demerdasch
Aeneas – Joshua Saunders
Belinda – Manon Ogwen Parry
Sorceress – Julia Merino
Attendant, Second Woman – Hannah McKay
Witches – Seohyun Go, Julia Solomon
Spirit – Gabriella Noble
Sailor – Tobias Campos Santiñaque

Director – Oliver Platt
Designs – Alisa Kalyanova
Movement – Caroline Lofthouse
Lighting – Eli Hunt

Video – Mabel Nash  

Chorus (chorus master: Henry Reavey) and Orchestra of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama James Henshaw (conductor)

This new Guildhall Dido and Aeneas, directed by Oliver Platt and designed by Alisa Kalyanova, was not the Dido of your expectations. I can be reasonably sure of that. Doors opened to reveal a club scene onstage, electronic music of a decidedly non-Stockhausen variety blasting through the small theatre. Dido eventually joined, dancing as if her life depended on it; perhaps, in retrospect, it did. Belinda too (if indeed these were there names). And then, suddenly everything changed. Purcell’s music was to be heard. In an unanticipated Dr Who-like shift – will the Queen of Carthage turn out to be the new Doctor heralded by Billie Piper? – we found ourselves in a very different world indeed. Its denizens took what they wanted from Dido’s handbag, re-clothed her, and left her generally shocked and bemused, apparently having no more idea what was going on than I did. 

Sailor (Tobias Campos Santiñaque) and Chorus

We now appeared to be in a rural English community, with straw figures, a maypole, and enforced country dancing, clothes suggestive more of the early twentieth century than Purcell’s time, let alone that of Dido and Aeneas. When Aeneas arrived, seemingly similarly abducted, he had no more idea what was going on. So far as I could discern, neither of them did throughout, brought together by the strange villagers, though again, neither did I. Punk-triffid witches did their thing. Aeneas eventually resolved to stay, Dido by then rejecting him, physically berating him, until he turned on her and seemed on the verge (at least) of sexual assault, until she stabbed him, after which she was led to the Maypole to be hanged. It was quite absorbing in its way and very well blocked and choreographed, but I really could not tell you what it was about or how it cohered. Was that the point? It may have been, given liberties taken – nothing wrong with that – for the missing music, but I suspect I was missing something. Was it perhaps all an unfortunate dream, arising from nightclub hallucination? I fear I shall simply have to admit defeat. 

Dido and Chorus

All in the cast, the excellent chorus included, threw themselves into this oddly compelling vision in wholehearted, committed fashion. Karima El Demerdasch’s Dido was first-rate, from wild abandon – difficult to imagine Janet Baker or Jessye Norman in this production – through fear and unease to final tragedy. Accomplished through the synthesis of words, music, and gesture that, put crudely, is operatic performance, this signalled not only great promise but great achievement. I am sure we shall see and hear more from her. Aeneas is, especially by comparison, a bit of a thankless role, but Joshua Saunders made a good deal of this bemused conception. Manon Ogwen Parry’s Belinda and Julia Merino’s Sorceress were both very well taken, as indeed were the other, smaller roles, Tobias Campos Santiñaque’s Sailor a winning ‘boozy’ moment in the spotlight. James Henshaw’s conducting complemented the punk-folk conception of the staging, more City Waites than Les Arts Florissants, let alone English Chamber Orchestra. It may not be how I hear it, but it is hardly how I see it either, and performance should always extend beyond ritual. There was, then, much to enjoy—and to puzzle over.

Le nozze di Figaro, Opera Holland Park 15 June 2021

Holland Park

Count Almaviva – Julien Van Mellaerts
Countess Almaviva – Nardus Williams
Susanna – Elizabeth Karani
Figaro – Ross Ramgobin
Cherubino – Samantha Price
Marcellina – Victoria Simmonds
Bartolo – James Cleverton
Basilio, Don Curzio – Daniel Norman
Barbarina – Claire Lees
Antonio – Henry Grant Kerswell
First Bridesmaid – Naomi Kilby
Second Bridesmaid – Susie Buckle

Oliver Platt (director)
takis (designs), applied on the set for La traviata by Cordelia Chisholm
Rory Beaton (lighting)
Caitlin Fretwell Walsh (movement)

Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus master: Richard Harker)
City of London Sinfonia
George Jackson (conductor)


What a welcome return to Holland Park this proved to be. Glorious weather helped, of course—quite a change from an earlier visit to Glyndebourne with altogether necessary overcoat and umbrella—but the achievement of Opera Holland Park first of all in putting on a season at all, let alone with its customary artistic success, deserves the highest praise.


One might think one could hardly go wrong with The Marriage of Figaro, though all too many recent productions have proved otherwise. In reality, it requires, like all Mozart, excellence in every respect. There is nowhere to hide, least of all in musical terms. The City of London Sinfonia was on good form, conducted by George Jackson, who fell prey to none of the traps readily walked entered by many of his peers. Instead, what we heard was an imaginative, wisely comprehending performance of Mozart’s score. Everyone will have his own ideas concerning tempi. In most cases, there will be various solutions. The trick is to make them work: largely, if anything but simply, a matter of ensuring a steady underlying tempo, which can certainly be varied, whilst at the same time hearing and conveying the act and ultimately the entire opera as a whole. There were, quite naturally, occasions when I initially wondered whether an initial tempo, at odds with how I might hear in my head, would work. There were none, however, when I was not swiftly convinced by Jackson’s choice: even Susanna’s emergence from the wardrobe, which showed a due sentiment of wonder can sound faster than I had believed.


A keen ear for orchestral detail, sometimes interpretative such as a cartoonish descending cello line, more often straight from the score, was in evidence throughout. Crucially, Jackson and his players conveyed an underlying melancholy, sometimes something darker still, as necessary counterpart to high spirits. There was room to breathe and to reflect: not so much a matter of speed, or even tempo, as of understanding and communicating the relationship between words, melody, harmony, and, this being opera, gesture. This was definitely Mozart’s comedy, not Rossini’s. The score was necessarily given in a reduced orchestration by Jonathan Lyness, which, lack of double wind notwithstanding, often tricked one into thinking one was simply hearing a small orchestra. Wind came naturally to the fore, balance not always as expected, but there was really no ground for complaint—and every ground for gratitude that this was happening at all, let alone so well.


Whilst there is no reason to be ageist about this, Figaro responds well to a cast of young singers—always, of course, provided they are capable of navigating its treacherous waters. This cast certainly was; it worked very well in ensemble too. The central quartet—Julien Van Mellaerts as the Count and Nardus Williams as the Countess; Elizabeth Karani as Susanna and Ross Ramgobin as Figaro—and others besides provided that necessary sense of reacquainting us with characters many fancy we know so well yet also of bringing something distinctive, of anchoring their portrayals in this particular Figaro, rather than some generic conception. All impressed in their various ways. Van Mellaerts, in combination with Jackson, had me sit up and take notice of quite what seria depth Mozart achieves in the Count’s third-act recitativo accompagnato and aria, ‘Hai gia vinta la causa … Vedrò mentr'io sospiro’. Detail and style matter here—not necessarily prescriptively, but generalisation will not do—as of course do their relationship to the whole. Williams brought great musical virtues to a finely balanced portrayal of dignity and sense of fun: this was Rosina, as well as ‘the Countess’. Karani and Ramgobin judged their standing at the centre of every intrigue extremely well: a musical just as much as a stage matter. Handling of recitative was just as impressive as their arias, which grew out of the former as musico-dramatic necessity.


Cherubino is a gift of a trouser role, yet no less tricky for that. Samantha Price had its measure, capturing not only its effervescence but a hint of the sadness—at least for those of us no longer quite so youthful—that lies with its distance. Victoria Simmonds and James Cleverton ensured that Marcellina and Bartolo, even shorn of their fourth-act arias, were more than stock buffo characters. As ever, the angel as well as the devil lies in the detail. A wily Daniel Norman as Basilio, and a bluff Antonio in Henry Grant Kerswell added to the fun; as did last, but far from least, Claire Lees’s beautifully sung, intelligently acted Barbarina. A small chorus, well directed and supplemented as is customary by the Holland Park peacocks, helped bind the action together in stage as well as musical fashion.


Oliver Platt, whose work I have admired in not one but two productions of Così fan tutte (Holland Park and the Guildhall), pulled off the difficult task of directing a Figaro for a time of social distancing. For the most part, one forgot—at least I did—that the characters were not interacting quite as normal. So much can be done, and was, with implication and choreography (for which plaudits to Caitlin Fretwell Walsh’s movement direction). Then there were moments, frozen as if for reflection, in which a sense of distance opened up: opening up being the operative word, since they were open to interpretation rather than dogmatically defined. The same might be said of a stylised, punkish look at costumes (takis) that were not quite what we might initially have thought. When we saw the servants, they were not really servants at all, let alone serfs. Crucially, they wore wigs. Who were they? People playing at being servants?


Moreover, whilst it would be difficult to claim this as an overtly political Figaro, it would be equally difficult not to draw political conclusions from the sense of judgement being passed on the Count and indeed the metatheatrical way the characters—perhaps partly out of character—turned on him and ultimately left him in isolation at the end of the second act. Judge not, that ye be not judged, takes on different meaning in a drama involving manorial justice—whatever the temporal context(s).


For opera is always constructed, never more so than now. Charlotte Chisholm’s resourceful work on a set necessarily conceived for two operas, this and La traviata, once again had one pretty much forget the restrictions under which we still labour—until a moment recalled the fact to us, at which one lauded the achievement. The action flowed with plenty of incident, yet nothing that jarred. Where there was anachronism, as for instance in the third-act ballet—what a history there is to that, as Lorenzo Da Ponte’s Memoirs so memorably recount—it was quite deliberately so. Distance intervened, momentarily, on and off stage; and then all came back together, audience included. That, surely, is what opera needs right now: solidarity and action in knowledge of the crisis that engulfs us.

Iolanta and L’Enfant et les sortilèges, Royal Academy of Music, 18 March 2019

Susie Sainsbury Theatre

Images: Robert Workman

Iolanta – Samantha Quillish

Brigitta – Emilie Cavallo

Laura – Yuki Akimoto

Marta – Leila Zanette

Vaudémont – Shengzhi Ren

Alméric – Joseph Buckmaster

Robert – Sung Kyu Choi

Ibn-Hakia – Darwin Leonard Prakash

Bertrand – Niall Anderson

King René – Thomas Bennett

L’enfant – Olivia Warburton

La princesse, La chauve-souris – Alexandra Oomens

Le feu, Le rossignol – Lina Dambrauskaitė

La théière, Le rainette, Le petit vieillard – Ryan Williams

Maman – Tabitha Reyonolds

La tasse chinoise, La libellulue – Hannah Poulsom

La bergère, Une pastourelle, La chouette – Aimée Fisk

La chatte, L’écureuil – Gabrielė Kupšytė

L’horloge comtoise, Le chat – James Geidt

Le fauteuil, L’arbre – Will Pate

Oliver Platt (director)
Alison Cummins (designs)

Jake Wiltshire (lighting)

Emma Brunton (movement and puppetry)

Royal Academy Opera Chorus and Sinfonia

Gareth Hancock (conductor)

Tchaikovsky’s one-act Iolanta seems to have gained in popularity recently. London, at any rate, has two different productions this year: this, at the Royal Academy of Music, and at Holland Park this summer. As ever, the question with a one-act opera is what, if anything, to pair it with. (That hardly applies with Salome or Elektra, though couplings have been known, but it will generally do so with shorter works.) Ravel’s L’Enfant et les sortilèges is a popular choice, and rightly so, from the one-act stable. Without much – although not without any – in the way of overt connection being made, the two operas complemented each other nicely, both proving excellent showcases for their young singers, both proving substantially more than that too.

Oliver Platt, one of our most accomplished young directors – last year, I saw two (!) fine productions of Così fan tutte (here and here) – once again offers us stagings both intelligent and involving. Like their hero(ine)s, they take their own paths, yet where those paths intersect, the results are thoughtful and intriguing. Iolanta seems to me greatly misunderstood – or at least too often mostly understood in a way that limits rather than sets it free. The subtext seems obvious – a blind girl, kept safe by her father, eventually freed from her imprisonment by a stranger – and yet, too often ignored. Here, it certainly is not, a greenhouse, a place of hothouse care and incarceration, placed firmly on stage, its flourishing yet stifled plants both inspiring and warning, could Iolanta but see them. Likewise the surgical gloves of her companions, weirdly static in aestheticised presentiment of Maeterlinck and Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. But when, finally she can see, finally she can become – in the eyes of men, in the eyes of society more generally – a ‘woman’, Iolanta turns suddenly away from the sun’s blinding rays, from adulthood. It is too late: orchestra and chorus have rejoiced, she gives out a cry of anguish, but no one cares – other, perhaps than us, in the audience. Now she is on her own, awakened, seeing; or rather, captive once again, this time without the alleged protection and solace of childhood.

The boy in L’Enfant et les sortilèges – a trouser role, naturally, in this most elegantly queer of operas – is on his own too; or is he? This is certainly an opera very much about childhood, an irredeemably adult idea, rather than a children’s opera. And so there is, or should be, always something enticing and yet disturbing about that penetration of an imagined child’s lair, here very much centred upon the imaginings of his bedroom. Here, the constructivism of our imagination, that of the work’s creators, most likely that of the ‘child’ too, is put centre stage. We see, lightly worn, the workings: puppetry, other short-trouser children, books, fabrics, a tent from his – our? – own life, creating a world that is, yes, imagined, but also equally his, Ravel’s, Colette’s, our own. It is never predictable, always with an element of the dream, of the unconscious, yet one can hazard a guess where it has come from, at least in retrospect. We are all psychoanalysts now, are we not? And when the Princess emerges, from the tent in the garden – here, as in Iolanta, a place of magical enticement, which may or may not be quite what it seems – she is dressed as Iolanta was. Will the boy do to her what the earlier princess’s prince charming was set to do to her? Most probably: not, however, quite yet, for childhood, whatever that might be, and its enchantments, its gifts, still reign. Light and dark take a related, yet different path. At least, we believe so…

These are not in any way easy operas for students, however accomplished, to perform. The young musicians of the Royal Academy acquitted themselves very well indeed. Without repeating the cast list, I should like to mention a handful of singers who stood out for me. All, however, performed creditably, whether individually or as a company. Samantha Quillish’s Iolanta was heartfelt, moving, possessed both of heft and subtlety: everything, at least, anyone could reasonably have asked. Shengzhi Ren’s Vaudémont proved honest, ardent, again moving: just what the Tchaikovsky brothers wanted, allowing us, should we wish, to question their assumptions whilst affording them the dignity of being taken seriously. Thomas Bennett’s King René grew in strength and compassion as the evening progressed, whilst Sung Kyu Choi’s Robert offered quite a taste of what might have been, had characters’ choices been different. Olivia Warburton’s Child (L’Enfant) impressed in every possible way: her French, her demeanour, her elegance of line. This was a character, both ‘real’ and constructed, in whom one could believe, ably supported and abetted by a near faultless cast.

It was perhaps inevitable that the orchestra, conducted by Gareth Hancock, would sometimes fall a little short. Orchestras twice its size will find these tough nuts to crack, let alone together. There was much to savour, though, and if I sometimes missed the flexibility of the finest Tchaikovsky performances, that was hardly the point here. Hancock supported his singers with skill and care, permitting them, like those flowers in the greenhouse and the garden, to bloom as they would. As to what happens next, we shall see – and hear.

Così fan tutte, Guildhall, 5 November 2018

Silk Street Theatre

Guglielmo (Benson Wilson), Ferrando (Filipe Manu), Don Alfonso (Christian Valle),
Fiordiligi (Alexandra Lowe), Despina (Zoe Drummond), Dorabella (Carmen Artaza)
Images: Clive Barda

Fiordiligi – Alexandra Lowe

Dorabella – Carmen Artaza

Despina – Zoe Drummond

Ferrando – Filipe Manu

Guglielmo – Benson Wilson

Don Alfonso – Christian Valle

Oliver Platt (director)

Neil Irish (designs)

Rory Beaton (lighting)
Caitlin Fretwell Walsh (movement)

Orchestra and Chorus of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama

Dominic Wheeler (conductor)

Despina and Ferrando

Precisely where and when Così fan tutte takes place should be a matter of sublime indifference – or at least of individual taste. It is ‘about’ many things, but eighteenth-century Naples – should that actually be the less exotic yet still ‘othered’ neāpolis of Wiener Neustadt? – is not among them. Not intrinsically, anyway. These things can happen anywhere, at any time; these emotions, these physical and metaphysical truths are for many of us as close to universal as makes no matter. Nevertheless, the idea of a southern port city as a venue for touristic licence may well prove an apt setting for what is at dramatic stake. It helped Mozart and Da Ponte tread the fine line between realism and artifice that is surely fundamental to this, (one of) the very greatest of all operas; it also did to outstanding effect in Opera Holland Park’s new production this summer.  

Guglielmo and Dorabella

In a different way, or at least in a different southern port setting, so too does it in the Guildhall’s new staging. I only realised after the event – indeed upon starting to write this paragraph – that the director had been one and the same: Oliver Platt, albeit with a different design team. Perhaps, then, there was something after all to my hitherto innocent thesis of a common theme, notwithstanding the move forward a couple of centuries to the 19-80s to Alfonso’s Bar. Close to an American (West Coast? San Diego?) naval base, with all the potential for conflict between transience and long-term ‘home life’ that might imply, mood was superficially very different, likewise the consequences for particular directorial choices. Rarely, if ever, for instance, have I seen quite so raucous an opening scene, as the licentious ways of the naval boys (and at least one girl), their partners, and their would-be partners got under way, our quartet of lovers to be schooled taken from their number. That sense of a social context, however – a meaningful social context rather than a mere setting, ‘pretty’ or otherwise – remained common to both productions.

Don Alfonso and Despina

So too, again in different ways according to the different requirements of this particular production and performance, were the spatial, eminently musical visualisations of Mozart’s extraordinary and extraordinarily telling musical symmetries and oppositions. Così fan tutte is a labyrinth and a laboratory like no other, as worthy a successor to the experimental Bach of the cantatas as a precursor – a successor too – to Tristan und Isolde. Indeed, though Don Giovanni was the Mozart opera Pierre Boulez said he had long wished to conduct, yet never did; it is surely Così he should ultimately have come to, not least in light of his revelatory late recording of the Gran Partita, KV 361/370a. Whatever the ‘incidental’ detail of tequila shots, of entertainment in sombreros, of Despina the notary as Judge Judy, the fundamentals – related, not necessarily identical – were present both in Holland Park and at the Guildhall. So too was the existential devastation, the clear-eyed, merciless refusal to transcend, of the close.

Despina

For that to be the case, of course, one needs musical drama too – indeed, musical drama above all. This one took a little while to get going: perhaps more a matter of opening night nerves than anything. The Silk Street Theatre acoustic did not help, I suspect, not least when married to a certain, rather surprising heaviness of hand – tending, in the Overture, even to the brutal – from Dominic Wheeler in the pit. Throughout the first act, some of his tempo choices were distinctly odd: not so much in themselves – as a listener, one should always be willing to adapt, to rethink in that respect – as in relation to one another. (Once again, doubtless idiosyncratically, I thought of Boulez and his admiration for Wagner’s Essay on Conducting, not least the claims for proportionality rather than ‘absolute’ tempo therein.) The second act worked much better, though, blessed by some gorgeous woodwind playing, even if the strings were a little too often thin of tone.

Dorabella

There was much both to enjoy and to admire in the singing – as there must be, if a performance and production are to have the slightest chance of working their dramatic effect. Carmen Artaza’s dignified, often exquisitely spun line, trickily married – that tightrope I mentioned above between realism and articificality – to sparky, well-defined personality proved a particular joy as Dorabella. So too did the patent sincerity of Filipe Manu’s Ferrando, his second-act aria truly moving, Benson Wilson’s Guglielmo a swaggering yet not insensitive contrast. Fiordiligi will always prove a great challenge: one to which Alexandra Lowe rose with considerable success in a performance finely differentiated from Artaza’s, her soprano coloratura meaningful as well as accurate. Christian Valle’s Don Alfonso ruled the roost as he must, Zoe Drummond’s excellent Despina intriguingly disillusioned at the close. Called upon to do far more in the way of acting and movement than would usually be the case, members of the chorus impressed too, individually and corporately. This, as the cliché has it, was considerably more than the sum of its parts. After all, if ever there were an opera to demonstrate both the truth and depth of what might first appear to be, and indeed what might actually, be buffo cliché, it is Così fan tutte.

Così fan tutte, Opera Holland Park, 31 May 2018

Fiordiligi (Eleanor Dennis) and Guglielmo (Nicholas Lester)
Image: Ali Wright

Fiordiligi – Eleanor Dennis

Dorabella – Kitty Whately

Guglielmo – Nicholas Lester

Ferrando – Nick Pritchard

Despina – Sarah Tynan

Don Alfonso – Peter Coleman-Wright

Oliver Platt (director)

Alyson Cummins (designs)

Rory Beaton (lighting)

Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus master: Richard Harker)

City of London Sinfonia

Dane Lam (conductor)

Absence makes the heart grow fonder; or does it? In Così fan tutte, who knows? Or rather, what could such a question even mean? Would it not be a typically sentimental coping mechanism adopted to avoid confronting the questions – artificial yet profound, indeed profound through artificiality – it asks of its characters and its audiences alike? If one does not at some level, perhaps the most important level of all, find that Così goes deeper and further than Tristan, then one most likely has not understood either. Given a tragedy without catharsis, a tragedy in the clothes, surpassingly elegant and ravishing, of comedy: sometimes one might ask who needs an opus metaphysicum at all? (We might actually need it in order to recover.)

Ferrando (Nick Pritchard), Guglielmo, Depsina (Sarah Tynan), Don Alfonso (Peter Coleman-Wright),
Fiordiligi, Dorabella (Kitty Whately)
Image and subsequent images: Robert Workman

At any rate, absence had certainly made my heart grow still fonder when it came to Opera Holland Park. Not having been able to visit last summer, I returned to what may well be the most completely successful show I have yet to see and hear there. There is certainly none I would put above it, quite a claim, given that we are dealing with Mozart, the most difficult of all composers to perform. There is nowhere to hide, on stage, in the pit, nor indeed in the audience. Nor should there be. Moreover, one had the sense, whether in production or in musical performance – the distinction is far from distinct – that this ambivalent, ambiguous, existentially devastating drama was being enabled, with the lightest of touches, to speak for itself. That does not happen by itself; there is no room for ‘non-interpretation’, for some illusory ‘original’. Yet nor did it ever seem that something was being inflicted on the work. There is room for critique, whether in words or in performance, yet sometimes, as here, the work is so rich that it both offers its own and, perhaps, renders it beside the point.

Don Alfonso

For what is Così, if it is not a musico-dramatic laboratory, a game whose results we should rather not know, and yet can never quite un-know? We see that in Oliver Platt’s production: not spelled out, ‘in a laboratory’, but actually more or less where it ‘should’ be, in an eighteenth-century setting, in which detail is everything. The more we look at what might seem a straightforward, ‘traditional’ production – and, in a sense, is – the more we see – and hear. The chorus, which like us watches proceedings and occasionally participates, is, from the start, a participant and perhaps a critic. It is not quite the Neapolitan ‘daily passeggio’ of which Leopold Mozart wrote, in a letter quoted by Helen Wallace in the programme, for that was perhaps too obviously theatrical, at any rate too bound to a particular stratum of the social hierarchy: ‘in a few hundred carriages the nobles go out driving in the afternoon until Ave Maria to the Strada Nuova and the Molo.’ These seem largely to be more ‘ordinary’ people, but what is ‘ordinary’? They are like us, perhaps, but they also remind us that we need not be ‘like’, or at least identical to, the principal characters on stage to learn from them. And so, when one looks more closely, one notices an apparently ‘male’ member of the ‘chorus’ in apparently ‘female’ dress. (S)he brings no particular other attention to himself or herself. There is no obvious plotline, no ‘distraction’, as some would have it, rightly or wrongly; there is also no obvious exit strategy for us on heteronormative or other grounds. Così fan tutti/e; or, mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur. 

Fiordiligi and Ferrando

All, however, is not always quite what it seems. For the commedia dell’arte painted faces of Ferrando and Guglielmo are there to start with: visitors, perhaps, from beyond, yet also in need of external transformation – in Tristan, it would be a potion – in order to reveal themselves. Interactions between characters, like those between different chemical elements, are minutely observed, rendering us experimenters of our own, again whether we like it or not. (At least, so long as we watch and listen.) One of the problems some people, not unreasonably, seem to have with this opera is not always appreciating the level of parody, verbal and musical. And so, when Fiordiligi stands on a chair to assume her pose for ‘Come scoglio’, that cruel, loving, and in every sense ravishing seria parody, she initially falters, almost falling (not, I hasten to add, vocally). The watching lovers laugh, and she resumes. All is not quite what it seems, or perhaps it is. That is largely up to us, yet within the framework constructed – or rather within the different, intersecting frameworks constructed, by Alfonso and Despina, by Mozart and Da Ponte, and by production and performers; as well, of course, as that constructed by our own experiences, thoughts, and emotions. We are led to deconstruct that terrifying final ‘moral’ ourselves, Mozart’s brusque neo-Classicism the only possible response to Da Ponte’s seemingly straight hymn to reason. If we do not think about, do not feel its numerous contradictions, we have no one to blame but ourselves – not unlike the characters themselves. Is all perhaps precisely what it seems? Yes and no.

Dorabella and Guglielmo

For it is Mozart above all who renders this opera such a necessary agony. And it is the musicians who – with the greatest respect to truly excellent work from everyone else involved, whether in the theatre, behind the scenes, or somewhere in between – who ultimately bring that into life. The City of London Sinfonia offered us gorgeous musical sado-masochism, woodwind one might almost literally have been willing to die for, strings incisive yet far from without warmth of their own. Dane Lam’s tempi began on the quick side, never unreasonably so, yet indicative of an approach one might too readily have taken to be partial. For, as the drama progressed, as the characters achieved greater delineation, so did temporal differentiation. Lam’s was a reading that knew where it was going, and thus could afford to take time on the way – in, for instance, a heartrending ‘Un aura amoroso’.

Not that that would have been heartrending without an estimable Ferrando, of course; that was not, happily, something we needed to put to the test, Nick Pritchard balancing with apparent ease the demands of line and variegation. So too did Nicholas Lester’s Guglielmo, the bitterness of his disillusion moving indeed, his ‘journey’ perhaps the greatest of all. Eleanor Dennis and Kitty Whately likewise proved almost infinitely capable both of sisterly affinity and dramatic disentanglement. So many attributes – sorrow and joy, honour and temptation, simplicity and complexity – were revealed as sides of the same experimental coin. Lines, unadorned or subtly ornamented, exuded both clarity and warmth. We knew them, and yet did not. Sarah Tynan’s Despina was very much the musical catalyst, her cynicism and her sense of fun both vividly portrayed. If Peter Coleman Wright’s pitch was sometimes a little approximate, he brought important dramatic truths to his portrayal of Don Alfonso – perhaps not unlike Francesco Bussani, first in his line. The chorus, well trained, by Richard Harker, could hardly have done more to bring their roles, individual and collective, to life.

Fiordiligi and Dorabella

There is method in the madness one feels at the close; there has to be. And yet, quite rightly, there remains mystery too. Or, in the ruminations of another operatic character, forced to confront truths of existence he might rather not – at least not too often: ‘Ein Kobold half wohl da:/Ein Glühwurm fand sein Weibchen nicht; der hat den Schaden angericht’t.’ Was Sachs just rephrasing the question? Probably. Are we? Almost certainly. That does not, however, mean that we are not confronting it, that we need not do so. Mozart leads us to Wagner, as well as Wagner to Mozart.

Il trittico, Opera Holland Park, 5 June 2015

Michele – Stephen Gadd

Giorgetta – Anne Sophie Duprels
Luigi – Jeff Gwaltney
Frugola – Sarah Pring
Tinca – Aled Hall
Talpa – Simon Wilding
Soprano Amante – Johane Ansell
Tenor Amante – James Edwards

Sister Angelica – Anne Sophie Duprels

Princess Zia – Rosalind Plowright
Abbess – Fiona Mackay
Monitress – Laura Woods
Mistress of the Novices – Kathryn Walker
Sister Genovieffa – Johane Ansell
Sister Osmina – Kathryn Hannah
Sister Dolcina – Rosanne Havel
Nursing Sister – Chloë Treharne
Alms Sisters – Anna Patalong, Sarah Minns
Novices – Naomi Kilby, Ellie Edmonds
Lay Sisters – Rebecca Hardwick, Chloe Hinton
Child – Matteo Elezi

Gianni Schicchi – Richard Burkhard

Zita – Sarah Spring
Lauretta – Anna Patalong
Rinuccio – James Edwards
Gherardo – Aled Hall
Nella – Elin Pritchard
Betto – Simon Wilding
Simone – William Robert Allenby
Marco – Ian Beadle
La Ciesca – Chloe Hinton
Spinelloccio – Henry Grant Kerswell
Gherardino – Barnaby Stewart
Buoso – Peter Benton

Martin Lloyd-Evans, Oliver Platt (directors)

Neil Irish (designs)
Richard Howell (lighting)

City of London Sinfonia

Stuart Stratford (conductor)

Time was when many felt compelled to ‘make allowances’ for ‘smaller’ companies. Now, more often than not, the contrary seems to be the case, instead apologising for their elder and/or larger siblings: ‘But of course, it is far more difficult for House X, given the conservatism of its moneyed audience,’ as if House X might not actually attract a different, more intellectually curious audience by programming more interesting works. At any rate, there is now no more need, if ever indeed there were, to ‘make allowances’, and it is difficult really to consider a company with such extensive programming as Opera Holland Park to be in any meaningful sense ‘smaller’. This new production – reusing its 2012 Gianni Schicchi – of Puccini’s complete Trittico may well be the best thing I have yet seen and heard at Holland Park.

Yet again, any reservations I might pre-emptively have held in abstracto concerning a small-ish orchestra (the outstanding City of London Sinfonia, strings 6:5:4:3:2) vanished within a few bars; the acoustic may sound unpromising in an unpromising performance, but in one such as this, with truly excellent conducting throughout from Stuart Stratford, there was no problem whatsoever. Dynamic contrasts and continuities could hardly have been more powerfully – and sensitively – communicated. Climaxes were shaped with unfailing conviction, matched, one felt, with as true an understanding as Puccini’s own of the dramatic ebb and flow. Indeed, the importance of rhythm, and its inextricable alliance to increasingly adventurous harmony, was projected in Il tabarro as almost a symphonic poem of the Seine itself – were that not woefully to underplay the role played by Stratford’s splendid cast. The post-verismo (if in fact we are post-) darkness of the score, lit by shards one might relate to Stravinsky, Schoenberg, or Debussy, but which one would be quite wrong to consider in any sense derivative, told of a Paris both distinct from and yet related to La bohème, Puccini’s self-quotation playful acknowledgement rather than necessity, so deeply imbued with style and meaning was the musical account.

Different colours, different sound-worlds presented  themselves in Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi, the tragic noose tightening inexorably in the former, all the more powerfully for its radiant feminity (from which Poulenc surely learned so much in Dialogues des Carmélites. I initially hardly felt like hearing the latter, immediately following the tragic denouement of Suor Angelica. Performance put me right, the revels now begun of a scherzo as full of zest and the comedic complexities of commedia dell’arte as the Petrushka score that more than once came to mind. Nothing was permitted to outstay its welcome, ‘O mio babbino caro’ for once a genuine moment of well-natured self-parody rather than a would-be reversion, in which members of the audience may sit back and ‘enjoy’. Indeed, Dante’s great comedy itself seemed to loom over the enterprise as a whole – just as, in very different circumstances, it had over Calixto Bieito’s brilliant Berlin double-bill of Schicchi and Bluebeard’s Castle earlier this year.

 

The casts were also as fine as I can recall from OHP, perhaps even finer still. Even given a certain amount of duplication, the number of singers involved is large, so as often put a strain upon one of those ‘larger’ houses. Here, no one disappointed, and the whole, as the well-worn cliché has it, was considerably greater than the sum of its parts; indeed, there was a real sense of company, such as one is more likely nowadays to find in relatively ‘smaller’ circumstances. Anne Sophie Duprels convinced equally in the conflicted roles of Giorgetta and Suor Angelica, her musical and dramatic focus and shaping every inch the equal of Stratford’s. Stephen Gadd and Jeff Gwaltney had one believe just as strongly in them and their plight in Il tabarro; it may not be a lengthy opera, but these felt like fully drawn characters, and the ‘smaller’ parts offered much of great interest too. So did those in the other two operas. Other singers to stand out – although it hardly seems fair to do anything but repeat the cast list – were a vehement, Rosalind Plowright as La Zia Principessa, nobler than the convent hierarchy, but possessed of similar, ruthless, yet perhaps ultimately more conflicted coldness. Family lines exert their own pressure, as we should shortly be reminded in Gianni Schicchi. Richard Burkhard’s protean Schicchi, Sarah Pring’s slightly but not too outlandish Zita, and Anna Patalong’s beautifully sung Lauretta headed a cast of true depth in that final instalment.

As night fell, the qualities of the three productions declared themselves in different ways; that change in light – and temperature – proved especially telling during the course of Suor Angelica. Neil Irish’s arched backdrop for Il tabarro, commenting yet expanding upon the ruins of Holland House, moved to the foreground for the laundry – inevitable thoughts concerning convent repression there – in Suor Angelica and the bedroom for Gianni Schicchi, laundered clothes serving dual purpose in the two latter operas. There was, however, no attempt to force the three operas closer together than that; they told their own stories, and we made connections as we would. Martin Lloyd Evans (Il tabarro and original director of Gianni Schicchi) and Oliver Platt (Suor Angelica and revival director of Schicchi) respected the works, which in turn seemed to respect them for it. Movement and designs were in keeping with the dictates of the action, scenic and musical alike, keenly observed without drawing undue attention. The tragedy and comedy of human existence were the focus, from pit and stage alike.