Tchaikovsky: Child of Glass, Not Entirely Serious, 13 August 2026

Opera Holland Park

Tama Matheson (director, actor)
Jayson Gillham (music director, piano)
Stephen Wicks (assistant director, choreography)
Suzy Kohane, Oliver Holland (actors)
Téo Debreuil (ballet soloist)

On the hottest day of the year, Opera Holland Park turned from its own season to the period in which it generously permits use of its theatre to other, smaller companies and events. The first, following on from last year’s Beethoven: I Shall Hear You in Heaven, was Not Entirely Serious’s Tchaikovsky: Child of Glass. Reuniting co-producers Tama Matheson and Jayson Gillham and actors Suzy Kohane and Oliver Holland, Matheson and Gillham tripling and doubling as writer/director and pianist/music director respectively, the new play welcomed Royal Ballet soloist Téo Dubreuil to the team, with impressive, often moving results. 

Tchaikovsky’s life presents, of course, a very different story from Beethoven’s, but both, like many others, have clear narrative arcs, the latter with undeniable tragic elements, the former an undeniable tragedy. (I found this writing another composer biography, that of Schoenberg: how well a life structures its works, at least in certain cases.) Here the emphasis naturally lies on the composer’s homosexuality and broader queerness, Tchaikovsky initially appearing onstage in a dress, only to lose and never regain it. There are other stories to tell, no doubt, but in a general ‘bio-play’, it would be perverse to ignore this as guiding principle. Russian culture ministers, should they still exist, may beg to differ. Across today’s world, an increasingly ominous space for LGBTQ+ people, and not least in a United Kingdom in which Rowling & Co. seem to call most of the legal shots, we hardly need reminding of how fragile acceptance can be, of how distant liberation remains. 

Matheson brings to onstage portrayal of the composer the same energy and commitment shown not only in his writing but also his general animating presence. Put simply, this would not be happening without him—though it is no one-man show. In narration and dialogue, there is a readiness to recapture, even in necessary translation, the different style and voice of Tchaikovsky’s age. A good deal of basic – and sometimes less basic – biographical information is conveyed: perhaps some time a little too much, although the balance is difficult to strike. The outlines, however, as well as telling detail are very much present, as indeed they are in the contributions of his fellow actors, called upon to summon up a chorus of portrayals (literally in the ‘court of honour’ some have claimed drove Tchaikovsky to his death). I mean no disrespect to writer or actors, though, when I say that it is elements of music and dance that linger longer and hit deeper. Such, after all is their nature—arguably in general, but certainly in the life in question, its agonies as clearly as any sublimated into art. Gillham’s pianism, crystalline, scintillating, seductive and more, guides us through a distinguished tasting-menu of Tchaikovsky and others (Rachmaninov, Mozart, Bizet, Wagner, Saint-Saëns), original piano music (solo or concerto) and arrangements delivered with equal ease and magic. The ‘Bacchanale’ from Samson et Dalila puts in an apt, orientalist appearance for a scene in Paris, in which the composer succumbs once again to the sins and liberation of metropolitan flesh. Here, Debreuil’s personification of Tchaikovsky’s urges, his dreams, and ultimately, even in death, his hopes truly commands the stage. His is a part lying somewhat in the line of Tadzio (Britten’s more than Visconti’s—or Mann’s): more knowing, perhaps, yet also crucially beyond good and evil.

Turandot, Opera Holland Park, 23 June 2026

Images: Pablo Strong

Princess Turandot – Anne Sophie Duprels
Calaf – José de Eça
Liù – Fflur Wyn
Timur – Jihoon Kim
Ping – Josef Jeongmeen Ahn
Pang – Joseph Buckmaster
Pong – Zwakele Tshabalala
Emperor Altoun – Robert Burt
Mandarin – Wonsick Oh
Prince of Persia – Jamie Formoy
Young Turandot – Lara Ronxin Quattrone

Opera Holland Park Youth Chorus (chorus master: Joe Cummings)

Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus master: Richard Harker)

City of London Sinfornia

Naomi Woo (conductor)

Celebrating its thirtieth anniversary and the centenary of Puccini’s death, Opera Holland Park completed its set of the composer’s operas with a semi-staging of his final, unfinished work, Turandot. One might wish for a full staging, but one cannot have everything—and relatively little was lost. This made for a fitting crown to a season far from over, or perhaps better an extended encore to its new Fanciulla del West.

Anne-Sophie Duprels and José de Eça (previously Dick Johnson) came together to do something strikingly both similar and different as Turandot and Calaf. Their performances proved to be on a similarly outstanding level too, once again as fine a dramatic soprano and tenor as I can recall hearing at Holland Park—and considerably superior to those one might encounter at many of the opera firmament’s starriest houses. Whatever the dramaturgical depravity of the work – a big ‘whatever’ – both navigated its difficult, some might say impossible, relationship between fantasy and realism with all the fine attention to words, line, and their combination one could hope for. Duprels’s Turandot stood and sang on the threshold of a new life, slowly warming as much as melting. De Eça’s ardour swept all before it, Fflur Wyn and Jihoon Kim’s compassionate Liù and Timur included—which, alas, is as it should be. Wonsick Oh’s Mandarin was a chilling, yet human – indeed, human partly on that account – master of ceremonies, ably assisted by the protean solo-ensemblists of Josef Jeongmeen Ahn, Joseph Buckmaster, and Zwakele Tshabalala’s Ping, Pang, and Pong. Robert Burt’s Emperor Altoun and Jamie Formoy’s Prince of Persia afforded vivid, crucial, ‘smaller’ contributions.  

The role of the chorus is particular important in this opera. Opera Holland Park’s Chorus and Youth Chorus both impressed, both in themselves and in combination with the City of London Sinfonia, which again gave a mighty impression of a much larger band. The CLS now sound like old Puccini hands, which of course they are: warm, incisive, steely by turns, relishing and communicating the ripe post-Wagnerism and still astonishing modernism of the score in equal measure. If there were a few moments when any orchestral reduction would suffer by comparison with the full score, Tony Burke’s resourceful work, strange electronic organ intervention aside, contributed greatly to the success of the performance. A panoply of percussion enhanced the musical theatre of cruelty, as well as looking forward to the later twentieth century.

So too did Naomi Woo’s conducting, screwing up the tension where required and richly expansive where called for. Echoes of Debussy, Stravinsky, Schoenberg and others were relished, as, equally important, were the many cases in which Puccini takes the lead and others follow. It was difficult not to hear sentiments of Dallapiccola’s Il prigioniero, for instance, not least in the arguably still more twisted combination of torture and hope on offer here. As ever, that tantalising early morning conversation between Puccini and Schoenberg, when the ailing elder composer travelled to Florence for the Italian premiere of Pierrot Lunaire, hovered in the musical air. Holland Park’s celebrated peacock chorus contributed vocal embellishments, apparently as engaged with the sadistic dramaturgy as the rest of us. If Franco Alfano’s completion remains unsatisfactory, we cannot always hope for Berio. It has the merits at least of bringing to the surface in its listless wagnerismo parallels – arguably more than that – with Siegfried and Brünnhilde. 

Eleanor Burke’s direction was an equal partner in that (as, of course, were our Calaf and Turandot). The semi-staging concentrated, naturally, on character and narrative, and did so very well, whilst nonetheless framing their unfolding with reference to a child, the young princess, first having opened her music box and later handing it to the cruel princess she was to become. The importance both of childhood experience and of the problematical yet fascinating tension between Carlo Gozzi’s commedia dell’arte and Puccini’s realism was brought to our attention, for us to ponder and experience as our minds and mindsets permitted. This was not the place really for an overarching concept, though we were free to contribute one as we wished. Dress, as opposed to full-scale costume, was stylish in red and black. 

This was, then, another distinguished production from Opera Holland Park. A good number of audience members raised their hands at the outset, when asked by CEO and Director of Opera James Clutton if this were their first time. It is difficult to imagine they would have been anything other than greatly impressed, just as the rest of us were. For there was no mistaking the warmth and sincerity of the final applause. What next? Dare we hope for the aforementioned Dallapiccola, perhaps in tandem with Busoni’s Turandot? Someone should, at any rate.

Così fan tutte, Opera Holland Park, 2 June 2026

Fiordiligi – Madeline Braham
Ferrando – Osian Wyn Bowen
Dorabella – Shakira Tsindos
Guglielmo – Paul Grant
Don Alfonso – Paul Carey-Jones
Despina – Elizabeth Karani

Director – Cecila Stinton
Designs – Neil Irish
Lighting – Robert Price

Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus master: Lindsay Bramley)
City of London Sinfonia
Charlotte Corderoy (conductor)

 

Così fan tutte may be my favourite opera; it is certainly one of those about which I am touchiest. To have me come away from a performance not verging upon spitting blood is rarer than it should be: doubtless a reflection on me as well as much contemporary Mozart staging and conducting. At any rate, there was no such problem here at Holland Park: no need for a transfusion of any kind, and an intelligent, enjoyable production and performance of a Neapolitan warmth to belie London’s torrential downpour, plunging temperatures, and transport misery. 

Doubtless we romanticise the past. Societies often have, though equally often they have trashed it—and continue to. The idiocies that abound in contemporary liberal discourse on the Enlightenment are frustrating, not least given their flattening effect on a movement far more varied, diffuse, and interesting than the Guardian letters page to which it is too often reduced. Their defamation is nonetheless less grievous than those served up then and now concerning the Middle Ages. Da Ponte and Mozart’s Naples shows more things in heaven, earth, and indeed somewhere warmer still than any ahistorical philosophies might dream of, Its strikingly ‘modern’ laboratory treatment, musically as much as verbally dramatic, and a key to understanding its nineteenth-century rejection is balanced and/or contested by the quackery of Mesmerism; sadly, the theological heart beating at its core remains ripe for rejection or straightforward incomprehension by bears of insufficient historical imagination. 

What of more recent ages? Like any period, the 1960s will suggest different things to different people, indeed different things to the same people at different times. In Cecilia Stinton’s production, however, there was a degree of postwar glamour and prosperity evoked through intercontinental tourism, in this case by a pair of US American women, both to be deceived by and yet also assert a degree of vengeance upon their soldier lovers and their hosts and hostesses. Titles help further establish the new world, knowingly distant in a world of ‘Yanks’ and the like from Da Ponte’s Italian. Despina and Don Alfonso navigate the show from the airport onwards, taking us to the fatally named Hotel Caligula to a Pompeii that has more than a little of the overseas Italian restaurant to it. One sees what one expects rather, necessarily, than what is there: surely a considerable part of the point. A romanticised view of a Roman antiquity that never was, yet which governed much of our self-understanding, both as individuals and societies, in the eighteenth century as now, comes to life through disguise, games, and commercial and other forms of exploitation. Statues come to life or turn to death, but will anyone notice? Perhaps they are mere plaster-casts anyway, if indeed that matters. It is necessary to complete at least an initial course from the (summer) school for lovers even to be aware that one has taken it. 

And all is accomplished with a greater sense of humour than I have seen for some time. If my view of the work is darker, Stinton’s conception convinces and, yes, entertains, as well as turning the tables, without ever neglecting – as so many do – the difficult, necessary lessons of which travel, tourism, and ‘heritage’ are mere vehicles of passion and, ultimately, Passion. There is proper bleakness at the end, as Mozart’s chillingly perfunctory, automaton-like close shows up the surface meaning of Da Ponte’s ‘moral’ for what it is. Mock-heroic gestures and acts have throughout performed a similar role, bringing Mozart’s horrifying parodies to scenic life for those who might otherwise take them at face value—or not even notice. It is a difficult work for many, precisely because of its musical suppositions. A helping hand here does no harm at all, especially when the titles veer in another, less literal direction. If we are all Romantics as well as romantics now, that only renders our need to learn from those who were not, or who were less straightforwardly so, all the greater. 

Mozart’s ambiguity is absolutely fundamental to the drama, nowhere more so than in his orchestral writing and long-term harmonic plan. Few have understood and communicated this so well as Sir Colin Davis, and no one in my theatrical experience. But again, whether we romanticise the past or not, we cannot live in it. Charlotte Corderoy’s conducting of the City of London Sinfonia was warm and broadly sympathetic, supportive of the singers yet leading them as necessary. Tempi were often, though not always fast without being harried. Ensembles are numerous in Così, presenting musical as well as dramatic challenges; there were, as is often the case, a few instances of disjuncture between pit and stage, but nothing grievous and swiftly, decisively remedied. Balance, moreover, was generally impeccable. There was, moreover, a palpable sense of staging and musical interpretation having been conceived and proceeding as one, not least in emphatic, if far from exclusive, tilting of the scales towards comedy. 

Such collaborative, collegial work was also a hallmark of the vocal performances. Madeline Braham was a wonderful Fiordiligi, finely supported by both director and conductor, yet with a fresh and thoughtful artistry very much her own. Shakira Tsindos’s Dorabella proved a proper foil: both contrast and complement in musical and dramatic terms. We felt as well as observed a growing division as well as distinction between them, as also between Osian Wyn Bowen’s Ferrando and Paul Grant’s Guglielmo. These lively, human portrayals were well framed and complemented by Paul Carey-Jones’s Don Alfonso and Elizabeth Karani’s Despina: both hugely charismatic performances, often in tandem with the excellent chorus—and Despina’s own troupe of adoring ragazzi (shades of Zerbinetta).  Coloratura held no fear for anyone, all of whom knew how to put it to excellent dramatic as well as musical use. And in this, arguably the ensemble opera par excellence, the whole was quite properly more than the sum of its estimable parts.

La fanciulla del West, Opera Holland Park, 26 May 2026

Minnie – Amanda Echalaz
Jack Rance – Robert Hayward
Dick Johnson – José de Eça
Nick – Zwakele Tshabalala
Ashby – Alaric Green
Sonora – Aidan Edwards
Trin – Jamie Formoy
Sid – Joe Ashmore
Bello – Michael Temporal Darell
Harry – Dominick Felix
Joe – Hugh Beckwith
Happy – Matthew Duncan
Jim Larkens – Samuel Snowden
Billy Jackrabbit – Freddie Tong
Wowkle – Kezia Bienek
Jake Wallace – Blaise Malaba
José Castro – Ronald Nairne
Pony Express Rider – Robert Jenkins

Director – Martin Lloyd-Evans
Designs – Anna Reid
Lighting – Jamie Platt
Choreography – Róisín Whelan
Fight director – Haruka Kuroda

Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus master: Dominic Ellis-Peckham)

City of London Sinfonia

Matthew Kofi Waldren (conductor)

Images: Craig Fuller

This year, Opera Holland Park celebrates its thirtieth anniversary. Now a fixture in London’s operatic calendar, it continues to put many allegedly starrier stages to shame, not only through the quality of its productions and a wise stewardship that continues to build on its particular artistic strengths, but also through the genuine warmth of its welcome to newcomers and seasoned operagoers alike, and to its commitment to community and sustainability. Puccini has always stood at the heart of its offerings, so opening the 2026 season with a new production of La fanciulla del West, directed by Martin Lloyd-Evans and conducted by Matthew Kofi Waldren, was fitting and welcome. It turned out to show the company at its best: an interesting, intelligent staging, with excellent musical values, including a City of London Sinfonia one would never have guessed from the sound included only five first violins and a well assembled team of seasoned and newer vocal artists.

When talking about how differently an opera – or any other performing artwork – has struck one on different occasions, it is always difficult to know how much to attribute to the performance, broadly conceived including production, and how much to oneself. It will often be a combination of both; the important thing to remind oneself is that one may be more or less receptive at different times. I suspect, as an astute critic said to me during the interval, that Fanciulla may be a work that speaks more readily to those of a certain age. Its themes become more apparent, as well as more meaningful. (That may also be in part a reflection of coming to know it better.) But I am pretty sure it was only that; much in Lloyd-Evans’s production skilfully drew out the work’s dramatic concerns without overt interventionism, tracing a careful and involving path between its tricky combination of realism and redemption, neither of which it seems desirable, even possible, to underplay, let alone jettison. 

First among these themes is surely loneliness; at least, it felt so here. I do not doubt a more overt, even contemporary thematization could work too, but a hallmark of this production was to draw it out of what we could imagine the work ‘itself’ to be. Related to that and with similar contemporary resonance, period setting notwithstanding, is the theme of migration. For these are people who have come to California from across the world, not only the continent. In that lie their hopes, their fears, their sadness, and their possibilities to build something new—such as love. The dramatic, emotional point of the first scene, of men meeting at the Polka saloon, unsure of how they can and should relate to one another, whether missing their ‘homes’ elsewhere or otherwise, comes across strongly. Minnie and Dick Johnson are not so different, though they step out from that generality. And, as Minnie reminds us, none of them, her included, has clean hands: this could readily tilt into a Brecht-Weill Mahagonny, although ultimately its direction could hardly stand more strongly opposed. 

That is all in the work, one might say, and in many ways that is so, but one is led to understand and feel that with greater clarity and indeed emotional depth than I can previously recall. Dancing with another, faute de mieux, is touching in its heterosexual wariness but also its brief joy, though the ‘real thing’ lies between the central couple—and between them alone. We follow its origins, its rekindling, its blooming, its crisis, and its victory, through detailed, yet never fussy direction that supports every character onstage to trace a plausible path. There are set-piece moments, as there are in the work. They make reference, or at least conform, to our ideas of the Western, brought further to life in Anna Reid's resourceful designs and Jamie Platt's lighting. But they are never mere clichés: they have a function, narrative and emotional, and effect that function well.  

Waldren’s direction of the CLS and its playing were first-class. If you would have me down as a sceptic for chamber orchestra Puccini, even in so skilful a reduction as that by Ettore Panizza, you would be right. Not only, though, was I convinced from the outset; the question never arose in the first place. Here was a sound that was throughout just right, a gorgeous string sheen the icing on a cake of many ingredients, often dissolving in strikingly modernist fashion before our ears, whilst never forgetting its ‘Italian’ – forgive the essentialism – heart. Flexible yet directed, warm yet variegated, here was a Fanciulla that evoked the Puccini of his past and future, whilst reminding us how close much of it stands to Tristan und Isolde, to Debussy, and to the operas and film scores of Korngold and company. If I had a slight doubt, I wondered whether it might move on a little faster at times, but such matters come down to taste more than judgement. Passages of suspended time had their own dramatic motivation, palpably received throughout a packed audience.

 

Amanda Echalaz’s Minnie was similarly world-class: a far more complex character than I have seen and heard before and all the better for it. There were goodness and wisdom there, to be sure, but also pride and even resentment: as was very much her right. Her alchemy of words and music was shared by the charismatic José de Eça, at least as lovelorn and with all the greater need for a redemptive arc. One could not but root for them, much as one feared (even when one ‘knew’) darker forces would win out. Robert Hayward’s Jack Rance married a Scarpia of the West with something deeper, doubtless drawing on his experience in Wagner up to and including Wotan. No one sentimentalised, crucial in this of all composers, and the drama was all the richer for it. Cast from depth, a community was brought to life by singers such as Zwakele Tshabalala’s Nick, Alaric Green’s Ashby, Aidan Edwards’s Sonora, and many others, not least Kezia Bienek’s loyal Wowkle. This, though, was very much a company effort, with an outstanding chorus trained by Dominic Ellis-Peckham at its beating heart. All contributed to something greater than the sum of its considerable parts.

 

For the ending not to seem trite, even silly, it needs broader, redemptive resonance: not an easy task for our age. It is arguably here that the work needs a little help, and the question is raised as to what sort of work it really is. Clearly it is not a tragedy, though it has seemed to be leading that way. Nor is it a comedy, save in the sense that it is not a tragedy. It is easier, I think, to take Turandot as a perverted, even repellent version of the latter. It might be easier to take Fanciulla as such, if it had a greater mythological element to it, as Wagner does even in Die Meistersinger. Tristan is a tragedy that, in the older or at least George Steiner sense, turns aside too. Whilst one might draw a comparison here, perhaps the problem is that it does not feel appropriate, for various reasons, of which realism is only one. The point is not, of course, classification, Aristotelian or otherwise, for its own sake. It is perfectly fine for a work simply to be itself; ultimately it must be. But when doubts linger concerning the happy ending, such questions more or less inevitably arise. A potential future carved out for the lovers is hard-won in its way, It is difficult to argue with Minnie’s admonitions and persuasion: she deserves it. But do we believe in it? In Così fan tutte, of course we do not: that is the point. If I am still not entirely clear what the point is here, first the problem may well be mine, and second this came far closer to convincing me than any performance previously, the dress rehearsal I was fortunate enough to attend included. So there was an emotional truth to what we saw and heard in committed performance, as in staging, as in work. The three came together in just the way opera of most kinds should.

Happy thirtieth anniversary, then, Opera Holland Park. It has been a pleasure to share a good few of those years with you, and I hope to share many more of them.

Hänsel und Gretel, Opera Holland Park, 14 June 2023

Hänsel – Charlotte Badhma
Gretel – Laura Lolita Perešivana
Peter – Paul Carey Jones
Gertrud – Meeta Raval
Witch – Eleanor Dennis
Sandman – April Koyejo-Audiger
Dew Fairy – Charlotte Bowden

John Wilkie (director) 

Neil Irish (designs)
Robert Price (lighting)

Michael Spenceley (movement)

Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus master: Dominic Ellis-Peckham) 

Children’s Chorus from the Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School (chorus master: Scott Price) 

City of London Sinfonia

Kărin Hendrickson (conductor)

Hänsel (Charlotte Badhma), The Witch (Eleanor Dennis), Gretel (Laura Lolita Perešivana), 
Images: Ali Smith

It is always a joy to return to Holland Park: to Opera Holland Park, that is, the park itself being available all year around. Sometimes, the sense of it heralding summer can seem wildly optimistic; doubtless it did for those initially sampling the year’s first production, Rigoletto. Now that spring has finally not come, winter having suddenly jumped into summer, the season’s second, Hänsel und Gretel, was able to bask in that long anticipated magic of sunshine and warmth gradually ceding, peacock cries and all, to nightfall for the final act. 

Peter (Paul Carey Jones)

Hänsel, of course, is so magical a work that temptation can be to love it too much. Occasionally during the first two acts, I wondered whether conductor Kărin Hendrickson might be heading in that direction: not that, if I am honest, I mind. Someone taking her time is increasingly rare in music of many kinds, and the last thing one wants here is someone rushing us through the opera’s relatively few minutes. If I were to be excessively critical, I might say that there were a very few occasions when the score felt as if it were on the verge of losing momentum, though I am not sure it ever quite did. Instead, Hendrickson was setting up a considerable and welcome contrast with the antics and resolution of the third act, wrapping things up nicely, having allowed us to enjoy the ride. The City of London Sinfonia played like a little more than ‘fourteen angels’. Though a small band – notably smaller (strings 5:4:3:2:2) than we generally hear, and in a trickier acoustic too – they offered a dynamic and related emotional range to match any. It seemed clear that they enjoyed playing for Hendrickson—and doubtless to play such ‘late-Romantic’, for want of a better term, music too. If we want to hear the Staatskapelle Dresden and Colin Davis, we can go to the recording, but then we shall miss live performance and magical setting. 

Opera Holland Park Chorus

A likeable, characterful cast added much to the proceedings. Charlotte Badhma and Laura Lolita Perešivana complemented and contrasted each other in just the right ways, vocally and gesturally, as Hänsel and Gretel. Paul Carey Jones’s positively Wagnerian Peter was luxury casting indeed; here is a singer who knows how to make his voice carry, even many yards offstage, and yet there is no lack of flexibility, quite the contrary. Meeta Raval’s revealed a lyric soprano with distinct dramatic flair as Gertrud. Eleanor Dennis had a whale of a time as the Witch, in a performance as well sung as it was acted. April Koyejo-Audiger’s Sandman and Charlotte Bowden’s Dew Fairy eagerly took their chances to shine, as did members of the Opera Holland Park Chorus and a children’s chorus from the Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School. Above all, this was a collaborative and sustainable performance. 

Gertrud (Meeta Raval)

For better or worse, productions of this work tend to shy away from its darkest subtexts. John Wilkie’s was no exception here. I admit to not being entirely sure what Wilkie’s concept was. Updated to the interwar years, there seemed in the first scene to be an interest in the family’s poverty, albeit an interest not really sustained. Fairytale, dream-like characters had already appeared in the Overture, lending a sense of mystery; their choreographed return at the end of the second act seemed (at least to me) less motivated. I suspect something psychoanalytical was intended. For whilst this was certainly no militantly traditionalist staging, an overall framework eluded me, as did the significance of the Witch peeling off exaggeratedly ‘feminine’ clothing to reveal a ‘masculine’, albeit highly caricatured military uniform. Fascism, I suppose, though more of a Fawlty Towers variety than something more sinister—or meaningful. In any case, she was soon gone. Perhaps that was the point; if so, it was a distinctly odd one. None of this detracted unduly, though, in what remained a lovely yet never too lovely evening,  sampling ideas that might yet be considered a little more seriously and/or magically.

Margot la Rouge and Le Villi, Opera Holland Park, 23 July 2022

Margot, Anna – Anne Sophie Duprels
Sergeant Thibault – Samuel Sakker
L’Artiste – Paul Carey Jones
Lili Béguin – Sarah Minns
Nini – Laura Lolita Perešivana
La Patronne – Laura Woods
First Soldier – George von Bergen
La Poigne – Jack Holton
Second Soldier – Alistair Sutherland
Totor – David Woloszko
First Woman – Chloé Pardoe
First Drinker – Sean Webster
Second Drinker – Matthew Duncan
Third Drinker, A Man – Peter Lidbetter
Waiter – Richard Moore
Police Inspector – Dragoş Andrei Ionel
Roberto – Peter Auty
Guglielmo – Stephen Gadd
Dancers – Fern Grimbley, Isabel Le Cras, Gabriella Schmidt

Martin Lloyd-Evans (director)
takis (designs)
Jake Wiltshire (lighting)

Jami Reid-Quarrell (movement)

City of London Sinfonia

Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus director: Dominic Ellis-Peckham)

Francesco Cilluffo (conductor)

Images: Ali Wright
Chorus, Le Villi

Opera Holland Park’s new double-bill of operatic rarities proves a great success, highly recommended to anyone slightly curious to hear works off the beaten track. Delius’s Margot la Rouge, written from 1901-2 but unperformed until 1983, and Puccini’s first opera, Le Villi, here given in its 1884 two-act revision, were both unsuccessful entrants in the Milan publisher Sonzogno’s competition for new one-act operas. In Martin Lloyd-Evans’s production, both open with a father and his daughter, the unfortunate tales to follow initiated by the latter leaving the former. (Make of that what you will.)

Delius’s 45 minutes or so tell a straightforward story in which the woman Marguerite/Margot, fallen into Parisian prostitution, has a chance meeting with her childhood sweetheart, Thibauld, which rekindles their relationship, only for her pimp-lover, L’Artiste, to explode with anger, stab Thibauld, and in turn be stabbed by Margot, who is arrested. There is little in the way of dramatic conflict or surprise; people act precisely as one might expect them to. There is a frankly absurd number of cast-members for a work so short. But it is musically interesting, Delius not only at his most Wagnerian, but far more directed (or conventionally directed) than many of the composer’s more wandering scores. Lloyd Evans and his team summon up a seedy Paris bar, a storm, and various comings and goings with a gutsy verismo spirit that matches what one hears from orchestra and singers alike. If ultimately Margot la Rouge comes across more as a sketch in search of expansion, it certainly does not outstay its welcome and has much to fascinate audiences of various tastes.

Le Villi is, unsurprisingly, the more accomplished, finished work, the level of craftsmanship from Puccini at so early a stage in his career little short of astonishing. The Gothic tale has more in common with French and, perhaps still more, German Romanticism than one might expect. Here, takis’s shell of a bar transformed into a woodland house, Roberto and Anna, celebrating their betrothal, are separated by Roberto’s journey to Mainz to collect his inheritance. Waylaid by a Mainz ‘siren’, he fails to return, choosing instead a city life of debauchery, and Anna dies, her father calling for supernatural vengeance from the Villi who inhabit the forest. Roberto, having finally resolved to return home, meets these fairies instead of his beloved; they do as the legend foretells, dancing him to death.

Puccini is likewise not without Wagnerian influence here, but his truer predecessors seem to be earlier German (and again French) Romantics, as well as the purveyors of French grand opéra and ballet. For, in this early opera-ballet, what surprises most is just how much Puccini sounds like himself. Melodies, harmonies, scoring, if not so much characterisation: so much of his later mastery is already close—and sometimes more than close. Lloyd-Evans’s resourceful production takes full advantage of the magical descent into darkness an evening at Holland Park offers. Again, it tells the story directly, with a sharp eye for detail, and offers plenty for one to consider after the event, as indeed does the work itself.

Both orchestral reductions, by Andreas Luca Beraldo, seemed to me highly successful, in that I pretty much forgot we were not hearing quite the real thing. That success must also of course be attributed to Francesco Cilluffo and the City of London Sinfonia.  Cilluffo’s conducting, energetic yet long-breathed, was imbued with every inch of the conviction necessary to lift such scores off the page. The CLS sounded fuller of tone than many an opera house orchestra of twice the size. It drove the action as much as supported the singers in a true partnership between pit and stage. The Opera Holland Park Chorus, finely trained by Dominic Ellis-Peckham, proved both polished and enthusiastic in its singing—and game in its dancing too. Jami Reid-Quarrell’s choreography, whether for the chorus or the three Villi dancing, was sharp, illustrative, and dramatically conceived.

At the heart of both operas lay the outstanding singing of Anne Sophie Duprels: heartfelt, incisive, and variegated. She was poignantly partnered by Samuel Sakker as Thibauld in Margot la Rouge, Paul Carey Jones’s Artiste offering a contrasting, commanding, and vicious stage presence. The size of the cast offered a host of young singers opportunities to shine, all of them well taken. As Le Villi’s Roberto, Peter Auty might have graced any operatic stage. His marriage of vocal heft, lyricism, and command of detail fully complemented Duprels. Stephen Gadd’s performance as Anna’s father Guglielmo should also be commended. As so often at Holland Park, this was a fine company achievement.

Indeed, I think it was worth drawing attention to the achievement of the greater team at Holland Park. From Director of Opera James Clutton down (not to forget recently departed colleague Michael Volpe), or perhaps better, from a committed team of volunteers up, this is a friendly, welcoming, high-achieving company, crucial both to this country’s operatic ecology, past, present, and future, and also playing its part in building a more sustainable theatre in the broader, ecological sense. Since the pandemic, OHP has taken still greater care to work in partnership with local suppliers; a wonderful array of upscaled furniture provides audience seating; the auditorium has been constructed from reclaimed wood and recycled shipping containers. Art for art’s sake matters; let no one tell you otherwise. But art is never solely for art’s sake. To survive, it must assume and further social, environmental, and political responsibility. When everything goes right artistically, as it does here, that is even better, but human striving, artistic and social, matters greatly in itself and will only do so more as our world belatedly confronts a host of crises that never should have been permitted to reach this stage. Every theatre company, every orchestra, every artist, every partner organisation will have its/his/her/their own solutions, but they must work together too; that includes us as audiences. What better place to learn from hard work, effort, and example than here in Holland Park?

 

Eugene Onegin, Opera Holland Park, 15 June 2022

Tatiana – Anush Hovhannisyan
Onegin – Samuel Dale Johnson

Lensky – Jack Roberts
Olga – Emma Stannard
Mme Larina – Amanda Roocroft

Filipievna – Kathleen Wilkinson
Prince Gremin – Matthew Stiff
M. Triquet – Joseph Buckmaster
Zaretsky/Captain – Konrad Jaromin
Solo tenor – Phillip Costovski

Julia Burbach (director)
takis (designs)
Robert Price (lighting)
Jo Meredith (movement)

Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus director: Richard Harker)
City of London Sinfonia
Lada Valešová (conductor)

 

Eugene Onegin (Samuel Dale Johnson).
Images: Ali Wright

Sharing a single set by takis with Carmen—typically resourceful, sustainable practice for Opera Holland Park—Julia Burbach’s Eugene Onegin proved a puzzling affair. The idea, I think, was to move between monochrome and colour, perhaps playing with memory and/or dreaming, but too much remained obscure or arbitrary (at least for me). Burbach seemed unsure whether to opt for realism, something more symbolic, or even a coherent melange of the two. Presumably, the uniform light colours of the first scene were intended to evoke a sort of Chekhovian boredom, but it seemed at odds with Pushkin, let alone Tchaikovsky.  Having everyone dressed in similar finery in that opening scene also suggested a chorus of nobles rather than peasants. For these were clearly the same people we encountered in the ball scene, and I do not think the intention was to suggest some sort of Russian Petit Trianon. Quite why some were playing badminton, I have no idea; it proved distracting in the wrong way, as had ‘peasant’ dancing earlier on. A turn through colour to black largely made emotional and narrative sense, yet details continued to sit oddly with the overall ‘picture’. Nothing ever quite moved convincingly, nor settled down.

It was also unquestionably the most heteronormative Onegin I have seen: a perverse distinction, one might say. Not only is there no sign, no inkling, nor even the slightest twinkling of an eye, of homosexual subtext; the characters are conventional enough in their relationships to be plausibly heterosexual. Perhaps if one were viewing work and creator from a Putinesque standpoint, that might signal cause for celebration. To the rest of us, it may seem strange or evasive.

That said, the cast did a fine job within these confines. Jack Roberts (an OHP Young Artist) and Emma Stannard gave a fine impression of Lensky and Olga as a young couple giddily in love. Their sheer enthusiasm proved infectious, not least given the curiously static production. Roberts’s sappy tenor and Stannard’s deep-toned mezzo proved just the vocal ticket too. Samuel Dale Johnson’s offered a thoughtful, well-sung performance as Onegin, both beguiling and infuriating in his mood swings. If the visual haunting demanded by Burbach in the Letter Scene seemed somewhat contrived, Dale Johnson’s subtler vocal version thereafter, culminating tragically in buyer’s remorse, was far more convincing. Anush Hovhannisyan’s Tatina gained in confidence as the evening went on: character development of course, but also, I think, in strength of performance. By the final scene, this was a formidable portrayal indeed. There were no weak links onstage, Kathleen Wilkinson’s Filipievna and Konrad Jaromin’s appearances as Zaretsky and the Captain especially catching the ear.

Tatiana (Anush Hovhannisyan)

Lada Valešová’s direction of the City of London Sinfonia seemed, laudably, engineered to follow these particular performances and production, rather than being imposed upon them. Was her languorous, intimate way with the first act too much of a muchness? That is probably a question of taste. It is not how I hear the work, but there was a thoughtful approach at work here. I missed a sense of abandon in the big public scenes, though Valešová’s scrupulousness offered alternative rewards.  One should also bear in mind that she was working with—and emphatically with—a chamber orchestra. A larger orchestra, as well as a different production, may well have brought forth a different musical reading.

Carmen, Opera Holland Park, 10 June 2022

 

Carmen – Kezia Bienek
Don José – Oliver Johnston
Escamillo – Thomas Mole
Micaëla – Alison Langer
Frasquita – Natasha Agarwal
Mercédès – Ellie Edmonds
Zuniga – Jacob Phillips
Moralès – Jevan McAuley
Le Dancaïre – Themba Mvula
Le Remendado – Mike Bradley

Cecilia Stinton (director)
takis (set designs)
Johanne Jensen (lighting)
Isabel Baquero (choreography)

Children’s Chorus from Cardinal Vaughan School
Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus director: Richard Harker)
City of London Sinfonia
Lee Reynolds (conductor)

Image: Ali Wright

 
Carmen was the last opera I saw before the end of the world. Not necessarily what I would have chosen; for many of my friends it was Fidelio, whose absence from my truncated Beethoven Year I regretted deeply. But then none of us chose pandemic, lockdown, death, misery, and the rest. It was good, though, to have opportunity to exorcise another pandemic ghost, albeit in different guise. Cecilia Stinton’s new Holland Park production has little in common with Martin Kušej’s staging at Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden; nor did Lee Reynolds’ traversal of the score, in his own, skilful, new reduction correspond to my memories of Daniel Barenboim. 

Different strokes…? Doubtless, yet I could not help but regret the lack of rethinking, especially in staging. There are half-hearted nods to a feminist turn, which in context come across more as odd than enlightening, for ultimately what we see is highly conventional, permitting of little to say other than what it is not. We lacked, thank goodness, Francesca Zambello’s notorious donkey; otherwise, this was a ‘period’ tale, in uniforms and frocks. It all looks a bit like a school play. Dmitri Tcherniakov’s radical decentring of Carmen could not be more distant; the unremitting intensity of Calixto Bieito’s much ‘straighter’ retelling in Franco’s Spain seems a world away too. There is some ‘colourful’ dancing and other musical comedy-style ‘business’. Children hand around postcards advertising Escamillo’s fight. Don José elicits strikingly little directorial interest, but it would be difficult to say any of the characters was fully treated. And that, bar a peculiar role reversal at the opening, is more or less it. It seems odd that anyone might need a course in orientalism at this stage, but there we are.

Reynolds’s conducting had none of Barenboim’s revisionism either, yet proved more compelling than the staging. The City of London Sinfonia was on sharp form, clearly in sympathy with its conductor’s carefully gauged balance of drive and lyricism. If I missed the sense of numbers contributing to a sum greater than their parts, that is often the case here; and I realise, especially in the ‘authentic’ opéra comique version, that I could readily be accused of wanting to turn the opera into something (more Austro-German, Nietzsche forbid) than it is. Reynolds and the orchestra supported the cast and led the action where necessary and appropriate. No one could or should reasonably have been disappointed, save for the inevitable reductions in scale of a chamber orchestration. Even then, different balances—not least, more prominent woodwind—had one reconsider one’s position on the work: no bad thing, given its ubiquity. 

Kezia Bienek fully inhabited the title role, insofar as the production permitted. Hers was a Carmen, quite rightly, not inclined to take any prisoners, yet far from one-dimensional. Vocal delivery was well centred on the text as a whole (that is, words and music) and stage presence fitted the bill splendidly throughout. If the staging seemed rather to leave Oliver Johnston to fend for himself, he proved well able to do so, giving us an intelligently sung Don José. Thomas Mole’s dark tone was just the thing for Escamillo, in another intelligent reading. Micaëlas rarely disappointed, but that is no reason not to celebrate Alison Langer’s performance, beautifully and touchingly sung. A fine supporting cast and excellent performances both from the Opera Holland Park Chorus and pupils of Cardinal Vaughan School compensated in good measure for what I—though not, I think, the audience as a whole—perceived as lack of ambition in the production.  

Hänsel und Gretel, British Youth Opera, 12 August 2021

Holland Park Theatre

Mother – Hilary Cronin
Father – Jack Lee
Gretel – Ellie Neate
Hansel – Amy Holyland
Dew Fairy – Rosalind Dobson
Sandman – Eva Gheorgiu
Witch – Fiona Finsbury

Southbank Sinfonia

Stephen Higgins (musical director)

Max Pappenheim (arrangements, sound design)

Daisy Evans (director)
Loren Elstein (set and costume designs)
Jake Wiltshire (lighting)

Not at all what I was expecting—and in many ways all the more moving for it. British Youth Opera, hosted by Opera Holland Park, presents a Hänsel und Gretel for our times. This was not, I hasten to add, a Hänsel replete with masks, ventilators, Microsoft Teams, and so on. I think we all fear these will be theatrical clichés soon to descend and slow to depart. Rather, preparation for performance, adjustments made, and what we see and hear on stage and through headphones resonate strongly with recent and current experience in and out of the theatre.

The work is reworked, as it were, so as not only to offer a lightly metatheatrical treatment, but also to enable ways of hearing especially, necessarily prevalent over the past eighteen months to shape, perhaps even to invade, our theatrical space. We begin in medias res, rather than with the Overture. Rehearsal for a traditional staging is under way, directed by an actor-ly woman who, suggestively, later plays the Witch. (Her chance at last to shine, or something more sinister?) Two children, Hannah and Gemma, commence a disruption of proceedings that offers both opportunity—the path to their surprise assumption of the central roles—but also apparent danger, let out into the world without their telephones, their parents both concerned and distracted. Daisy Evans, artistic director of Silent Opera, brings her experience to bear in having much of the earlier action play out on two aural levels: we set our headphones according to whether we wish to listen to the children’s or the adults’ perspective. In practice, we probably flit between the two—as with our eyes too, sometimes in harmony, sometimes not. It initially seemed surprising that this experiment did not continue, but coming together after estrangements of various kinds is surely the point here.

Likewise the counterpoint, for want of a better word, between a small live instrumental ensemble and a fuller recorded orchestra transformed in various unexpected ways by Max Pappenheim. Such tension and overlap tend, like a new English version of the libretto—perhaps it would be better to say of the story itself—both to enhance and estrange, like much recent experience. We make our way through, together, then, like Hänsel and Gretel—or Hannah and Gemma. Resourceful use is made of the stage, of earlier designs, of found objects, of electronic means, but above all of theatre itself. When it all comes together, we rediscover with true joy what we have been missing—yet perhaps also recognise ruefully what continues to be absent.

Amy Holyland and Ellie Neate made for a colourful central pair, charting vocally and scenically the theatrical transformation, far from linear, of Hannah and Gemma into Hänsel and Gretel. Hilary Cronin and Jack Lee, taking on a larger slice of the action than would generally be the case, shone similarly as their parents in accomplished musical and dramatic performance. One often had only to tilt one’s head to witness another, unsuspected layer to the action. Fiona Finsbury clearly had an excellent time in her roles, as did the rest of a cast which worked very well together. Coordination of scenic and musical elements by Daisy Evans and Stephen Higgins not only worked well, but combined to provide in itself heightened emotional response at what remains a time of deeply heightened emotions.

The Cunning Little Vixen, Opera Holland Park, 13 July 2021

Images: Ali Wright
Vixen (Jennifer France) and Fox (Julia Sporsén)

Vixen – Jennifer France
Fox – Julia Sporsén
Forester – Grant Doyle
Forester’s Wife, Owl – Ann Taylor
Schoolmaster, Mosquito – Charne Rochford
Priest, Badger – John Savournin
Harašta – Ashley Riches
Chocholka – Harriet Eyley
Lapák – Natasha Agarwal
Jay, Rooster – Grace Nyandoro
Woodpecker – Chloë Pardoe
Innkeeper – Phillip Costovski
Innkeeper’s Wife – Yolanda Grant-Thompson
Pepík – Alys Mererid Roberts
Frantík – Claire Ward
Frog – Daniel White
Caterpillar—Toby Yates
Grasshopper – Ben Jardim
Young Vixen – Estella Charlesworth

Stephen Barlow (director)
Andrew D. Edwards (designs)
Rory Beaton (lighting)
Sarita Piotrowski (choreography, movement)

Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus master: Dominic Ellis-Peckham)
City of London Sinfonia
Jessica Cottis (conductor)

 

Forester (Grant Doyle), Schoolmaster (Charne Rochford)

Our present condition lends us, perhaps more than ever, to think of what has led us here, how things really are now, and where the world will take us next. Or so we fancy: for some of us that is doubtless the case, for others less so, and is it really that different from other stages in our earthly existence? Plus ça change? It is too early to tell. Whatever the truth or otherwise of such claims, an opera that decentres humans without obliterating them, turning our attention to the life cycles of which that of our species is but one—and an intrusive one at that—has much to say to us right now.


Enter The Cunning Little Vixen; indeed, enter the cunning little vixen Sharp-Ears. A particular strength of Stephen Barlow’s new production for Opera Holland Park is the heightening of a sense of interaction—perhaps neither good nor bad, but just ‘how it is’—between the natural and human worlds, in this case a decidedly urban world portrayed with sparing use of designs and props but decided suggestion, subtlety, and dramatic impact. We see Terynka on stage at the opening, a reminder not only of the intertwining—real, though less crucial than we might think—but also of the constructed parallels between the poacher Harašta’s forthcoming marriage to Terynka and the life, loves, and death of our vixen—and what will become in turn of her daughter. There is sadness, both of regret and of grief, in that, not least with respect to the lovelorn Schoolmaster, who has always admired Terynka from afar. There is also danger: danger that humans might encroach on that natural world too far: not for nothing are our urban foxes, human and animal, seen by a recycling bin. The natural world exists here too: we probably see foxes in London more often than elsewhere in the country. Should we? That is probably a meaningless question. How, then, might we effect some sort of return, for our sake and theirs, to a more ‘natural’ life-cycle? And should we?

 

Terynka

That love (probably) and sex (definitely) lie at the heart of such conundrums, intertwined and parallel, is clear too. Much is done, probably all to the better in the age of coronavirus, by suggestion, again by intersection and parallelism. That word ‘intersection’ reminds us of gender issues, contemporary and age-old, too. The scene in which the vixen tempts hens to leave the apparent safety of their masters, animal and human, by presenting a utopia of women’s (and animal) rights seems especially crucial in this staging, both as high-point and as dead-end. Make of that what you will in light of the loss of their eggs and thus their potential for motherhood and, ultimately, the continuation of their species line. Are not, though, humans doing that anyway? Do we only care when, to borrow from Strauss and Hofmannsthal, a vixen rather than a forester/farmer steals their shadow?


There are rightly no easy answers, but they are posed: as they are in the musical performances, here very much of a piece with what we see. As so often in Holland Park, a sense of company that is more than its parts—like opera, like society, like nature?—is palpable and productive. Jessica Cottis’s direction of Jonathan Dove’s skilful reduction of Janáček’s score—very much a work of art in its own right, accordion and all—is fiercely alert in the moment; yet it also, as must any comprehending Janáček performance, senses and conveys the often surprising ways in which what might seem to be difficult, even rebarbative fragments are magically, indissolubly pieced together. The orchestra, here an attentive, lively City of London Sinfonia, takes on still more of that role when the work is sung in English, thus losing those foundational, generative Czech speech rhythms (even for those of us who speak no Czech). The decision is doubtless wise in a world permitting little international travel, a largely English cast (and audience) responding to the immediacy of a common tongue, a witty updating of Norman Tucker’s translation very much delivered and heard in the here and now. The ear compensates, as do the mind and eye.

 

Young Vixen (Estella Charlesworth), City of London Sinfonia, Jessica Cottis (conductor)

It was, then, the sort of performance in which it is tempting to re-list the cast and attribute good things to all of them. Such an approach, if slightly tedious, would doubtless be warranted. If I only single out a few performances that particularly caught my ear (and other senses), such words should be taken as indicative rather than exclusive. Jennifer France and Julia Sporsén offered lively, loving portrayals of Vixen and Fox, similarly alive in the moment yet allusive to broader, more cyclical (and/or ruptured) themes. Grant Doyle’s detailed way with words and music had me wonder what he would have made of the original Czech, though only in retrospect. As a key bridge between one world and another, he not only made things fit but ensured that they moved us in our human state of alienated longing. So too, albeit more exclusively on the human side, did Charne Rochford’s Schoolmaster. Ashley Riches operated as Harašta with a fine vocal and stage swagger, seemingly knowing yet ultimately foolish. All contributed, though; the operatic ecosystem would have been considerably the poorer without any. Surely that offers its own, broader moral.

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.