La locandiera, Bampton Classical Opera, 16 September 2025

St John’s, Smith Square

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

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

CHROMA

Andrew Griffiths (conductor)

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

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

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

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

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

Lena (Rosalind Dobson), Fabrizio (Samuel Pantcheff)

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

Aminta e Fillide and Venus and Adonis, Guildhall, 5 June 2019

Milton Court Theatre

Images: Clive Barda
Cupid (centre, Collin Shea) and chorus

Aminta – Harriet Burns

Fillide – Carmen Artaza

Venus – Sîan Dicker

Adonis – Andrew Hamilton

Cupid – Collin Shay

Shepherdess – Katherine McIndoe

Shepherd – Damian Arnold

Victoria Newlyn (director)

Madeleine Boyd (designs)

Andrew May (lighting)
Karl Dixon (video)

Chorus and Orchestra of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama

Chad Kelly (conductor)

The stature of John Blow becomes clearer, it seems, with every encounter. Alas, paucity of encounters remains the problem for many of us. This was the first live performance of Venus and Adonis I had heard, let alone seen; I am delighted to report that it did not disappoint. Indeed, it brought vividly to life what so many of us know intellectually: that if Purcell’s genius will likely always remain the loftiest summit of English Restoration music, it stands far from alone; and that, moreover, Dido and Aeneas owes a great deal to the example of what is rightly considered the first English opera. When one hears Blow’s anthems, many characteristics one has hitherto considered quintessentially Purcellian are revealed to be part of a common musical language; the same is true here, and for dramaturgy as well as musical language.

Adonis (Andrew Hamilton)

Any passable performance of Dido – ‘Tristan und Isolde in a pintpot’, Raymond Leppard once called it – will fly by; so did this more than passable performance of Venus and Adonis. Conductor Chad Kelly seemed very much in his element, continuo and orchestral playing warm, flexible, charged with dramatic meaning and atmosphere. The singers did too. Sîan Dicker sang and acted a splendidly voluptuous Venus: sexier than Dido, yet moving towards similar grief. If the latter were ultimately more generalised, that shows the final distinction between Blow’s opera and Purcell’s and is no reflection upon a fine performance indeed. Andrew Hamilton’s Adonis, perhaps not unlike Aeneas, was similarly imbued with allure: less complex, in his own way more vulnerable – he, after all, meet death – and a blanker sheet for projection in an under-acknowledged reversal of gender norms. Collin Shay’s Cupid fascinated. Presumably in conjunction with director, Victoria Newlyn, Shay presented a god of love by turns sullen, awkward – childish, one might say – who sprang to animated life when finally heeding the call to use his bow. Damian Arnold’s finely sung and acted Shepherd had one wishing there were more for him to do, the chorus from which he sprang exemplary in delivery of notes, words, stage action and that alchemy we call opera. Newlyn’s production presented Venus as an artist(e), her final words delivered movingly almost as a nightclub torch song. Video projections of the random world of Internet dating – iCupid, should we call it? – and a telling contrast between such urban modernity and the decidedly down-at-heel American hunting community from which poor Adonis had been plucked brought to contemporary life dramatic conflicts that have haunted our civilisation however far back we may care to trace.

Cupid, Aminta (Carmen Artaza),
Fillide (Harriet Burns)

I was less sure about her staging of Handel’s Italian cantata, Aminta e Fillide, and ultimately less sure whether staging it had been a good idea at all. This is not a dramatic piece and was never intended to be. Concert performance without stage hyperactivity would surely have served it better. One can try, of course, and I should be delighted to be prove wrong. Frenetic scene changes taking us from airport lounges to early video games were doubtless fun for those taking part, extras included, but seemed only to confirm that less would have been decidedly more. Cupid's linking presence felt forced; still more so did the desultory appearance of Botticelli's Birth of Venus at beginning and end.Here, Kelly seemed more constrained by what has become ‘period’ convention, vibrato-less strings sometimes grating, the music in general more regimented. However, Harriet Burns and Carmen Artaza offered some dazzling singing, especially later on, coloratura and range of colour alike showing what should really lie at the heart of this pastoral.