L'Heure espagnole and Gianni Schicchi, Royal Academy of Music, 25 November 2021

Susie Sainsbury Theatre

Concepcíon – Bernadette Johns
Ramiro – Will Pate
Don Iñigo Gomez – Michael Ronan
Torquemada – Ryan Vaughan Davies
Gonzalve – Liam Bonthrone

Gianni Schicchi – Patrick Keefe
Lauretta – Kathleen Nic Dhiarmada
Rinuccio – Ryan Vaughan Davies
Gherardo – Samuel Kibble
Simone – Wonsick Oh
Betto – Daniel Vening
Marco – Will Pate
Nella – Sophie Sparrow
La Ciesca – Luiza Willert
Zita – Bernadette Johns
Spinelloccio, Notary – Michael Ronan
Gherardina – Clara Orif
Pinellino – Johannes Moore
Guccio – Charles Cunliffe
Buoso Donati – Tom O’Kelly

Stephen Barlow (director)
Yannis Thavoris (designs)
Jake Wiltshire (lighting)

Royal Academy Sinfonia
Alice Farnham (conductor)

Images: Craig Fuller

 

How wonderful at last to return to opera at the Royal Academy of Music. (I caught an excellent concert of chamber music by Bartók and Eötvös from musicians coached by Tamara Stefanovich earlier this term.) Many of London’s best opera performances come from our conservatoires, young, enthusiastic musicians aided to act as a company, with none of the grind of repertoire routine, the ‘star system’, or worst of all, agent-determined casting that can blight bigger stages. The smaller size of theatres helps too. To see characters’ faces, especially in a fast-moving, highly reactive ensemble piece such as Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, is worth a great deal.

 

It is a work that tends to bring out the best in its performers—and certainly did here. Stephen Barlow directed a staging set roughly halfway between the time of composition and the present day. I do not think I have ever seen a production set in 1299, and cannot say I have any particular desire to do so. An abiding idea of Florence will always loom large, though, and so it did here: in this case, tinged with music. Composer Buoso Donati’s grand piano helped fill the stage, a drunken Betto (Daniel Vening) occasionally hammering out a tune on it. Monuments to past greatness, or at least renown, included a Maggio Musicale poster for one of Donati’s operas. A large instrument case inherited from the set for L’Heure espagnole, provided a place to hide the body where necessary. But the crucial action lay, as it were, in the interaction, clearly well planned and rehearsed both by Barlow and conductor Alice Farnham. Yannis Thavoris’s costumes contributed to the framework for delineation of character: Bernadette Johns’s Zita every inch the wheelchair-ridden (malingering?) battleaxe with airs, Will Pate’s Marco and Luiza Willert’s La Ciesca a uniformed policeman and ambitious, voluptuous wife, and so on. Patrick Keefe’s Schicchi necessarily took centre-stage once present, and figuratively once announced. His was a fine, detailed performance, as were those of his daughter Lauretta (Kathleen Nic Dhiarmada, with a lovely, snapshot-like ‘O mio babbino caro’) and her eager lover Rinuccio (Ryan Vaughan Davies). But there is little point in merely repeating the cast list. All contributed to the greater whole, as did incisive orchestral playing and conducting. Puccini’s score glistened as it should and must; the opera’s wit duly scintillated.

 


Ravel’s L’Heure espagnole had taken place in a musical instrument repair shop El Tempo, time more overtly met music in the guise of instrument cases with time signatures and tempo markings: ‘4/4’, ‘Assez vite’, and so on. The largest functioned as clock cases to be hiked up- and downstairs by Ramiro. Again set, costumes, and lighting (Jake Wilshire) made a considerable contribution to the overall mise-en-scène. What I missed somewhat, even at the time, though still more so in retrospect, was a sense of musical urgency and utmost precision, the latter surely a sine qua non for all Ravel performance. Farnham was supportive to her singers—and that, of course, may well have been to the point—but there were times when tempi dragged a little. The small orchestra (strings 4.4.3.2.2) seemed less at home in Ravel too, sonorities and balances somewhat variable. That cavil notwithstanding, Johns offered a lively, seductive Concepión, Pate properly under her spell, growing in (the character’s) masculine confidence. So too were the other male singers, Vaughan Davies a nicely fussy Torquemada, Liam Bonthrone and Michael Ronan properly preening suitors in their different ways. Much to enjoy, then, in both cases.

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.

La bohème, Opera Holland Park, 11 June 2016

Holland Park Theatre

Mimì – Anna Patalong

Rodolfo – Shaun Dixon
Marcello – Andrew Finden
Musetta – Elin Pritchard
Schaunard – Frederick Long
Colline – John Savournin
Benoît – David Woloszko
Alcindoro – James Harrison
Parpignol – Michael Bradley
Customs Sergeant – Alistair Sutherland

Stephen Barlow (director)

Andrew D Edwards (set designs
Howard Hudson (lighting)

Opera Holland Park Children’s Chorus and Chorus (chorus masters: Scott Price and Richard Harker)

City of London Sinfonia
Matthew Waldron (conductor)

 

Ever since a friend was reported as having said he’would like something in return for modern-dress Shakespeare (how quaint that term seems now, as if anyone would bat an eyelid!), namely an Elizabethan-dress staging of Look Back in Anger, I have been curious about the possibilities of ‘down-dating’, as I suppose we might call it. Rarely, if ever, do we see it, though. Stephen Barlow’s new production of La bohème does just that, however, relocating the action to that very same period. Indeed, I notice that the RSC’s Props Department is credited in the programme for ‘their co-operation and contribution’. Andrew D Edwards’s designs look gorgeous: both sets, making excellent use of the Holland Park stage and environment, and costumes.

 

What are we to make of such a move? Not having asked Barlow and that, perhaps, not being entirely the point in any case, I shall, without implying ‘intention’, say a little about what I made of it, or thought one might make of it. One could, I suppose, say that it does not matter, say what ‘we’ often say about the time and period, that in some respects, at least, it is the least interesting aspect of a production. That, I think, would be a half-truth, but a half-truth nevertheless. I doubt many of us would be complaining if an opera set in Tudor England were convincingly updated to nineteenth-century France, and certainly not to the present day, although we might well ask why, and with what success. Why there and then, in that case? For me, the immediate resonance was with Shakespeare’s London. Rodolfo, our poet, perhaps something of ‘Will’ about him: perhaps more Shakespeare in Love than Shakespeare ‘himself’, but how much do we know of the latter anyway? A leather doublet becomes him, as does distraction from his quill. Given not only the poetical but metatheatrical concerns of the work, I wondered whether, following the first or even the second act, we should discover that it had all, or partly, been a play within a play, or some such device, but no – with the possible exception of the decidedly, deliberately artificial device of casting snow upon the scene in the third act. Perhaps that is the point, or at least could be made to be the point: we are all metatheatrical now, we all create our own metatheatre, even when something is apparently played ‘straight’. That, I think, is undeniable, although I suspect the particular relocation is, at any rate, not entirely arbitrary. Shakespeare’s London, or our creation of it, speaks to an English audience as strongly as pretty much any other possibility.

 

Perhaps the justification is that: we know it, or think we know it, and thus we find it easier to explore. I have no problem in principle with exchanging Montmartre and a Southwark tavern. It was all rather fun, and genuinely surprising. Other productions might delve deeper – although, frankly, very few do. Not everything can be directed by Stefan Herheim, whose Oslo staging is in a class of its own. This works well, on its own terms. The enigmatic programme quotation from Two Gentleman of Verona – which I only saw afterwards – might speak for itself, then, so long as we do not start silly gushing about alleged ‘timelessness’. Nothing is timeless; nor is it helpful or interesting to consider it so. ‘Oh, how this spring of love resembleth/The uncertain glory of an April day/Which now shows all beauty of the Sun/And by and by a cloud takes all away.’ We are free, then, to consider correspondences and connections insofar as we wish.

Having a young cast of such considerable theatrical ability helps. Rarely has the sexual attraction between Mimì and Rodolfo seemed so evident. Anna Patalong offers a beautifully sung, clearly heartfelt performance. It would take a sterner heart than mine not to root for her. Shaun Dixon sometimes sang out a little too much for my taste, but the acoustic can be a tricky one. There was certainly no doubting his commitment, nor his idiomatic command. Andrew Finden’s Marcello was intelligent, thoughtful, impetuous: the quicksilver quality of his exchanges with Elin Pricthard’s gloriously charismatic Musetta, every inch the self-conscious stage queen, yet most genuine in concern and charity at the close, would have been worth the price of admission alone. Frederick Long and John Savournin made at least as much of Schaunard and Colline as any artists I can recall. The sense of student camaraderie can rarely, if ever, have been so strong; nor can the dangers of that play-acting which ultimately fails our tragic heroine. David Woloszko’s Falstaff-like Benoît was not only an obvious comic turn, but very well sung too, as indeed were all of the ‘smaller’ roles’.

The OHP Chorus and Children’s Chorus were, quite simply, outstanding. Barlow’s work with them had clearly been thoroughly internalised. They knew what they were supposed to do, and did it, without ever seeming over-rehearsed. Vocally, one could hear every word, and in a coherent musical whole too. Matthew Waldron’s conducting doubtless helped greatly in that respect. There was never the slightest danger of sentimentalisation, in a sharp-edged account, which kept the excellent City of London Sinfonia on its toes throughout. I was surprised how little, if at all, I missed a larger body of strings; in a fine performance, one’s ears (almost always) adjust. It was not all so driven, though; where the music needed, wanted to dance, it could do so happily, not least during Musetta’s second-act ‘show’. There would be no harm in relaxing a little as the run progresses; by the same token, however, there is nothing to complain about, and a great deal to savour, here. OHP’s Puccini Midas touch works its magic once again.

 

La fanciulla del West, Opera Holland Park, Tuesday 3 June 2014

Holland Park


Minnie – Susannah Glanville
Dick Johnson – Jeff Gwaltney
Jack Rance – Simon Thorpe
Nick – Neal Cooper
Sonora – Nicholas Garrett
Trin – Jung Soo Yun
Sid – Peter Braithwaite
Bello – James Harrison
Harry – Oliver Brignall
Joe – Edward Hughes
Happy – John Lofthouse
Jim Larkens – Aidan Smith
Ashby – Graeme Broadbent
Wowkle – Laura Woods
Billy Jackrabbit – Tom Stoddart
Jake Wallace – Simon Wilding
Jose Castro – Henry Grant Kerswell
Pony Express Rider – Michael Bradley

Stephen Barlow (director)
Yannis Thavoris (designs)
Richard Howell (lighting)

Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus master: Timothy Burke)
City of London Sinfonia
Stuart Stratford (conductor)


‘I like the atmosphere of the West’, Puccini wrote after seeing three of David Belasco’s plays performed on Broadway in 1907, ‘but in all the “pièces” I have seen, I have found only a few scenes here and there. Never a simple thread, all muddle, and, at times, bad taste and old hat.’ It was nevertheless there and then that the first dramatic seeds were sown for La fanciulla del West were sown; it would be written to a libretto after Belasco, dedicated to Queen Alexandra (!), and premiered in New York in 1910. Even after considerable compression, modification, and so forth, I am not convinced the work is a resounding triumph, though many Puccini lovers esteem it highly indeed. It is certainly full of musical interest: the Wagnerisms of old are perhaps not so prominent, though the love scene in the second act surely takes partly after Tristan, but the influence of Debussy in particular is fruitful indeed. Whole tone scales pervade the score, and there is more than the occasional nod to Pelléas. The story itself, the characters included, remains more of a problem. They are not the easiest people to care about, and without that, Puccini’s trademark emotional manipulations cannot do their work. He may have wished the opera to be a ‘second Bohème, only stronger, bolder, and more spacious,’ but that ambition would only fitfully be fulfilled. The sentimentality of the ‘redemptive’ ending is, alas, only too readily resisted.


Or so it seemed here, despite an excellent orchestral performance from the City of London Sinfonia under Stuart Stratford. The number of occasions when one really felt the lack of a larger orchestra was surprisingly small, the strings proving more luscious than one would have had any right to expect, the woodwind piquant and alluring, and the brass offering dramatical fatalism aplenty. Stratford’s direction seemed to me splendidly judged, those Debussyan resonances both readily apparent and seamless incorporated into the score. There is little that can be done about a rather annoying theme – friends tell me that it has been ‘borrowed’ by a composer of musical theatre, though it stands out like a sore thumb even before one is aware of that – but the score was certainly given its due. Stratford’s – and his cast’s – crewing up of musical tension during the second-act wager was beyond reproach.


Susannah Glanville shone as Minnie; I had not encountered her before, but was mightly impressed by her vocal reserves and the dramatic use to which they were bit. This was a performance that would have graced many a ‘major’ stage, not that the ever-enterprising Opera Holland Park has any reason to fear such lazy comparisons. Jeff Gwaltney sometimes struggled to make himself heard – in particular, his words – but offered a sensitive portrayal of Dick Johnson. Simon Thorpe presented the conflicting emotions of Jack Rance with considerable skill, permitting one initially to sympathise, then to be repelled. A strong supporting cast included a highly impressive performance by Nicholas Garrett as Sonora. Choral singing was likewise greatly to be admired.


The problem, then, lay with Stephen Barlow’s production. This, at least it seems to me, is a vulnerable work, and the updating to a 1950s Nevada atomic testing ground makes little sense. A number of those who know the opera far better than I do say that it is a work that resists relocation in any sense. I am not so sure; I can imagine, for instance, a metatheatrical treatment in Hollywood, which played upon musical themes as well as the more obvious metaphor of gold-digging. The name ‘Camp Desert Rock’ seemed to promise something that remained un-delivered, but perhaps that should come as a relief. Barlow’s concept, however ably assisted y Yannis Thavoris’s designs, seems not to involve any real re-thinking; re-location jars and perplexes, rather than reinvigorates. Puccini’s ‘never a simple thread, all muddle, and, at times, bad taste and old hat’? That would be too harsh, but work and musical performance alike are done no favours by pointless, eye- but hardly ear-catching interpolations, of Minnie’s final act arrival upon a motorcycle and the lovers’ subsequent airline departure. It was difficult to resist the conclusion that the opera would have been better off left in Gold Rush California.

Die Zauberflöte, Royal Academy of Music, 14 March 2012

Tamino (Thomas Elwin) and the Queen of the Night
(Anna Gorbachyova)
Images: Hana Zushi, Royal Academy of Music

Sir Jack Lyons Theatre

Tamino – Thomas Elwin
Papageno – Ross Ramgobin
Queen of the Night – Anna Gorbachyova
Monostatos – Ross Scanlon
Pamina – Sónia Grané
Speaker – Gareth John
Sarastro – David Shipley
Papagena – Jennifer France
Two Armoured Men – Stuart Jackson and Nicholas Crawley
Three Ladies – Sara Lian Owen, Katie Bray, Kathryn Walker
Three Boys – Lydia Stables, William Coulter, Caroline Loane
Three Slaves – Bradley Smith, Joseph Thompson, Dominic Kraemer



Stephen Barlow (director)
Yannis Thavoris (designs)
David Howe (lighting)
Victoria Newlyn (choreography)

Royal Academy Opera Chorus
Royal Academy Sinfonia
Jane Glover (conductor)

One of the principal joys of visiting Royal Academy Opera is to witness young singers at the beginning of their careers stretching themselves, taking on roles that elsewhere they would most likely have to wait quite some time to play, in a supportive yet professional environment. This Magic Flute was no exception. It is not the time for odious comparisons: one does not expect a Wunderlich or a Fischer-Dieskau here. But each of the principals in this ‘second cast’ – implying nothing concerning quality, merely reflecting opportunities afforded to two different casts – had something to offer, though every voice will doubtless develop in expected and unexpected ways in the years to come.






The 'Three Children' (Lydia Stables, William Coulter, Caroline Loane)



Thomas Elwin’s Tamino, for instance, offered in many respects a heartfelt response to what is surely Mozart’s most beautiful tenor role. It was a pity that he did not take greater advantage of the size of the small Sir Jack Lyons Theatre, for there was no need to force his voice as sometimes he did, but he is doubtless accustomed also to singing in larger halls and theatres. Ross Ramgobin made an engaging Papageno, the comic elevated over the very real pathos with which Mozart endows his bird-man, yet Ramgobin showed himself undoubtedly blessed with the gift of stage presence. Sónia Grané was in many respects the most impressive of the singers, though I sometimes felt she was miscast as Pamina, offering a more nineteenth-century emotive (Italianate?) approach than the purity that I at least associate with the role. David Shipley revealed an impressive bass as Sarastro, with Ross Scanlon a camp foil as Monastatos. Papagena has relatively little to sing, but still made an arresting, vivacious impression thanks to Jennifer France. And though she did not make every note, Anna Gorbachyova performed more than creditably as the Queen of the Night. The Three Ladies – why, in the programme, ‘Three Women’? – and most smaller parts were well taken, though the experiment in offering ‘Three Children’, two of them girls, does not seem worth repeating. Gender equality, I suppose, though in which case why not have a counter-tenor as one of the ‘Three Adults’? More seriously, even though one rarely gets to hear treble singing of the quality one expects from Vienna or Tölz – except, of course, when one is hearing Vienna or Tölz – the timbre is so crucial to our understanding and surely also to Mozart’s conception that Three Boys really must be sung by three boys. (Even venerable recordings from the past often fall down in enlisting women’s voices, but this seems an especially unnecessary compromise.) Tuning was often alarmingly awry.

Choral singing was impressive, not least during the second act, when the connections with other of Mozart’s Masonic works became especially apparent. Jane Glover led the Royal Academy Sinfonia with tempi to which it would be difficult to take exception, and if that sounds like faint praise, I should register gratitude in an age when turning Mozart into a freak-show has become more or less the tragic norm. There were a few rough edges to the orchestral playing, but only a few, and Mozart’s music, one should remember, is the most difficult of all to play well. Thank goodness, then, that there were no overt concessions on offer to the ‘authenticke’ brigade.



Papagena (Jennifer France) and Papageno (Ross Ramgobin)



Glover writes – diplomatically? – of having ‘engaged a vibrant production team led by Stephen Barlow, whose ingenious contemporary concept is of great insight, great detail and great fun’. Well, ‘vibrant’ is certainly one way of putting it, even at a stretch ‘ingenious’. However, I am afraid for me, though not, it would seem for much of the chortling – when it was not inappropriately applauding – audience, it sells The Magic Flute terribly short. We find ourselves immersed in a sketch of 1980s - or is it 1970s? - popular culture. Opening in a nightclub, Tamino escapes some form of at least sexual molestation – that is the non-existent monster – and progresses (?) to join a cult that suggests Scientology, or perhaps the Mormons. Were this intended as a critique of Enlightenment instrumental reason, Adorno and Horkheimer to hand, it might have been fascinating. But no, it merely seems to bespeak an inability to take this most extraordinary of operas remotely seriously. The trials Tamino and Pamina must undergo seem merely to entail walking into a sauna and out of a steam room; towels are to hand. Everything is a bit, or rather far too much, of a joke, and the celebratory mass wedding at the end is not undercut: are we supposed to consider initiation into a cult a good thing? Even what might have been a nice touch in having the Queen of the Night reveal herself, not unlike a character from Dallas, as the curtain drops, fails in that it is difficult, given what has gone before, to know what to make of it: less undercutting, more a silly final surprise. Goodness knows why she is first revealed to us as editor of a celebrity magazine. Instead of a flute we have a ghettoblaster – around which the ‘Three Children’ crowd during the Overture – and instead of Papageno’s pipes a mini-electronic-keyboard. Pamina seems to be auditioning for a role as Bonnie Langford, whilst Papageno is a photographer, presumably for the magazine. Monostatos and company are security guards, who occasionally like to glance at a copy of Playboy. On Barlow’s terms, however, Yannis Thavoris’s designs are accomplished; he certainly has to a tee the ghastly white short-sleeved shirt look beloved of creepy American (pseudo-)religious organisations. What a pity, then, that Barlow gives the impression of never having listened to Mozart’s score; its unearthly beauty, its unutterable dignity, should suggest to him something quite different from what he inflicts upon it. I find it difficult to imagine that that great Mozartian, Sir Colin Davis, International Chair of Conducting and Orchestral Studies, would have thought much of what we saw.

Don Giovanni, Opera Holland Park, 6 July 2010

Don Giovanni – Nicholas Garrett
Commendatore – Simon Wilding
Donna Anna – Ana James
Donna Elvira – Laura Mitchell
Don Ottavio – Thomas Walker
Leporello – Matthew Hargreaves
Zerlina – Claire Wild
Masetto – Robert Winslade Anderson

Stephen Barlow (director)
Yannis Thavoris (designs)
Colin Grenfell (lighting)
Sam Spencer-Lane (choreography)

Opera Holland Park Chorus
City of London Sinfonia
Robert Dean (conductor)

Opera Holland Park’s new production of Don Giovanni marks a definite step up from its Fidelio, at least as presently conducted. (The production is excellent.) I do not think I had heard Robert Dean before, but he and the City of London Sinfonia presented an eminently creditable account of the score: not the last word in exploring its unfathomable depths, but mercifully free of the doctrinaire point-making that mars so many present-day performances. By and large, Mozart was allowed to speak for himself and benefited from doing so. Tempi were sensible; if the overture had sounded the odd alarm bell (for another reason, see below), then the music soon settled down. Woodwind solos were a particular joy, but the strings too appeared to be enjoying a new lease of life following their leaden direction the previous night. There were a few occasions when I missed greater heft, but surprisingly few, given the extraordinary nature of Mozart’s proto-Romanticism and the relatively small forces. Ornamentation can often irritate, but here, whether in the orchestra or from the soloists, it was tastefully, interestingly, yet not at all shyly accomplished. Eighteenth-century style is quite a different thing from what those who most loudly trumpet their supposed adherence would have you imagine. There was, however, a questionably prominent harpsichord: both loud and strangely ‘present’ in sound. Surely it was amplified? It seemed to me an interesting idea, though hardly necessary, to employ it during the Handel parody of Elvira’s ‘Ah, fuggi il traditor’, but its appearances became tiresomely frequent and increasingly inappropriate, culminating in unmerited – and out of sync – clattering during the Stone Guest scene. Choral singing impressed.

Stephen Barlow’s relocation to the High Victorian era worked well. As ever with such things, there are words that jar: the work is not in any real sense ‘about’ Seville, but why are it and Spain mentioned so much? That may not matter much, but it does more than in an abstracted, mythologised setting, in which specificity does not arise. If anything, the relocation might have benefited from greater concentration upon its new specificity: the weird, behind-closed-doors world of much Victorian sexuality might fruitfully have been explored. The costumes and sets were beautifully done, however, for which plaudits should be handed to Yannis Thavoris. And the focal, Dorian Gray-like narcissism – several wall portraits and all – of Don Giovanni was convincing to a degree. An especially effective idea was to have the Commendatore step forward from one of those portraits, an elderly version of the young libertine. Giovanni’s defiance acquires another layer of understanding when seen as rejecting the fate of growing old (relatively) gracefully. Some other touches convinced more than others. The comely bell boy – subsequently seen in the chorus of damnation – who thought it worth a play for the hero’s affections during his serenade amused, though surely not quite so much as the excessive guffawing from some well-oiled members of the audience might have suggested. However, the portrayal of Zerlina as a Plain Jane – who only at the end removes her spectacles and lets her hair down, to initiate sex with Masetto – is quite at odds both with libretto and, more importantly, Mozart’s music. A peasant girl who should exude natural fertility seemed more like a failed candidate for IVF. No wonder that Claire Wild seemed uncertain what tone to adopt for her music.

Her Masetto was the weakest link in the cast: strong on stage presence but sadly lacking in voice. Laura Mitchell was not dissimilar, though her lopsided portrayal, neurotic to the exclusion of the erotic, may possibly have been a product of directorial line. Simon Wilding was a powerful Commendatore, whilst Ana James sang beautifully as her almost-namesake. The production, however, seemed a little uncertain what to do with her. (I remain wedded to the post-ETA Hoffmann idea of Donna Anna as truly desiring Don Giovanni, but there are other possibilities.) Don Ottavio is, of course, the very definition of the thankless role, but Thomas Walker impressed with his style and musicality. Matthew Hargreaves was suffering from some ailment, but nevertheless caught attention as a fine Leporello, alert to the quicksilver shifts demanded and commendably attentive to the finer points of the libretto. Nicholas Garrett proved a splendid Giovanni, handsome of tone as well as aspect, suave, cruel, and yet credibly heroic at the last. This, then, was a Don Giovanni of which Opera Holland Park can justly be proud.

A few words, however, concerning the audience: whilst there was hilarity to be had during the overture from the sight of a former Conservative Cabinet minister, no Chelsea strip in sight, and his young companion engaging in a slanging match with the couple seated in front, there are perhaps better ways to appreciate Mozart’s shift of tempo – here a little abrupt, as it happened – than by having an ex-politician shout ‘Shut up!’ and his guest offer a one-finger salute at the row in front. For whatever reason, the happy couple rushed away the moment the final chord was heard. For connoisseurs of Conservative politics of a slightly earlier vintage – perhaps they exist – Lord Lawson of Blaby was also in attendance.