A Midsummer Night's Dream, Deutsche Oper, 29 January 2020

Images: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM von Benjamin Britten, Regie: Ted Huffman, Premiere am 26.1.2020, Deutsche Oper Berlin, copyright: Bettina Stöß

Oberon – James Hall

Tytania – Siobhan Stagg

Puck – Jami Reid-Quarrell

Theseus – Padraic Rowan

Hippolyta – Davia Bouley

Lysander – Gideon Poppe

Demetrius – Samuel Dale Johnson

Hermia – Karis Tucker

Helena – Jeanine De Bique

Bottom – James Platt

Quince – Timothy Newton

Flute – Michael Kim

Snug – Patrick Guetti

Snout – Matthew Peña

Starveling – Matthew Cossack

Cobweb – Markus Kinch

Peaseblossom – Lora Violetta Haberstock

Mustardseed – Selina Isi

Moth – Chiara Annabelle Feldmann

Ted Huffman (director)

Marsha Ginsberg (set designs)

Annemarie Woods (costumes)

DM Wood (lighting)

Sam Pinkleton (choreography)

Ran Arthur Braun (Puck’s choreography)

Sebastian Hanusa (dramaturgy)

Neil Barry Moss (Spielleitung)

Children’s Choir of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin (chorus director: Christian Lindhorst)

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Donald Runnicles (conductor)

For my final review – unless, which seems unlikely, I manage to write up this evening’s concert before midnight – written as a European citizen, it is perhaps fitting to be writing of an English opera, performed by a German company, conducted by a Scotsman. Given the circumstances, I hope I shall be forgiven if it does not find me at my most inspired, should such a condition even exist. Hand on heart, Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is not an opera I can bring myself to care for greatly, although – perhaps there is a lesson, or at least an irony, here too – the Berlin audience reacted enthusiastically.

Shakespeare is a dramatist whom composers, at least opera composers, confront at their peril. However clichéd it may be to say this, there is so much music in his verse that setting it can seem superfluous. This is not a rule; there are no such rules. However, I cannot see, or rather hear, what is gained in this case, other than an undeniable creepiness to score and elements of the dramaturgy, which therefore does not seem an unreasonable place for a performance to take as its point of departure. In that, as in everything else, Donald Runnicles’s leadership of the excellent Deutsche Oper Orchestra and Children’s Choir and a fine group of soloists proved just the ticket. Rarely if ever have I heard those recurring slithering glissandi and the weird balances of instrumentation and of instrumentation-vis-à-vis-harmony sound quite so ambiguous, even callous in their indifference to the affairs of mere mortals. This was fairyland music properly unsentimentalised. Moreover, Runnicles communicated the constructivist aspects of Britten’s writing more powerfully than any conductor I can recall. Unsurprisingly, the closer it sounded to The Turn of the Screw, the more interesting the score became. There is only so much anyone can do about the general thinness of writing and a tendency, constructivism notwithstanding, towards diffuse formlessness; insofar as anyone can, Runnicles certainly did. Colour, however, came first and foremost. Those silvery slivers of orchestral moonlight cast, in a fine dramatic paradox, as much shadow as anything else.

The children’s choir had evidently been very well prepared by Christian Lindhorst. Indeed, I had to remind myself afterwards that most of its members would have been singing in a foreign language. A mixed cast included many Anglophone singers, but those who were not, at least in terms of mother tongue, could again hardly be distinguished from those who were. (Singing and musical performance more generally are, of course, international businesses in which British artists have been enabled to flourish by membership of the European Union; goodness knows what will happen next year.) It seems invidious to single out particular performances when all impressed and contributed to a whole that was unquestionably greater than the sum of its parts. I shall limit myself to noting vocal portrayals that, for whatever reason, particularly caught my ear. From James Hall came a warm yet, in the best way, piercing Oberon, channelling Alfred Deller’s memory through something more than imitation; he was well matched by Siobhan Stagg’s spirited, knowing (at least until she was not!) Tytania. Gideon Poppe and Samuel Dale Johnson offered an excellent rutting pair of impetuous youths, well matched and contrasting with their lovers, Karis Tucker and Jeanine De Bique. James Platt’s bluffly comic Bottom led a characterful troupe of rustics.

Ted Huffman’s production gave the impression of good ideas that might fruitfully have been taken further, while shining a clear path through the basic narrative. No one would have stood in any doubt as to who was who, nor as to what was taking place: more, after all, than can often be said in opera staging. I presume the mid-twentieth-century setting – 1940s? – was intended to suggest the period of writing or at least Britten’s life in some respect. It was not, however, immediately clear why we should not then have been closer to 1960. Military uniforms and a suggestion – or was that just me? – of a battlefield as all slept in the forest may have alluded to wartime; if so, without something more, I was rather at a loss as to why and with what consequences. In a programme interview, Huffman referred to Oberon and Tytania fighting over the Indian boy as being akin to the status of Britten and Peter Pears as a childless couple. Once more, if so, nothing more was made of it – and I should hardly have thought of that without reading. Lines delivered in somewhat exaggerated fashion by Jami Reid-Quarrell, Puck was likewise intended, I learned, to represent an outsider. Fair enough, although surely that comes with the territory. There was, however, no doubting Reid-Quarrell’s agility, nor the skill of Ran Arthur Braun’s choreography for him. Quite why Theseus, in a fine vocal and stage display by Padraic Rowan, was drunk, I am afraid I have no idea, but the use of giant puppets for Pyramus and Thisby was charming.

What did I miss? Christopher Alden’s superlative ENO production, far and away the best I have seen, went for the pederastic jugular. Would that more would grasp that thorny nettle with such dramatic verve – be it in this or any other Britten opera. Perhaps, though, I was missing the point. With that, I should probably sign off. See you on the other side, lost in a far darker wood than this, with blue passports, yet nothing in the way of fairyland magic and no ‘break of day’ for at least a couple of decades. If we are lucky.

Philip Venables, 4.48 Psychosis, Royal Opera, 24 April 2018

Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith

Images: ROH/Stephen Cummiskey

Gwen – Gweneth-Ann Rand

Jen – Lucy Hall

Suzy – Susanna Hurrell

Clare – Samantha Price

Emily – Rachael Lloyd

Lucy – Lucy Schaufer

Ted Huffman (director)

Hannah Clark (designs)

D.M. Wood (lighting)

Pierre Martin (video)

Sound Intermedia (sound design)

Sarah Fahie, Rc-Annie (movement)

CHROMA

Richard Baker (conductor)

Philip Venables’s 4.48 Psychosis, based on Sarah Kane’s final play, seems to have received a largely rapturous reception, at least from opera critics, on its first outing in 2016. I missed it then, so was very curious to catch it on its revival: one of the Royal Opera’s ventures outside Covent Garden – perhaps aptly, in a theatre, the Hammersmith Lyric, known for its spoken theatre rather than for opera. I seem to be somewhat out on a limb here – only somewhat, since my impressions are far from uniformly negative – but I am afraid I found myself, on the basis of a first encounter, more troubled by doubts than some. (I should certainly not put it stronger than that.) It is genuinely not my intent to find fault for the sake of it; I suspect, moreover, that much may more be a matter of my own aesthetic preconceptions and preoccupations. However, given so enthusiastic a reception, there is perhaps room also for a moderately dissenting voice; it is not as if anyone won over is going to have his or her mind changed by someone who failed to ‘get it’.

Effort has certainly been extended, by composer, production team, and performers alike, in transforming this enigmatic, fragmentary play into an opera. As is often, although far from always the case, that has involved an element of simplification. We have characters and a more concrete setting, the latter still at a relative level of abstraction and/or malleability. The same could be said of the former, barring the protagonist, Gwen, and her psychiatrist (one presumes), Lucy, and even they can come together in the mass of five voices so as to present something beyond, or perhaps before, mere individuality. The use of ensemble often works well, breaking down or not, as the case may be – not unlike what we see on stage. A central narrative is much clearer: if, in the play, we know where everything is heading, even without knowing that that was precisely where Kane’s life was heading, temporal sequence is perhaps clearer, or at least less fragmentary, which may or may not be the same thing.

There is genuine musico-theatrical imagination, arguably innovation, too. Use of titles to present unspoken or unsung thoughts and words is not unknown, often playing, as here, with mismatch between what we see and what we hear. Here, however, it often seems an especially apt response. If an oft-posed – too often, perhaps – question in opera, is ‘Why are they singing?’ then here one might ask, ‘Why are they not singing?’ Two percussionists in the ‘pit’ – actually above the stage, adding, alongside some of the multifarious musical styles employed, to something of a nightclub feel – correspond syllabically with each other, ‘their’ or rather the ‘characters’’ words ‘typed’ out below. Likewise the psychiatric test of counting down in sevens makes its near-deadly appearance on that wall of further action between instrumentalists and stage. There was certainly no gainsaying the excellence of the musical performances either. Gweneth-Ann Rand and Lucy Schaufer stood perhaps as first among equals, but this was a vocal ensemble to be reckoned with by any standards. Likewise the players of CHROMA under Richard Baker’s clearly expert direction proved a match for any new music ensemble. Without knowing the work at all, there seemed little doubt that we were hearing what we should, in duly incisive performances.

And yet, I had a nagging suspicion, sometimes more than that, that it was performative and production excellence that were pulling this together in the direction it wanted – or we wanted it – to go. Was there actually that much more to the mélange of sections of music, often perhaps on the verge of noise – a meaningful distinction or not? – here? After all, a confused barrage of sounds may perhaps lend itself a little too readily to depiction of or engagement in psychosis. What of the clichés of Bach quotation and a modernised – post-modernised? – early music ‘lament’? Perhaps, though, that is the point. I readily acknowledge that it might be. Is not treating operatic music simply ‘as music’ almost always to miss the point? As a scholar of Wagner and opera more generally, I can hardly deny that. Likewise to make comparisons to original source material; again, as a scholar and indeed devotee of… Perhaps, then, it was more of a matter of my not necessarily having ‘liked’ the often popular musical styles, whether taped (presumably) or live. Again, that may well be the, or at least a, point. It is hardly much of a criticism to say ‘I did not like that.’

Even, at a more fundamental level, my doubt as to how much of an opera this was, interest in the voice, whether ‘intrinsic’ or ‘dramatic’, not always immediately apparent, might well be answered with many historical and contemporary examples of that too being the point. I could not help but think of Stravinsky’s typically artful twin avowal and disavowal of participation in such debates: ‘The Rake’s Progress seemed to have been created for journalistic debates concerning: a) the historical validity of the approach; and, b) the question whether I am guilty of imitation and pastiche. If the Rake contains imitations, however – of Mozart, as has been said – I will gladly allow the charge (given the breadth of the Aristotelian word), if I may thereby release people from the argument and bring them to the music.’ Was I involved in the drama, wherever that lay? Yes. If so, does it matter what my ‘ideas’ of opera might be? Probably not. After all, there is, or at least was, a long operatic tradition, both non-Wagnerian and non-Stravinskian, in which ‘the work’ takes less than centre-stage, in which the performative, contingent element is stronger. Perhaps Venables’s opera, then, lies closer to Rossini and Donizetti than to those works with which I stand more at home, and therein lies my ‘problem’; perhaps that problem is mine, and mine alone.

My next London opera visit will be to hear George Benjamin’s new work, also from the Royal Opera. Who knows what that will hold? I suspect, however, based upon his first two operas, that it will prove more to my taste, perhaps to my understanding too.

Luke Styles, Macbeth, Royal Opera, 9 September 2015

Linbury Studio Theatre

Duncan, Second Murderer – John Mackenzie-Lavansch
Malcolm – Michael Wallace
Sergeant, First Murderer – David Shaw
Lennox, Third Murderer – James Geer
Ross – Benjamin Cahn
Macbeth – Ed Ballard
Banquo – Alessandro Fisher
Lady Macbeth – Aidan Coburn
Macduff – Richard Bignall
Fleance – Luke Saint
Lady Macduff, Porter – Andrew Davies
Macduff’s Son – Xavier Murtagh

 

Ted Huffman (director and librettist)
Kitty Callister (designs)
David Manion (lighting)


London Philharmonic Orchestra
Jeremy Bines (conductor)

 

I applauded the Royal Opera House – and still do – for presenting a new work as the first piece in its new season. It was not its first performance; that had been given at Glyndebourne. But that is beside the point. A commitment to contemporary opera has been growing at Covent Garden, and that is in every respect an excellent thing. An inevitable consequence of that, despite the safeguards of workshops and so on, is that not all the works presented will turn out to be imperishable, or even perishable, masterpieces. There is no problem with that; frankly, much of the bewildering operatic repertoire is of dubious æsthetic quality in any case.

 

If that sounds like a build-up to disappointment in this particular case, then I am afraid it is. There is no need to repeat the difficulties or indeed the opportunities concerning the transformation of Shakespeare into opera. Especially to an Anglophone audience, familiarity with the words as well as the story – Ted Huffman uses Shakespeare’s words, albeit ‘cut, occasionally re-ordered, and, in a few cases, … reappropriated from other characters – enables re-adaptation and the idea of readaptation to take a place closer to centre stage than might otherwise be the case, although there is no particular sense of this as a meta-opera. What we have is a concentration upon politics; the witches are nowhere to be seen. (One particularly celebrated composer has already treated them in ludicrous fashion; they may well be better off left alone.) And we have a surprising, intriguing foreshortening, ending with Macbeth’s coming to power, in almost Poppea-like triumph, although an ‘evening-length’ version of this seventy-five minute, single-act work is envisaged by composer and librettist. As it stands, there is ironic power in hearing what was Malcolm’s closing speech – to what I assume is intentionally banal music - in the voice of a victorious Macbeth, and I think there would be even if one did not know of the transformation. It seems odd, in an opera, to eschew the possibilities afforded by soliloquy, but there might well be an imperative to alienate, so there is no need to condemn on principle.

 

Alas, what has emerged proves – with the usual caveats concerning a single performance – more dull than anything else. This is not a disaster, during the performance of which one simply feels embarrassed. However, the lack of musical characterisation, vocal interest, probing of any of the possibilities an all-male cast might have offered, all seem a missed opportunities, given the richness of the source. The musical language often sounds close, in a generalised sense, to Britten, but without – well, you can complete the rest from those three lacking qualities alone. Differentiation of soundworld between internal reflection and external military – two percussionists certainly make their mark – is for me perhaps the strongest feature of the score.

 

Lady Macbeth, a character with, to put it mildly, operatic potential, is played by a tenor, but that seems to be it in gender terms. ‘Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,’ might have seemed a fruitful line to pursue sung by a man, but it is not present. She more or less disappears from dramatic view, and even before she does gives little impression of what it might be that has elevated her into the dramatic pantheon. Macbeth fares a little better, but more simply from his presence, from Shakespeare, and, in this case, from a highly engaging performance from Ed Ballard (real stage presence, both physically and musically!) than from the work itself.

 

Indeed, I had no problem with any elements of the performance. The cast performed creditably; if feats of characterisation were not achieved, that is hardly the singers’ fault. This remained in many ways an excellent opportunity, well taken, for members of the Glyndebourne Chorus and its Jerwood Young Artists Programme. I am sure we shall hear more from a good number of them. The LPO chamber ensemble under Jeremy Bines sounded committed and incisive throughout, as if this actually were The Rape of Lucretia. Moreover, Huffman’s production, in modern army dress, seemed well thought through and executed and suggested its own parallels with recent and contemporary politics and warfare.

 

Who knows? In the highly unlikely event that anyone reads this in a century’s time, mine might be one of those ridiculous views cited in descriptions of ‘initial audience failure for subsequently acclaimed masterpieces’. In a way, I hope it is, or at least, so as not to be too conceited, that a view like mine is, since I should much rather we have another masterpiece than not. Rightly or wrongly, I cannot imagine what, at least from this first version, might lead to such a transformation in judgement.

 

Giasone, English Touring Opera, 4 October 2013

 

(sung in English, as Jason)

Image: Richard Hubert Smith
 

Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music

Giasone – Clint van der Linde

Medea – Hannah Pedley
Isifile – Catrine Kirkman
Ercole – Andrew Slater
Apollo/Demo – Peter Aisher
Deifa – Michal Czerniawski
Egeo – John-Colyn Gyeantey
Oreste – Piotr Lempa

Ted Huffman (director)

Samal Blak (designs)
Ace McCarron (lighting)

Old Street Band

Joseph McHardy (conductor)

 

Once again, one can only applaud English Touring Opera’s sense of adventure – and commitment. Its autumn season comprises three Venetian operas: L’incoronazione di Poppea, Giasone, and Agrippina, all in translation. Francesco Cavalli’s Giasone, or Jason, offered perhaps the most enticing prospect: an opera whose historical importance can hardly be gainsaid, and yet which we rarely have chance to hear. Giasone came more or less in the middle of the astonishing period from 1639 to 1666, in which Cavalli composed no fewer than forty operas. This drama musicale to a libretto by the Florentine poet, Giacinto Andrea Cicognini, their only such collaboration, was the tenth and the most popular of Cavalli’s stage works, indeed the most frequently performed of all seventeenth-century operas. Ellen Rosand’s New Grove entry lists, following the first, 1649 carnival performance at Venice’s Teatro San Cassione, possible performances in Milan as soon as 1649 and 1650 and in Lucca in 1650; moreover, published libretti attest to revivals, as Rosand’s list continues, in 1650 (Florence), 1651 (Bologna), 1652 (Florence), 1655 (Piacenza), 1658 (Vicenza), 1659 (Ferrara and Viterbo), 1660 (Milan and Velletri), 1661 (Naples), 1663 (Perugia), 1665 (Ancona), 1666 (Brescia), 1667 (Naples), 1671 (Rome, as Il novello Giasone, edited by Stradella), 1672 (Naples), 1673 (Bologna), 1676 (Rome, again as Il novello Giasone), 1678 (Reggio), 1685 (Genoa, as Il trionfo d’Amor delle vendette) and 1690 (Brescia, as Medea in Colco). Given that the history of seventeenth-century opera is often far more the history of libretti than music, a surprisingly large number of those performances have bequeathed scores to us. It may even have reached Vienna, and though we know nothing of this particular opera having reached English shores, a score of Cavalli’s Erismena in English translation suggests some degree of knowledge of the Venetian master’s œuvre. Such, at any rate, was the fame of Giasone, that it also became a rare example of an opera inspiring a play rather than the other way around.

 

ETO’s production is severely cut, lasting just over two hours (including an interval), offering slightly less than half of the work, if one judges by the duration (3 hours, 55 minutes) of the recording by René Jacobs (so far as I am aware the only such recording). There were times when I could not help but wonder how much we might have benefited from hearing more, not simply in musical terms, but also in terms of progression of the plot and development of characters. By the same token, however, dramatic continuity was for the most part admirably maintained; one experienced far more than a mere ‘taste’. We should also do well to remind ourselves that the concept of the musical work with respect to the seventeenth century is unstable and problematical. We are not dealing with Tristan und Isolde here. One loses something in translation, too, no doubt, but Ronald Eyre’s version proves admirable: rich in vocabulary, as Anthony Hose’s programme appreciation noted, and in wit.

 

Such would go for nothing, of course, without performances to match. I cannot deny my preference for modern instruments. However, if I may try to leave that upon one side, not least in light of the sad impossibility of today hearing seventeenth-century-repertoire so performed, the Old Street Band offered a generally spirited account, intermittent sourness in the strings notwithstanding. Continuo playing was for the most part colourful without veering into exhibitionism, Joseph McHardy’s direction of ensemble from the harpsichord well-paced and alert both to shifts and continuity in register – that ever-fascinating relationship between aria, recitative, and what comes in between. As Raymond Leppard once put it, Cavalli, ‘of all his contemporaries, never lost sight of the early ideals of recitative as a form of intensely heightened speech which, more than the aria, formed the basis for operatic effectiveness. And at his best, although in a different way from Monteverdi, his arias and ariosos grow out of and merge into the recitative-like jewels set in a crown, but not separate from it.’ And in Rosand’s words, this time in the programme, the arias of Giasone, ‘are specifically justified by the dramatic circumstances: rather than undermining verisimilitude, they promote it.’ Both of those observations fitted very well with my experience in the theatre, no mean feat.

 

The singers must also take a great deal of credit for that. Clint van der Linde pulled off very well the tricky task of portraying a compromised, even at times weak, character without vocal compromise or weakness. Indeed, his countertenor Giasone offered a fascinating blend of vocal strength and character fragility. Hannah Pedley and Catrine Kirkman proved just as successful as his twin loves, Medea and Isifile: credible characters of flesh and blood, emotionally as well as dramatically convincing. The travesty role – always popular in Venetian opera of this time – of Delfa offered another opportunity for a countertenor to shine, in this case Michal Czerniawski. Piotr Lempa displayed to good effect his deep bass as Oreste, though some of his vowels went a little awry. Peter Aisher, a Royal College of Music student, was a late replacement for an ailing Stuart Haycock as Apollo and Demo; he took a little time to get into his stride, the Prologue being somewhat barked, but as time went on, showed considerable musical and theatrical ability.

 

Ted Huffman’s production mostly lets the action speak for itself. I was not quite convinced by the mishmash of styles in terms of designs, whilst appreciating his aim ‘to create a world that is neither classical nor contemporary, but rater an invented world, constructed from recognisable historical elements’. Abstraction might have worked better in that case, for inevitably one begins to wonder why someone is dressed in clothes of a certain period and someone else in those of another. Yet such matters do not really distract, and the conversion of Samal Blak’s set for the first act into that for the second proves both economical and dramatically effective. The decay of Lemnos during the absence of the ‘hero’ and the waiting of his wife is instantly, powerfully conveyed. Stage direction is for the most part keenly observed, the balance between comedy and darker emotion well handled.  Documentation is excellent too, the programme offering a general essay by Guy Dammann, as well as individual pieces on the three operas of the season.

 

ETO’s autumn tour takes in London, Rochester, Snape, Malvern, Crediton, Bath, Harrogate, Durham, Newcastle, Buxton, Sheffield, Warwick, Cambridge, and Exeter. Click here for details.
 

The Lighthouse, English Touring Opera, 11 October 2012

Linbury Studio Theatre

Sandy – Adam Tunnicliffe

Blazes – Nicholas Merryweather
Arthur – Richard Mosley-Evans 

Ted Huffman (director)

Neil Irish (designs)
Guy Hoare (lighting)
Oliver Townsend (costumes)

Aurora Orchestra
Richard Baker (conductor)

 

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s chamber opera, The Lighthouse, received a splendid performance from English Touring Opera, just as Viktor Ullmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis did last week. At little more than an hour and a half, including an interval, this proved a far more satisfactory dramatic experience than the Royal Opera’s Götterdammerung on the main Covent Garden stage. (To be fair, that would not be difficult, and ETO’s performance was far better than merely preferable.)

 

The opera has the gripping quality of a superior detective – and ghost – story. Its Prologue sets up the situation as three naval officers answer questions concerning the disappearance of three lighthouse keepers, questions posed by a solo horn. As time goes on, their interrogation metamorphoses into something approaching reconstruction, the point we reach in the opera proper, in which the singers who have played the officers turn to play the lighthouse keepers – and, at the end, return to the guise of the officers, who may or may not bear guilt. Davies wrote the libretto as well as the score, composed for an expanded Fires of London ensemble, out-of-tune piano, banjo, and flexatone included.

 

Misunderstandings and the weird ways in which makes sense out of disparate, perhaps even mutually exclusive, ‘truths’ are finely portrayed musically and verbally as well as scenically. Words from the three characters come together to present something that may or may not be more or less truthful than what it is they think they are saying individually: a verbal magic square perhaps? Webern’s shadow is cast longer and more widely than one might expect. The instability of the three men’s relationship – they have been together for a good few months now – is menacingly conveyed, though not without affection either. Arthur is a different matter, or at least he seems to be, but there is certainly at least a hint of homoeroticism, especially in Ted Huffman’s excellent production, between Sandy and Blazes. Parody is present, of course, most evidently in the reimagination of the ballads – a street variety from Blazes and Sandy’s sickly drawing-room version – and the hymn tunes. (Arthur is clearly the kind of Protestant fundamentalist who has long drawn Davies’s ire.) The rhythm of the closing automation – ‘The lighthouse is now automatic,’ we hear at the end of the Prologue – is as stubbornly memorable as the New York traffic-jam sounds at the beginning of Stravinsky’s Agon, another work owing a great debt and repaying it handsomely, to the jewels of Webern. All of the way home and for some time afterwards I found it impossible to rid my head of its repetitions.

 

Both Huffman’s staging and Richard Baker’s conducting are excellent, equal in precision; so, unsurprisingly, is the expert witness of the Aurora Orchestra, as fine an ensemble of young soloists as one is likely to encounter. The simple set, faithful to the work, provides a suitably claustrophobic backdrop and indeed participant – who are the ghosts and where are they are? In the characters and/or our minds, or are they something more? – for the keenly directed drama to unfold. Guy Hoare’s lighting did its job very well indeed, especially when it came to showing the automated signals in the deserted, desolate house. Tenor Adam Tunnicliffe offered a sensitively sung performance of Sandy, both contrasting and blending well with baritone Nicholas Merryweather as Blazes. Richard Mosley-Evans presented a powerful portrayal of Arthur, alive to his daemons, and to the illusory and real strengths and weaknesses arising therefrom.

 

It is not merely that there was no weak length in the cast; these were performances that would have graced any stage. The excellent news is that they will grace a good few more stages, for after the Linbury performances, this production will be seen in Cambridge, Exeter, Harrogate, Bath, and Aldeburgh. For further details from ETO’s website, click here.