Hever Castle Theatre, Thursday 8 August 2019

One of the benefits of the relative lack of regular G&S these days is that a sudden encounter can reawaken not only old memories but also new delights in the splendid impact of the works when performed with musical integrity as well as real wit. Charles Court Opera gives us both, updating the setting and going all out for comedic effect while never undermining Gilbert’s craft or the genuine musical qualities of Sullivan’s score.

Orchestration was never one of Sullivan’s strengths so having the evening accompanied by David Eaton from the keyboard was perfectly acceptable, particularly when it allowed voices to carry so well. There is no chorus but Alys Roberts and Meriel Cummingham more than made up for this as two very knowing professional bridesmaids, with Amy J Payne’s frighteningly efficient Dame Hannah supporting them.

Joanna Marie Skillett has the vocal charms for Rose Maybud, torn between Matthew Kellett’s gently effective Robin and Philip Lee’s extrovert Dick Dauntless – a sailor very obviously related to Dick Deadeye. At the heart of the comedy lie Despard Murgatroyd and Mad Margaret and I can’t recall having seen them better that last night with Simon Butteriss and Catrine Kirkman. Simon Butteriss was also doubling Roderick, and it was a pity that the production meant that he had to sing The Ghosts High Noon as a disembodied head peering through the back wall. That he did so well was a tribute to his unfailing musicianship. But as Despard (reformed) he was brilliant and an absolute foil for Catrine Kirkman’s Margaret. There was a desperate intensity about her which was captivating and intensely funny – think Joyce Grenfell on acid. Whether verging on insanity or under the control of Basingstoke it was a masterpiece of comic acting.

Simon Masterton-Smith was Adam but also provided all the essential bass-lines where required.

The weather smiled on us – not always the case at Hever – as did the whole evening. The theatre is not easy to get to but on occasions like this it is worth every inch of the narrow roads.

Garsington Opera at Wormsley

The Happy Princess by Paul Fincham and Jessica Duchen, loosely based on an Oscar Wilde story, is a mini-masterpiece. In the directorial hands of the very talented Karen Gillingham and the Garsington Opera Youth Company it is a fine hour of opera by any standards, anywhere. I hope very much that this piece is soon published and licensed so that other youth groups elsewhere can have access to it.

Of course the smallest children (from nearby Ibstone CE School)  were show stealers as the city birds, flapping their wings and singing with terrific concentration and clarity, skilfully supported by conductor Jonathon Swinard,  but there is much more to this show than cuteness.

The thrust of the story is that pair of swallows (Owain Boyd-Leslie and Maia Greaves, both very young and very tuneful) undertake three errands for the statue princess (Lara Marie Muller – lots of gravitas and a fine voice). That takes us to some big ensemble scenes: sweatshop workers, a school and a group of refugees. Duchen is a fine story teller.

The singing is, from the very first note, incisive, dynamically well controlled and set against accomplished movement. And it all looks very natural – rather than rehearsed and that makes it all feel very professional and interestingly edgy.

Five stars too, if I were awarding them, for Fincham’s score which uses an eight-piece orchestra. It is highly atmospheric, nicely paced and varied, providing lots of opportunities for small solos along with some string choral numbers including harmony. I loved, for instance, the mysterious minor for the repeated trio between the Princess and the swallows with a rising scale motif – simple but very effective. It’s all unashamedly melodious too.

I suppose Offenbach is melodious too but, sadly, A Fool’s Paradise is definitely not his best work. Garsington Opera Adult Company (directed by Gillingham) had clearly gained a great deal from working on it but this 25 minute staged medley with narrated links never achieves lift off although the professional baritone, Robert Gildon, does his best to cut through the pedestrian woodenness.

It is a mistake to separate the adult and youth companies. In the recent past Garsington has commissioned works (Road Rage 2013 and Silver Birch, 2017 for example) in which the adults and young people work together as a single community and that works much better. It means that everyone can learn from and complement everyone else so that standards spiral upwards.

Susan Elkin

Opera Holland Park, July 2019

Education is a progressive realisation of our own ignorance, as Einstein said. The same applies to classical music and especially opera. The more you hear and see the more you discover. Francesco Cilea’s L’arlesiana (1897) was completely new to me but this production won’t be the end of my relationship with it because it is a fine piece.

Federico, (Samuel Sakker) who lives with his mother and younger brother on a Provencal farm, is besotted with an “unsuitable” woman he has met in the nearby city of Arles. It would be more sensible for him to marry and settle down with the very suitable Vivetta (Fflur Wyn) a local girl but of course this is opera and things don’t ultimately go right for any of them. L’arlesiana herself dominates the plot but never appears except, in this production, in a dream sequence.

One of the best things about this work is the quality of the dramatic orchestration: brooding basses to connote anger, oboe melody for calm sublimity, pianissimo upper strings for sadness and despair, for example.  And there’s a magnificent Verdi-esque ending to Act One to accompany Sakker’s high level anguish number as he sees the letters which confirm L’arlesiana’s infidelity. The music is in good hands with City of London Sinfonia under Dane Lam.

Sakker is outstanding in the central role, his rich tenor voice laying bare every emotion. Yvonne Howard finds lots of mezzo warmth and despair in Rosa, Federico’s anxious mother. Keel Watson, who has a very attractive gravelly bass voice, stomps about convincingly as family friend Baldassare and, once she gets going there’s delightful, soaring soprano work from Wyn as the hapless Vivetta.

One of Opera Holland Park’s (many) great strengths is its fine chorus work. It’s a huge, awkwardly shaped playing area but the  massed voices of a large ensemble combine excellent crowd acting with a lovely vocal sound and the off-stage interjections are eerily atmospheric.

Susan Elkin

Royal Albert Hall, 29 July 2019

I first encountered Haydn’s Creation, never mind how many years ago, at school. A group of us were then selected to play and sing in a London Schools performance under David Willcocks at Caxton Hall. I played second violin and it was one of those life changing, never to be forgotten experiences. I’ve sung it many times since, too.  I was, therefore, thrilled to see and hear the 200-strong 2019 Proms Youth Choir  making a terrific job of it. I know, from experience, that whatever these young people go on to do in the future, this performance, and the rehearsals for it, will have changed them for ever. And how wonderful to hear a choir with such an enormous body of fine tenors and basses.

Conducting from the harpsichord, Omer Meir Wellber gave us a sensitive Introduction – effectively an atmospheric overture and Haydn was, of course, very good at atmosphere – before the warm magic of Christoper Pohl’s voice filtered in with Im Anfange schuf. It was an inspired idea to have the choir sing the first number off book too because it meant that the cohesion was electric from their very first note.

Pohl is a charismatic and cheerfully empathetic performer. As well as singing with warmth and colour, he frequently looks round at the choir and orchestra and watches other singers attentively. There was a nice moment, for instance, which made the audience chuckle aloud, when he reached the words der himmlische Chor in the Sixth Day section and he gestured to the choir behind him as if to introduce them.

Tenor, Benjamin Hulett and soprano, Sarah-Jane Brandon both put in pleasing performances too. Brandon’s top notes are especially rich and I enjoyed the unexpectedness of Hulett’s suddenly breaking into English for four lines of spoken word near the end. The three work together for trios and duets too and one or two glitches passed almost unnoticed.

But really this performance belonged to the choir (chorus master: Simon Halsey) whose precision, discipline and controlled energy was outstanding especially in the joyous Die Himmel erzahlen. Youth, confidence, insouciance, talent and good training are a powerful combination.

There was also some fine playing from the BBC Philharmonic. This score is fun and we were never allowed to forget that. The gelenkige Tiger, Das Rind in Herden and das Gewurm were all clearly there and enjoying life in the newly created world.

I wasn’t quite sure why the harpsichord was changed during the interval except that I couldn’t hear the first one in Part One but I could thereafter. Perhaps there was a fault on the one Wellber began on. It didn’t detract, however, from a highly enjoyable performance of one of the finest works in the canon.

Susan Elkin

Royal Albert Hall, 25 July 2019

The evening began with a crisp but warm account of Till Eulenspiegel. There’s something about the acoustic of the Royal Albert Hall and the raked positioning of the orchestra which helps to bring out the detail and colour both melodically and dynamically. The trumpet solo and a couple of contrabassoon entries added noticeably to the spiky drama here, for example.

Stenz is a baton-less conductor with unusually expressive wrists and fingers which he uses balletically to coax what he wants from his players. In the familiar pieces which opened and closed this concert he used no score and rarely did anything as prosaic as beating time.

It was different, though in the trumpet concerto by Swedish composer Tobias Brostrom – played here in the UK for the first time. Stenz used a score and conducted more conventionally as you’d expect in music which is new to every orchestral player. There was a different sort of concentration and tension.  The piece is structured in two halves but three broad sections with the middle “movement” equating approximately to a traditional concerto adagio. The other-worldly percussion in the first section was impressive as the two solo trumpets (Jeroen Berwaerts and Hakan Hardenberger), mostly in thirds or echoing canon, played their haunting rather than melodic parts. It wasn’t a piece which I warmed to particularly although this orchestra played it well and both soloists did a fine job.

And so to the safety of Brahms’s first symphony which Stenz delivered with cohesion and colour especially in the andante which brought some really beautiful work from guest principal oboist, Chris Cowie and from Philippe Schartz on trumpet. The pizzicato passages were as vibrant and pointed as I’ve ever heard them and the finale (Stenz by now in whole arm, windmill mode) was both grandiloquent and moving.

Well done, BBC National Orchestra of Wales. It was a pleasant concert and what a sensible decision on the second hottest London day on record to play in shirtsleeves and tie-less.

Susan Elkin

Garsington Opera at Wormsley, 25 July 2019

Strange to be at Wormsley on the hottest night of the year with virtually no one in evening dress. This was because the performance had been preceded by a cricket match and most people seemed to have stayed on from the afternoon into the evening’s glorious outpouring of Monteverdi at his most spectacular.

This was a tactfully staged rendition, just enough movement to keep the eye interested without ever encroaching on the impact of the score. For once Joe Strathers projection of the text was fully included into the setting, with the English and Latin projected at large onto the timber back wall. Our eyes could take it in easily without constantly moving from text to singers.

Soloists included members of Garsington’s fine chorus across the evening and throughout the building. Monteverdi’s echo effects worked to superbly with voices coming from all parts of the house, an effect also used in the Sonata with its six female soloists.

The solo work is scored for high voices with sopranos Mary and Sophie Bevan, and tenors Benjamin Hulett, Robert Murray and James Way carrying the weight of the solo sections. Duo seraphim for the three tenors was particularly beautiful with its undulating rhythms and quasi-ornamental conclusion.

The English Consort was joined by The English Cornett and Sackbutt Ensemble to give us an electrifying account of the score, frequently changing instrumentation to give subtle differences of texture and weight. Within the ensemble were two chamber organs, the smaller being paired with the harpsichord which was played by conductor Laurence Cummings. He stood throughout and seemed to dance his way through the various movements even as he used one or other of the keyboards. The sense of dance was an essential element of PJ Harris’ staging as the singers flowed gracefully throughout the building always at one with the music.

This brought the Garsington Opera season to a close. Its 30^th anniversary and a splendid indication that the next thirty years are not in doubt.

Opera Holland Park, July 2019

What an evening! An inspired pairing with sumptuous singing and two fine, if unfamiliar, scores. It really doesn’t come much better than this.

Ermano Wolf-Ferrari’s 40 minute 1909 comedy features two singers and a silent actor. Countess Susanna (Clare Presland) has secretly taken up smoking when it is still taboo for women. Her husband (Richard Burkhard) smells smoke and assumes she has a lover. There’s a marvellous performance from lithe, expressive John Savourin as the silent but very active, participative butler looking exactly like John Cleese. It’s a lively, cheerful romp with some nice duet work especially in the number in which husband and wife have a gloriously dramatic row. I also loved the hilarious, exotic, quasi-erotic smoking number in which the flute whizzes about wittily in the background. And the reconciliation duet at the end ensures you have something to hum throughout the interval.

And as for the weightier but beautiful Iolanta, why on earth doesn’t it get more outings? I’m surprised, for example, that the delicious 6|8 number at the beginning with harp and violin melody, into which voices eventually break, isn’t played on Classic FM every day.

The joy of Tchaikovsky is the way he blends joyousness with agony and this score is no exception. A very sparky guest conductor under whom I recently played an amateur performance the fifth symphony said semi-seriously: “Tchaikovsky had a lot of issues – he really did!” when trying to get us to step up the anguish. I thought about that several times while listening to Iolanta.

Based on a play by Henrik Hertz, it’s the story of a blind girl who has been brought  up in ignorance of her disability. Then she falls in love although her father has promised her to someone else. Then a doctor turns up and – well, it’s pretty implausible but the singing is fabulous. Natalya Romaniw, who sings with stunning balance and colour, brings all the appropriate passion, naivety and, eventually, emotional maturity to Iolanta as her world is flooded with light. An accolade too for Laura Woods as her friend Marta. She has a voice like good claret and plays this role with warmth, dignity and intelligence. The final, rousing chorus number – exquisitely staged and sung – will haunt me for ages too.

I’m slightly less sure about Takis’s set which includes a large transparent blind across the back of the stage – reminiscent of the one in my over-bath shower at home although this one shimmers in the hanging lights which represent flowers. You can see “off stage” action through it but to me, it’s a bit trite and obvious.

Full marks to John Wilkie who conducts Il segreto di Susanna and to Sian Edwards for Iolanta. Both coax magnificent sounds from the City of London Sinfonia. I’m always impressed with the way the balance works at Opera Holland Park given the huge width of the area which acts as a level “pit”.

Susan Elkin

Wormsley Estate, 4/5 July 2019

Britten’s The Turn of the Screw is not obvious festival fodder. It’s mysterious and often uncomfortable narrative does not sit easily alongside picnics on a warm summer evening, but when carried through as well as this there is little room for doubt it is a masterpiece and masterly done.

Christopher Oram’s design is the key to the whole. The vast, rusting structure seems to have a life of its own. Panels move by themselves, not unusual in stage sets, but then the vast doors open as part of the naturalistic story-telling without anyone touching them. It is unnerving and totally in keeping with the development. By the second act the floor has collapsed – creating an almost Poe-like sense of the end of everything – and the water seems to be rising to drown everything above it.

It is difficult to see why Sophie Bevan’s immensely impressive Governess finds the place attractive and we are led to believe right from the start that she is not totally in her right mind. While nothing extrovert happens sexually there are many uncomfortable hints in Louisa Muller’s production of child sexualisation. Miles – superbly understated by Leo Jemison – takes the Governess’ hand to lead her and calls her My Dear in a way which seems far too adult for us. Elen Willmer’s Flora is equally chilling when she suddenly puts the ball under her apron to look pregnant and later drowns her doll like a new born child.

Kathleen Wilkinson’s Mrs Grose tries to bring some sort of sanity to the situation but fails to make any impact against the very real strengths of Ed Lyon’s seductive Peter Quint and the passion of Katherine Broderick’s Miss Jessel.

It is amazing what Britten achieves with just thirteen instruments in his ensemble, and the members of Garsington Opera Orchestra were at their individual best under Richard Farnes.

After such a galvanising evening it was something of a come-down to encounter Offenbach’s Fantasio the next night. The work is virtually unknown today and it did not take long for us to realise why. Though a favourite of the composer it is relentlessly underpowered and there are few tunes which come anywhere near the impact of his finest compositions. Huw Montague Rendall made a strong impact as the Prince of Mantua and his Cunning Plan song was one of the few memorable items across the whole event. Jennifer France demonstrated fine coloratura as Elsbeth but her character is so flat as to be less than two dimensional – which was not her fault and was really a waste of a positive singer. There were many smaller parts but none given anything of real interest to sing. Even the name part of Fantasio, though intelligently performed by Hanna Hipp, has little engaging music, including the Moon aria close to the start.

The chorus enjoy themselves and their A lovely day reminded me of the auto-da-fe scene from Candide. Then I realised that Jennifer France would make a perfect Cunegonde and began wondering how much better the evening might have been if this splendid cast had actually been giving us the Bernstein rather than the Offenbach!

Over the last thirty years Garsington Opera have given us so many wonderful evenings, and enduring memories, that one can easily forgive the occasional blip. We already know that next year brings Mitridante, Fidelio, Un Giorno di Regno and Rusalka. Dates are available for the whole season at www.garsingtonopera.org

Regents Park Open Air Theatre, Tuesday 18 June 2019

Can Hansel and Gretel ever fail? I can’t recall a production I have not immediately warmed to and Timothy Sheader’s approach was certainly striking and always apt to the score. Set in the 1950s with a real sense of poverty from the start, the large revolving stage kept the action moving smoothly and allowed the unusually large cast to fill the spaces with ease. During the overture the cleaners came on stage, only for us to realise that they were actually witches and were leaving sweeties for the children. A succession of mothers sent their children off into the woods for food – always a dangerous undertaking even without the threat of child eating witches.

The young cast greatly aid the credibility of the story, and ENO were able to field two casts of which this was the second. Heather Lowe is a jovial Hansel, clearly emotionally close to his sister. Elizabeth Karani’s Gretel is obviously the older sibling but happy to rely on her brother’s protection where needed. The scenes in the wood were just scary enough to convince until the Sandman moved the whole narrative into the world of dreams. Angels are never easy today, but turning them into flight attendants – in keeping with Hansel’s toy plane – was a master stroke. Just tongue in cheek enough to avoid sentimentality but warmly supportive at the same time.

Gweneth Ann Rand’s strongly sung and characterised Mother was a fine foil to Ben McAteer’s jolly father. His sudden sobering up with the realisation of the danger his children were in was impressive. The reduced orchestration worked well and carried strongly with supportive amplification, as did the singers. This showed yet again that amplification does not need to blast the audience in order to be effective.

Unfortunately this was as far as I got. A technical fault at the start of the evening meant the performance was severely delayed and – with an 8.00pm due start – travelling home was going to be very risky if I stayed until the end. It is not clear why – when there were so many families in the audience, some of whom left at the interval because of the late running – the late start is necessary. It makes it very difficult for anyone living outside of the immediate capital to ensure they can get back.

This was a real shame for this was a fine performance which, hopefully, we might see again under other circumstances. ENO could easily add this on a more regular basis.

Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury

I’ve come to the conclusion that 20^th and 21^st century British composers had/have a special affinity with the viola. Ralph Vaughan Williams, after all, is one of the few composers to have written a concerto for it and rarely have I been at a concert which featured violas (led by Yukiko Ogura who also played several lovely solos) as this all British Elgar/MacCunn/MacMillan programme. And they rose to the occasion with warm aplomb.

Two Elgar works sandwiched two contrasting Scottish works beginning with a crisp, incisive account of Introduction and Allegro. Martyn Brabbins is, on the whole, an old school conductor who beats time and spares us the histrionics, and if he milked the ralls and pauses in this piece slightly too much for my taste then I’ll forgive him because he coaxes a splendid sound from his players.

It’s a great pleasure to see a percussion concerto staged – and “staged” is the operative word here – since Colin Currie (who premiered this work in Utrecht in 2014) has to traverse the front of the stage at speed for marimba, glockenspiel, pitched bell, steel pan entries – and a lot more beside with a whole range of different sticks. James MacMillan’s Percussion Concerto No 2 is a strange, evocative work (complete with viola solo) which I was hearing for the first time. I was struck, not only by Currie’s slick talent but also by the attractive quirkiness of the orchestral writing which includes, for example, lots of col legno (to support the percussive tone) and some otherworldly glissando work.

And so to Hamish MacCunn’s “signature” work The Land of the Mountain and Flood which is a jolly piece and none the worse for being a bit of a Light Programme (back in the day) pot boiler. Brabbins ensured that it was played with marked precision as well as warmth with some well balanced wind interjections and delightful cello solo from Karen Stephenson.

Rebecca Chan, leader of the Philharmonia on this occasion, is a very charismatic player – sitting on the edge of her chair and energetically using her body to communicate with the whole ensemble. And that really worked well in an uplifting performance of Enigma Variations. It’s a colourful piece anyway and in this performance Brabbins and Chan took it deftly through all its contrasts from the mercurial to the majestic. The central, adagio Nimrod (variation 9) was well controlled – always a challenge –  and the feathery elegance of Variation 9 was neatly delivered.

Susan Elkin