St Luke’s, Brighton , Friday 20 July 2018

The programme for the evening was itself palindromic as well as concealing a finely crafted palindrome at the core of Peter Copley’s new work.

The evening opened and closed with an extended Piano Trio, with two shorter, single movement works either side of the interval. Moreover, these included works by each of the three soloists. The bar was set very high for the event as they opened with Beethoven’s Piano Trio Op70 No2 in Eflat. This gloriously humane work has a dancelike quality throughout, with extended almost Schubertian passages. If the finale is more strident it never loses its warm. Adam Swayne’s Hawker Hunter is a memorial piece to the Shoreham air crash. The highly aggressive opening draws on a large number of modern techniques in terms of the piano but these are all finely integrated into the score as a whole. As the piece progresses a sense of brooding calm overtakes it and we hear echoes of Purcell’s final pages of Dido and Aeneas. It is as if the music itself becomes the consolation, and is very effective.

After the interval we heard Ellie Blackshaw’s Piano Trio, which was receiving its fourth performance – noteworthy today for any new writing. Based on three, five-note chords which themselves reflect the names of the players, the work allows the individual instruments to develop their own voice and character in extended solo lines. This allows the work to breath and gives it a sense of openness and calm.

Peter Copley’s Piano Trio No2 is potentially his most extended work to date. Where the evening’s programme had been gently palindromic, this new trio is itself very closely structured. The opening Mesto mirrors the final Miserioso. The second movement Prestissimo likewise mirrors the fourth movement Leggiero and at the heart of the work the Adagio is a precisely worked out palindrome which draws to a single chord at its centre before reversing to the opening note. It is totally convincing and I suspect that any who had not had the palindrome pointed out to them would not be aware, so subtle is the writing. Nuances of balance and tempi create different aspects so that there is no obvious mirroring of earlier moments.

The opening movement brings an intense lyricism for all its sadness, though this gives way to a furious Prestissimo – think Flight of the Bumblebees on acid! – before the extended Adagio. The Leggiero is frequently jumpy and excitable, while the Allegro finale becomes almost playful in its communication both between the players and with ourselves.

The programming was quite right. The Beethoven reminded us of what the Piano Trio can be, and then three contemporary composers showed what can be done today, leaving us with the joy of Peter Copley’s work ringing in our ears.

Opera Holland Park

Antony McDonald, director of this production, puts a modern, mildly feminist spin on Richard Strauss’s opera-within-an-opera and it responds rather well. The thirty five minute prologue, which forms the first half, gives us a female composer (Julia Sporsen) in jeans falling in love with Zebinetta (Jennifer France) when the latter arrives with her Burlesque troupe and threatens the opera. Veteran actor, Eleanor Bron, meanwhile, makes a cameo appearance as the party planner.

The point, of course, is an examination of high art and its relationship with “popular” art. The incongruous Gilbertian compromise that the opera company and the burlesque troop will stage a show about Ariadne collaboratively is – in this production – suitably entertaining and witty. It also heightens the poignancy of the bereft Ariadne (Mardi Byers) whose lover, Theseus has abandoned her. I shall long treasure the silly dance with tricks by Zerbinetta and her troupe of four – to Strauss at his most tunefully spikey – as they try, and fail, to cheer up Ariadne.

Jennifer France is in her element as Zerbinetta and her show piece number – with Queen of the Night-like top notes and vocal acrobatics along with delicious comic timing, nippy dancing and lots of panache – gets her a well-deserved round of spontaneous applause. Mardi Byers delights as a velvety voiced, soulful and then joyful Ariadne and there’s lovely work from Kor-Jan Dusseljee as Bacchus who eventually sweeps her off her feet – their concluding duets are warmly balanced and theatrically satisfying.

It’s one of Strauss’s richest, and best orchestrated operatic scores and conductor Brad Cohen brings out the colour – even though from my seat I could hear more stage left percussion than I could horns who were on the other side.

Antony McDonald’s set is an ingenious device. It consists of three scruffy caravans – all with doors for exits and entrances and one which can be (and is) climbed on. These are the backstage areas for the visiting performers and they sit well against the elegant residual brick and stone work of the Holland Park house to suggest that a couple of troupes of performers have arrived at a stately home. In the second half, for the opera, the caravans are moved to the sides to make room for the dining table which forms the main set item for Ariadne but we never forget that this is a show within a show.

I’m less convinced by the rather clumsy device of doing the prologue in English and the opera in German. I suppose it stresses the idea that first these people are being themselves and then they’re acting but it felt very false and certainly confused several audience members who were seated near me.

Susan Elkin

Investec Opera Holland Park – July 2018

Isabeau is a strange, rather clunky piece and it was completely new to me. Think Spamalot meets The Merchant of Venice with a seasoning of The Emperor’s New Clothes which finally morphs into Lear or Oedipus. And with characters with names such as Ethelberto of Argyle and Randolf of Dublin it’s the sort of thing which provides ammunition for opera sceptics who want to ridicule the entire art form. It isn’t hard to see why Isabeau has more or less disappeared from the repertoire in the last 80 years or so although it enjoyed a fair amount of ongoing success following its 1911 Buenos Aires premiere.

Virginal Princess Isabeau i(Anne Sophie Duprels) is told by her tyrannical father (Mikhail Svetlov) the King that she must choose a husband from one of a series of competitors for her hand. She doesn’t fancy any of them, so her furious father says she must ride naked through the streets as a punishment. Citizens are forbidden, on pain of blinding, to look. Meanwhile a jolly falconer, Folco (David Butt Philip) has turned up – with lovely silver falcon puppet. He and Isabeau fall in love. He looks at her nakedness. He is blinded. They die. Yes the plot – or “book” as we would say if this were a musical – is utter tosh, however hard the production tries to find topical resonances relating to feminism, appearance and all the rest of it.

On the other hand Pietro Mascagni’s score is full of delightful orchestral colour every nuance of which is allowed to sing out under Francesco Cilluffo’s energetic baton. Isabeau gets a passionate aria in Act 1 in which she pleads with her father and each of her sustained notes is accompanied by shifting cadences beneath it. At one point the horns have a very dramatic and unusual repeated figure in which a very short note is followed by a stressed longer one. There’s interesting music for the harp and sometimes for percussion although the wood block for the horse’s hooves put me irreverently in mind of Monty Python.

There are some fine performances on stage here too. As a woman cheated of just about everything, Duprels uses her soaring top notes movingly to communicate passion and tragedy. Butt Philip’s tenor is warm and convincing especially when he is effectively in duet with the cellos. The piece finally becomes dramatically coherent in the last act when Isabeau visits Folco’s prison cell. Their duet work here is nicely balanced and judged in this production and you actually begin to believe in them.

Full marks to Opera Holland Park’s usual large, young chorus too. Chorus Master, David Todd, has done a fine job in making them sound really vibrant as they swarm over the set designed by takis.

There are problems with the set, however. It looks great with lots of steps, ledges and platforms on three moveable, interlocking “islands” presenting different configurations to connote a medieval castle. It’s visually a strong idea and it works especially well during Isabeau’s naked ride which takes place upstage behind the continuously shifting “castle” so that the audience gets the merest hint. The trouble is that these bits of castle are clearly very heavy and the cast and crew often struggle to start them rolling. And there’s a stage left chamber (a bit like a giant version of a disability lavatory on a modern train) whose big semi-circular door refused to budge on press night leaving cast members invisible to the audience who palpably resisted cheering when a stage hand, dressed as a churl, finally freed it, several minutes later. A case of a potentially good design whose practical problems have not been fully thought through? Let’s hope they sort it for the rest of the run.

St Saviour’s Church, St Albans , 4 July 2018

This rather elegant, intelligent Cosi is a good example of what can be achieved with six singers, a pianist and minimal props and set. Sung in Italian with “side titles” on small screens at the two edges of the playing area, it’s an enjoyably accessible take on the opera too.

Honey Rouhani is a delightful Despina. She makes every note sound gloriously effortless and she talks, quips and jokes with eloquent, flashing eyes. Her cynical, rippling 6|8 number when she first tells Fiordiligi (Loretta Hopkins) and Dorabella (Phillipa Thomas) what she thinks about men is sung with terrific verve.

There’s a strong performance from James Williams as the scheming bass, Don Alfonso too. He makes the bottom notes ring out with resonance – and cheerful malice. After all it’s a cruel joke he’s playing on the two women who are famously each tricked into yielding to the other’s disguised fiancé – to prove that no woman can be trusted because “cosi fan tutte” which translates roughly as “they’re all the same”.

I especially admired the ensemble work in this production. Many of the trios, quartets, quintets and sextets are beautifully sung, well supported by the warm acoustic of St Saviour’s Church. The solo work is generally adequate but not, in most cases as noteworthy as the group numbers – with the exception of Robert Barbaro’s 3|4 aria as Ferrando which is exquisite.

Loretta Hopkins – whose Fiordiligi is really troubled by the events which overtake her and, for a long time passionately resistant to seduction –  is an outstanding, very convincing actor which more than compensates for the harshness in some of her top notes and thinness at the bottom. David Fletcher (as Gugliemo) is entertaining and a strong duettist. Thomas is a good foil to Hopkins and has an appealingly colourful voice.

And, on the night I saw Cosi, there was a terrific performance from Janet Haney on piano. She and Elspeth Wilkes have shared out the performance dates.  I am, however, doubtful of the wisdom of opening this show – which is already quite long – with the overture played on piano. It feels a bit odd as if we’re starting the evening with a piano recital. Moreover, at times, especially in the first scene the piano seems to be drowning out the singers. Perhaps it is mis-positioned and would be better behind the action, further away from the audience?

Susan Elkin

Garsington Opera at Wormsley, 21 June 2018

If Capriccio had been moved to the period in which it was written, Bruno Ravella’s production of Verdi’s Falstaff takes us to the start of the twentieth century where the women, ever feisty in the first Elizabethan period, are here supports of women’s rights. Setting the second scene on a railway station (in gently caricatured sets by Giles Cadle) was a highly convincing idea given the large amount of movement the scene involves for all the main characters. If the final scene in Windsor forest lacked something of its potential magic its tongue-in-cheek oak leaves gave a fitting surrounding for the final gulling of Falstaff.

The women were the key agents throughout, with Mary Dunleavy dominating as Alice Ford, though ably supported by Victoria Simmonds’ more prim Meg and Yvonne Howard’s tippling Mistress Quickly. Richard Burkhard’s Ford had a touch of nobility about him which made his jealous outrage all the more convincing. He is also man enough to admit his faults and make up quickly. The young lovers, Soraya Mafi’s Nannetta and Oliver Johnston’s Fenton, were strongly cast and gave the impression that theirs was a relationship which really will last.

Henry Waddington’s Falstaff was unexpectedly sensitive. He is fat of course but not excessively so and aware of the implications of his size. Though his voice is not huge he uses it with skill to bring out the more reflective side of the character – a side we do not always see. He can be bluff with his own people – a fine Bardolfo from Adrian Thompson – but has mellowed enough by the end that it makes sense for Ford to invite him to dinner. No longer the rebel outsider, he has been gradually drawn into the family merchants of Windsor.

The chorus don’t have a lot to do but were effective in the last act, though it was a pity no children were involved as fairies. Richard Farnes kept the score moving smoothly and it was a pleasure to welcome back the Philharmonia Orchestra in what we hope has now become a regular summer date.

Garsington Opera at Wormsley, Wednesday 20 June 2018

Tim Albery’s strikingly handsome new production moves the setting to the time the opera was first presented – the mid nineteen-forties. However there is no hint of a war in progress, no sense that this is an enclave ignoring a greater reality. For the artists gathered at the home of the Countess all that matters is art, and Richard Strauss explores the purpose of art in a world torn apart by war not through confrontation but the deft interplay of close personal relationships. It is this that makes the work not only such a joy to listen to but avoids any sense that these people are playing irrelevant games while everything else is in chaos. Tim Albery’s production frequently mirrors Die Meistersinger in its insistence on the relevance and importance of the arts to society as a whole. Art may be created in a hot-house atmosphere but it is essential to the whole of society, even if the male servants can’t quite see the point.

Douglas Boyd conducts the score with loving attention to detail and I can’t recall the Garsington Opera Orchestra on better form. The large pit at Wormsley can encompass late romanticism with ease and the outpouring of lush harmonies fill the house.

The young cast bring a sense of reality to the piece which is not always the case. Central to this is Miah Persson’s merry widow, has warmth and wit, gentle humour and glorious tone which carries all before her. Happily the rest of the cast are up to her standards. Sam Furness as composer Flamand is a strong contrast to Gavin Ring’s poet Olivier, and their highly contrasted styles bring clarity to their disagreements. Their rivalry is only topped by Andrew’s Shore earthy La Roche, constantly bringing us all back to the daily realities of the theatre.

The many smaller roles are taken with distinction but one can’t overlook Benjamin Bevan as the stoic Major-Domo who sings nothing until the last few minutes of the evening.

It would be easy to ignore the tiny part of Monsieur Taupe, the prompter, but when Graham Clark brings his years of experience and exemplary diction his brief scene is a memorable delight.

Wormsley Estate, Oxford, 14 June 2018

Does it take a female director to see through the pantomime of Die Zauberflote and find unexpected revelations? Certainly Netia Jones new production for Garsington Opera, while genuinely captivating, is also regularly challenging to our potential preconceptions.

There is no simplistic sense of good versus evil here. The Queen of the Night is neurotic but her neurosis stems from her grief and her strongly regimented Catholicity. At the same time Sarastro’s handling (literally!) of Pamina comes close to inappropriate and she clearly does not like it. The most challenging rethink is within the temple scenes. Hints of the Handmaiden’s Tale may be over-obvious but even this is not as simple as it at first appears. The women seem to have easy access to any part of the building, are clearly enjoying themselves and it is all too easy for Papagena to move about without challenge. Conversely, the young men are bored to the point of dropping off to sleep – or trying to cadge an extra glass of wine – when Sarastro extols the benefits of Freemasonry.

The ending is also unexpected. The trial scenes mirror Masonic rituals but allow Pamina to be inducted as a Mason, to the horror of the young men, though obviously it is part of Sarastro’s plan. That Tamino gives up his apron at the end – rather like Walther refusing the master’s guild – was entirely fitting. He and Pamina have moved beyond these games and look to a better, more inclusive, humanity.

All of this is encompassed by some of the best Mozart singing we have heard from Garsington. Banjamin Hulett is a fine Mozartian, lyrical and fluid, but he is also a strong actor who allows the prince to change from a member of the Bullingdon Club to a relaxed and emotionally more secure adult. In this he is fully enabled by Louise Alder as a Pamina straight out of Roedean, but one who sings with great sensitivity.

Jonathan McGovern’s Papageno is very much his own man. No fanciful figure, he is the uncared for gamekeeper, who just needs a woman’s touch to keep him straight – and not to say washed! The birds he collects for the Queen are strictly for eating, and during his opening aria he skins a rabbit. This is not a gimmick but totally in keeping with the character as presented.

Sen Guo has no problems with the coloratura for the Queen of the Night and is naturalistically aggressive but no more dangerous than James Creswell’s manipulative Sarastro. The final handshake between the two was uncomfortably reminiscent of Kim and Trump – may be it was intended to be so – and probably as unstable.

The three boys were magnificent, their quiet gliding among the bushes on roller-skates a brilliant idea. Equally the three ladies were individualised by their ticks rather than their costumes. Monostatos, as is usual these days, was sanitised, but Adrian Thompson managed to make him suitable revolting.

Christian Curnyn kept the tempi bright in the pit throughout and the balance, as we have come to expect in the Wormsley pavilion, was as good as ever.

If the rest of the season is this good we are in for a wonderful summer. And on this night it was not raining!!

The Royal Ballet, Royal Opera House, 6 June 2018

When I interviewed Emma Troubridge, ROH’s Head of Scenic Art, recently, she told me that this Swan Lake is the biggest show she has worked on in twenty years in the job. Having now seen it, I understand what she means. No wonder the audience of 2000 primary school children with whom I shared the experience gasped audibly and applauded spontaneously when they saw the massive, grandiloquent sets for Acts 2 and 3 (designed by John Macfarlane). The costumes – especially for the Spanish dance which is all swirly red, black and sequins – are stunning and choreographers Marius Petipa, Lev Ivanov and Liam Scarlett use every inch of the vast playing space. Everything is on a grand scale.

Seated by the press officer in a stage right box (with slightly restricted stage view) I had an unusual overview of the orchestra in the pit below me along with its conductor Valery Ovsyanikov. With my accustomed technical interest I could even see which positions the leader was using in the violin solos. It is, of course, a great joy to see this famous, beloved ballet accompanied by a full orchestra – hurrah for ROH production values – complete with four trumpets, plenty of strings including five double basses. This is what Tchaikovsky’s wonderfully powerful score needs but, sadly, doesn’t always get. Here it sounds sumptuous – especially in the final few pages with the brass sounding fortissimo tragedy and despair.

On stage, meanwhile, there’s plenty to admire too. Yasmine Naghdi is a fine Odette/Odile with suitably sustained pirouettes and plenty of fluid swan-like “flying” – leaving the ground with apparent effortlessness when dancing with the men: Nehemiah Kish as Prince Siegfried and Gary Avis as Von Rothbart, for example, both of whom have high levels of stage presence and all the lithe strength their roles require. The dance of the little cygnets is neat and appealing and the set pieces in Act 3 are a joy – especially the Neapolitan dance for which they use Frederick Ashton’s choreography. And the big “numbers” when many are on stage, especially the corps de ballet swan sequences look terrific because they’re angled and grouped so imaginatively. As a piece of theatre it’s also highly emotional and pretty moving.

The essence of good ballet is, of course, interpreting the music in a way which drives the story forward and doing so holistically. The potentially disparate elements have to be tightly integrated. This one ticks all the boxes.

Susan Elkin