Profil recensioner
3Dwyer charts his madness all-too believably, so that the final crime of passion is out of sheer desperation than malice. It was electrifying
“Adrian Dwyer tackled the stratospheric tenor role – a veritable Matterhorn in itself – with heroic stamina”
Tidigare produktion recensioner
7This is Longborough Festival Opera’s Das Rheingold and the first instalment of the complete Ring-cycle up until 2022. It's also Polly Graham’s second season as Artistic Director of the festival established by her parents in 1991 - a founding year that was to bring an operatic dream of a British Bayreuth to reality. A first Cotswold Rheingold in 1998 heralded a Wagnerian Eden. It’s not been a smooth ride - early on a critic considered ‘Mr Graham will give more pleasure by being less ambitious’ - but history has proved otherwise and the intimate space of Longborough’s 500-seat theatre (salvaged from Covent Garden) is no barrier to artistic enterprise or a composer’s gargantuan vision. If anything, Longborough’s limited dimensions admirably suits Rheingold’s text-laden outlines where its creative energies (unfettered by the absence of technical wizardry) can be distilled through depth of characterisation and powerful musicianship. Designs and costumes aside, what really lifted this Rheingold into something almost revelatory was the standard of acting and singing - albeit not uniformly excellent, but with enough definition to repeatedly draw the ear and eye towards several outstanding performances. Chief amongst these was Mark Le Brocq’s dodgy dealer Loge, whose crimson frockcoat and twirling cane brought a whiff of a Victorian music hall MC. His ease of movement and vocal projection were outstanding, his perfectly caught ambivalence tailor-made for this role. His pirouetting laid bare Darren Jeffrey’s stolid and authoritatively sung Wotan whose lumbering gait worked against his impressive build, otherwise ideal as a ruler of the gods. More convincing was the nimble and dishevelled Mark Stone as Alberich, utterly persuasive in voice and single-minded ambition. His brother, Mime, was sung by a clarion-voiced Adrian Dwyer who brought considerable energy to his ensemble scenes.
Henry James when talking about reviewing books or music or drama was insistent that one must start by accepting “the given”. So when reviewing a Wagner opera at the Longborough Festival Opera, the first given is to remember that you are not at Bayreuth or the Royal Opera House. Longobourgh has its own approach and house style for Wagner and the constraints of a smaller theatre or even a smaller budget than the more august opera houses in no way diminishes the impact, enjoyment, or inspiration of their productions. Yet again, with a new production of Wagner’s Siegfried, this company provides its audience with a remarkable and thoroughly engaging experience of opera as drama. All the elements of music, scenery, movement, and declamation blend into a seamless whole that rivets the attention. Musically, Anthony Negus leads a committed, idiomatic, and intensely moving interpretation. The orchestra played with real aplomb and the brassier bits blazed while the softer moments lilted. The stage was peopled with singers who are also convincing actors and all of whom were extremely well-chosen for their roles.
Siegfried, the third instalment in Wagner's Ring cycle, is perhaps not the most engaging of the tetralogy, with its welter of back-storying and insufferable navel-gazing, but this production from the stupendous Longborough Festival Opera as it leads up to its second presentation of the complete cycle in little over ten years is the most involving I have ever seen. There is nothing to be faulted (apart from the turgid first act, Wagner's fault) in this presentation, with no weak link in the casting, amazing playing from the Longborough Festival Orchestra under the veteran, much-respected Wagner conductor Anthony Negus (such clarity of texture!), and brilliant staging effects.
The Intelligence Park, is given its first Covent Garden staging in the Linbury Theatre. Here is a taste of things to come: madcap characterisation, cheerfully raucous orchestration and a delicious playfulness with words which it is tempting to ascribe to Barry's Irish background. The opera is set in 18th-century Dublin, a little nod to the world of Handel, whom the composer reveres, and productions of whose operas come thick and fast these days. His Agrippina a current success up the stairs in the main auditorium of the Royal Opera House. And Messiahs aplenty are on the Christmas horizon. Poor Paradies struggles with his new music, as eager Jerusha, sung with indefatigable glee by Rhian Lois, cavorts with Serafino, sung by counter-tenor Patrick Terry. All make light work of Barry's stratospheric score, even de Souza leaping from his natural baritone to eye-watering falsetto. The picaresque action is played out against a cartoonish set, and here are all the elements of Georgian society, perhaps seen through the prism of Blackadder: wigs and waistcoats, breeches and brocade, tea and tantrums. Exaggerated and outlandish by director, designer and lighting designer Nigel Lowery, this highly-flavoured world spins round at breakneck speed in a galaxy of music by Barry. The relentless, driving torrent of notes is conducted with aplomb by Jessica Cottis, courtesy of 16 players from the London Sinfonietta, notably the hard-worked wind and percussion. The score has all the hallmarks of Barry (now 57) as a composer finding his voice. We all improve with age, of course, and Barry is no exception. If The Intelligence Park is frankly tough on the lugholes, it is brilliantly sung and visually entertaining. And if you love made-up words – an honourable literary tradition from Shakespeare onwards – there is much to enjoy in Vincent Deane's proudly abstract libretto.
Singing and acting is consistently impressive across the board and among the principals Brazilian baritone Michel de Souza commands our ear, Stephen Richardson brings gravitas to Sir Joshua Cramer (reprising this role from its original performance), counter-tenor Patrick Terry sings with limpid beauty, Pontrhydygroes-born soprano Rhian Lois adds sparkle and stratospheric agility and tenor Adrian Dwyer sharply focused declamation. In the pit, the ever-versatile London Sinfonietta, under the firm baton of Jessica Cottis, dazzle with their efficiency and confirm Barry as a composer of formidable talent and originality. Be prepared when it comes to Cardiff on Tuesday 8 October to be mystified by this manic enterprise, but you’ll be sure to come away transformed.
I never thought of Sergei Prokofiev’s War and Peace (or should it be Peace and War, for that’s how his opera divides) as a sing-along opera, yet the lady (soprano voice) seated next to me is singing along to the final patriotic anthem, keeping apace with the fine Welsh National Opera chorus. Just what Stalin wanted... a rousing call to arms... I’d have liked it in Russian (such a different sound to English), but English it is in Dr Rita McAllister’s translation of Prokofiev and his wife Mira Mendelson’s libretto. That’s my only quibble. I wonder what the Russian Ambassador, in the audience I believe, thinks of it. Mark Le Brocq’s tenor voice and sympathetic Pierre that wins the night in every way, I must say that Adrian Dwyer’s tenor also seduces me as much as his Anatole seduced Natasha. But it is Simon Bailey’s bass Kutuzov—the people’s choice not the tsar’s—who has the best tune, that anthem that stirs the blood. And David Stout’s bass baritone Napoleon / Dolokhov / Denisov / Raevsky stands his ground well, though I do wonder about Napoleon in his redoubt scene—it rather slows things down. Jonathan May makes for an amusingly rude, snobbish Old Prince Bolkonsky, and there is some coarseness from the peasant soldiers—something about getting shot in the arse. Necessary gallows humour to lighten the dramatic load. Tomáš Hanus, music director of Welsh National Opera, conducts an orchestra on great form. A tremendous, scorching undertaking on one of the hottest days in the capital brings to life a series of tableaux from a vivid tale of the past that resonates loud and clear.
