Past Production Reviews
27The advantage of Glyndebourne Opera’s performances at the BBC Proms is that they give us a chance to concentrate on the music making. And there was plenty of high-quality music-making on offer at the Royal Albert Hall on Monday 28 August 2017 when Glyndebourne Opera performed Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito.
Such intensity demands a parallel level of emotional power from the pit, and here Stuart Stratford, a familiar name from Opera Holland Park (see Puccini’s La fanciulla or Mascagni’s Iris, for example), provided just that. The English National Opera Orchestra gave their all in a performance of Lucia that also included a great deal of nuance. Stratford understands the voice, and how phrases need to breathe; he also, crucially, gets Donizetti’s orchestration. A sense of flow permeated the whole from the very opening; and to hear the ENO Orchestra on such full-toned form was a joy indeed. They clearly respect Stratford, whose deep musicality added immeasurably to the evening.
Tynan fully identified with the portrayal of Lucia, giving us a profoundly disturbing picture of a woman who was controlled and neutralised by society, fighting back in the only way possible. This meant that in Acts One and Two she was relatively passive, and one of this production's clever strokes is to make Edgardo just as controlling, in his different way, as Enrico. It is clear, this Lucia will be controlled no matter what, so madness is the only way out.
The tenor Peter Hoare was very impressive in the hugely demanding part of Orpheus the man (as opposed to Orpheus the myth and Orpheus the hero, also played well by Daniel Norman and Matthew Smith respectively) but the whole cast coped magnificently with the outlandish score.
This is the last of the four operas based on the Orpheus myth which the ENO had the wonderfully crazy idea of bringing together for the last few months of this year and on the whole the quartet has been a success. It began with Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice which is full of great music and tells effectively the basic story of Orpheus travelling to Hades to try to bring back his beloved Eurydice after her untimely death.
In the event, those performers communicated their fears, anxieties and desires vividly with the audience, who loved it all. Not surprising, since this was a magnificent cast headed by ENO Harewood Young Artist Božidar Smiljanić, as a firmly-voiced Figaro with superb stage presence. Silver-voiced Louise Alder led the feminine side as his feisty Susanna, along with Elizabeth Watts as a disconsolate Countess whose soliloquies on the loss of the Count’s love were superbly delivered, with Johnathan McCullough showing mystified resolution as a notably youthful Count. Singing in the witty translation by Jeremy Sams, the diction was so good I don’t recall glancing at the surtitles more than once or twice, and there was not a weak member of the cast in that respect, helped perhaps by the acoustic of the rectangular box.
Sometimes simple solutions really do work best. Joe Hill-Gibbins’ new production of The Marriage of Figaro for English National Opera stages Mozart and Da Ponte’s tangle of intrigues and concealments along a row of four identical doors in a white box. It’s a revelation: this is, after all, a piece in which the issue of who’s in on the joke (and who’s out) is crucial – and the humble door is its ideal multiway tool.
The role of Krishna was taken by Andri Björn Róbertsson with panache.
Other singers who impressed were Clive Bayley as Parsi Rustomji and Andri Björn Róbertsson as Lord Krishna.
Remarkable Staging of Glass’s Remarkable Akhnaten by ENO
Philip Glass’s opera Akhnaten has been revived at English National Opera after more than 30 years.
