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8Ceiling fans spin as Nadine Benjamin’s Clara sings Summertime to her baby – it’s the first singing we hear, and Benjamin delivers it gorgeously. You can almost hear the heat – and indeed, it is George Gershwin’s score, buoyantly played here under the specialist guidance of conductor John Wilson, that more than anything establishes the atmosphere of summer in the American south. Gershwin researched it enthusiastically: the prospect of working with Dorothy and DuBose Heyward and turning their play into an opera brought him to their hometown of Charleston, visiting churches and absorbing the music of the Gullah Geechee community first-hand. It’s no coincidence that there’s a slight stylistic shift whenever we hear from Sportin’ Life, the slippery, perma-smiling drug pusher who always has an eye on New York – his big numbers, including It Ain’t Necessarily So, have his voice shadowed by a quietly sleazy muted trumpet.
Nadine Benjamin, una soprano de carrera tardía y por ello mismo reconocida hoy en el Reino Unido como una artista capaz de llegar sin prejuicios de edad, cantó un excelente Summertime al comienzo y durante toda la velada protagonizó una Clara de fulminante autenticidad y carácter hasta el momento de su sacrificio final, cuando abandona a su hijo para buscar a su marido y ahogarse con él en medio de una tormenta. También merece una mención especial un My man is gone que Latonia Moore (Serena), cantó no como una queja individual sino como lo que debe ser, un lamento de trascendencia colectiva, en la línea del Requiem de Brahms.
Indeed, Lizzi Gee’s movement direction is superb. The children’s rough-and-tumble antics; the dream sequence, in which the children really do ‘take flight’ into fantasy; the delicate dancing of the en pointe duplicates of the dazzling Dew Fairy (He Wu), with their ‘milk-bottles’ of dew droplets; the reawakening of the lost children and the final chorus in celebration of this miracle: all are brilliantly conceived and executed. And, the choreography provides the production with a judicious moment of tongue-in-cheek kitsch. Reunited with his toy aeroplane by the sympathetic Sandman (Gillian Keith), the sleeping Hansel’s imagination powers a ‘lift-off’ to paradise. A bleached-blond flight crew arrive, smiles beaming and uniforms spic-and-span, and semaphore their pre-flight briefing before the excited children soar into the air on the surging wave of Humperdinck’s score, to be greeted by their parents bearing the balloons that will float them to wonderland. It’s terrifically well done.
Rachel Kelly and Susanna sang the roles of Hansel and Gretel in fine style, acting the childish roles with mischievous enthusiasm, but the real comic star of the piece was Alasdair Elliott as the witch, appearing first in a dress and luxurious blonde wig, but later revealing himself as a bald male, which I suppose makes him a warlock rather than a witch.
Sally Matthews shone in the title role, her bell-like soprano emotionally adaptive to a variety of situations, Pumeza Matshikiza’s Fox similarly likeable and (strangely?) relatable. The journey of Lester Lynch’s Forester offered a crucial dramatic counterpoint, ably supported and brought into relief by a host of sharply drawn cameos. It would ultimately be a little pointless to go through the large cast, but Madeleine Shaw’s Forester’s Wife and Ossian Huskinson’s Harašta seemed to me particularly vivid portrayals, in stage and vocal terms.
Directed by Dominic Hill (artistic director of Glasgow’s Citizens theatre) and conducted by Scottish Opera’s music director, Stuart Stratford, this is a bewitching staging of high theatricality, ending with big-hearted, over-the-top hilarity. The wolf whistles and cheers at the final curtain suggest the company has a hit on its hands.
