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6Movingly articulated at the close of this English-language performance by Grant Doyle’s big-hearted Forester, the inspiring final scene, showing him overwhelmed by the eternal beauty of the environment where he has spent his life, is underpinned by the soaring playing of the City of London Sinfonia in Jonathan Dove’s canny reduction of the composer’s original score under conductor Jessica Cottis.
Grant Doyle sings his noble epilogue about the passing of time and the meaning of life with total security, and seven years on from playing the Forester in Daniel Slater’s brilliant production for Garsington, he’s also won the right to meditate on ageing.
King Dodon features the strong-voiced baritone Grant Doyle, who sports a variety of costumes including some amusing underwear (it has to be said, there is a fair amount of working with the phallic symbolism of artillery in the production; while I am on the subject – an adult fairy-tale, then). Doyle was an exceptional Forester (The Cunning Little Vixen last year at Opera Holland Park, and before that as Robert in Iolanta; he owned the authority of his role here while embracing the King’s faults and frequent silliness.
OPERA + CLASSICAL MUSIC REVIEWS The Golden Cockerel begins its ‘English Tour’ at the Hackney Empire 5 March 2022 by Sam Smith published: 7 Mar 2022 in Opera + Classical Music Reviews A production that reveals strong performances and a penchant for the absurd. The Golden Cockerel Alys Mererid Roberts, Robert Lewis & Grant Doyle (Photo: Richard Hubert Smith) When English Touring Opera decided to include Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Golden Cockerel in its 2022 spring season, it could not have foreseen just how relevant it would feel. This is because its story concerns a Tsar whose own callousness and paranoia make him all too willing to embark on ill thought through and destructive wars. Rimsky-Korsakov wrote Zolotoy petushok in 1907, but it was immediately banned and not actually performed in Moscow until 1909, the year after his death. It appeared in Paris in 1914 as Le Coq d’Or, by which title it is still often known today. Vladimir Belsky’s libretto derives from Pushkin’s 1834 poem The Tale of the Golden Cockerel, and the opera can be seen as the precursor to such absurdist works as Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges and Shostakovich’s The Nose. The opera places a large emphasis on ballet and movement, and early stagings of the work tended to stress its modernist elements. For example, Diaghilev’s production in France in 1914 had the singers remain offstage while dancers provided all of the action. Not all approved of the approach, including Rimsky-Korsakov’s widow, but the production was considered a milestone and Stravinsky was to expand on the idea in his opera/ballet Renard (1917) and ballet Les Noces (1923), in which the singers stay unseen while mimes or dancers perform. The Golden Cockerel Alys Mererid Roberts (Photo: Richard Hubert Smith) A production by the Moscow State Music Theatre for Young Audience named after Natalia Sats appeared at the London Coliseum in 2014, and this attempted to emulate, although not slavishly follow, what might have been staged exactly a century earlier in Paris. Every character was represented by a singer and dancer, although the former were positioned at the front of the stage and so not actually out of sight. The dancers then occupied the rest of the area, playing out the drama with strong movements and gestures and generating an almost continuous swirl of activity. “…its story concerns a Tsar who… embarks on ill thought through and destructive wars” Director James Conway has taken almost exactly the opposite approach here by employing no one exclusively to dance so that all of the movement is created by the singers. Although it is possible to lament not seeing first rate ballet when the opera is so conducive to including it, there are an enormous number of compensatory factors in the chosen approach. It means that no portrayal of a character is divided between two people, which can break up emotions that need to be presented coherently in order to be moving. It also allows the absurdism to be played out to the full by creating routines that positively speak of it. For example, when Tsar Dodon’s two sons lead the people off to war, they do not reveal virtuoso balletic movements but rather march carrying banners that double as weapons, obstacles they must clamber over and maypoles. As they proceed to dance around these they reveal just how oblivious they are to what they are really doing. There is an inventiveness to the production so that the chorus remain on stage for long periods and really become the Tsar’s people. In this way, they fall asleep around him, employing comical actions as they do so, while the nanny Amelfa sings the Lullaby. Tsar Dodon rides off to war himself on a rocking horse brandishing a carpet beater, an object that proves to have several uses over the course of the evening, while he and the Tsaritsa of Shemakha ride this and a cannon instead of a carriage to their wedding. We do not actually see the related parade, but it proves just as effective for us only to witness the chorus’ reactions to it, and, given the words they use to describe it, it might have been distasteful to have tried to play it out visually. Behind a beautifully painted front curtain, Neil Irish’s set sees a skeleton framed ‘cylinder’ occupy the centre of the stage. This houses the Tsar’s throne, which has an onion dome behind it and can be rolled out to create his bed, thus showing how it is difficult to separate Dodon’s power as Tsar from either the church or his own lazy character. The Golden Cockerel stands on a platform at its summit to observe the world and make her proclamations, while in Act II it is covered with material to form the tent from which the Tsaritsa of Shemakha intriguingly emerges. Gerry Cornelius conducts extremely well, while Grant Doyle with his secure baritone is an excellent Dodon. He is very clever at playing up the Tsar’s bumbling, doddery and lazy nature, even indulging in a dance routine that would rival David Brent’s, so that he feels quite loveable.
Mozart Le nozze di Figaro, K492 – Opera buffa in four Acts to a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte after the comedy La folle journée, ou Le mariage de Figaro, by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais [sung in Italian, with English surtitles] Figaro – Adam Maxey Susanna – Julieth Lozano Doctor Bartolo – Timothy Edlin Marcellina – Katy Thomson Cherubino – Lauren Joyanne Morris Don Basilio – Joel Williams Count Almaviva – Harry Thatcher Countess Almaviva – Sarah-Jane Brandon & Josephine Goddard Antonio – Conall O’Neill Don Curzio – Samuel Jenkins Barbarina – Poppy Shotts Bridesmaids – Camilla Harris & Jessica Cale Royal College of Music Opera Chorus & Orchestra Michael Rosewell Sir Thomas Allen – Director Lottie Higlett – Designer Rory Beaton – Lighting Kate Flatt – Choreographer Reviewed by: Peter Reed Reviewed: 26 November, 2018 Venue: Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music, London RCM's The Marriage of FigaroKaty Thomson, Joel Williams, Harry Thatcher, Adam Maxey, Sarah-Jane Brandon, Julieth LozanoPhotograph: Chris ChristodoulouWith good reason, Figaro and Susanna survey with horror the dump of a room they’ve been allocated by the Count for the start of married life. That is the first thing we see in Thomas Allen’s RCM staging of The Marriage of Figaro, and it sets the scene for a sparkling evening as well as neatly summing up the opera’s political idée fixe of rulers and the ruled. Allen has form as the Count, and his insider experience of Mozart and Da Ponte’s inexhaustible work works brilliantly for his cast. The traditional production has no overtly directorial points to make – except, perhaps, for a new-born infant in a crib in the Countess’s boudoir suggesting both that she is out of bounds for the sex-addicted Count and that she is suffering from post-natal depression – and, as part of the RCM’s opera course, it has been meticulously rehearsed. Everyone knows exactly what they are doing, their acting has that ring of confident spontaneity, and the wedding-dance sequence is a brilliantly choreographed and executed pleasure. Lottie Higlett’s elegant, rococo sets unfold smoothly from Figaro and Susanna’s squalid quarters, to the Countess’s boudoir, then adapting to a lovely garden setting for Act Four, and her costumes, particularly and not surprisingly those for Count and Countess, are very splendid. Higlett also clearly knows how to make it suit the scale of the Britten Theatre, and the whole look of her and Allen’s staging, besides complementing the singers and the story, is notably clear and refreshing. This is a generous, subtly observed production that would thrive in any opera house. And it has heart – relationships are tenderly drawn, there’s a big frisson of mutual desire when Cherubino serenades the vulnerable Countess that’s suddenly and fiercely moving, the Count’s collision of frustration and hard-headed authority is casually but lucidly defined, the machinations of the Marcellina-Bartolo-Basilio trio have the sort of slap-stick villainy that just evaporates when the truth of Figaro’s parentage emerges, and, the moment of truth, the Count’s ‘Contessa, perdona’ briefly makes time stand still. There are yet more boxes to tick in the quality of the singing. Adam Maxey has the vocal range for Figaro, the bass end of his baritone is pleasingly seductive, and, while he could do with more variety of tone, the moments when he takes charge (including an electrifying confrontation with the Count), suggest that the potential is all there. Maxey is also very tall, easily two heads taller than Julieth Lozano’s petite Susanna, which is rather sweet when they are together. Lozano’s soprano has a substantial middle range, and occasionally there is an absence of mischievous ping higher up. Her portrayal, though, lacks nothing in mischief or control, and, as might be expected from a servant constantly batting off the Count’s feudal rights, she has a far sharper awareness of her social status than does Figaro, who is interestingly ambivalent about the master-servant power axis – in another life, this Figaro might have made a good Jeeves, As it turns out, Susanna is a servant with two mistresses. Sarah-Jane Brandon’s Countess had been marvellous in Act Two, singing a ravishing ‘Porgi amor’, looking very stylish and up for all Cherubino’s attempts at seduction and cross-dressing larks. Then, before Act Three, it was announced that she was unwell and was being replaced by Josephine Goddard (the Countess in the alternative cast), who is just as good, and manages that trick of seeming aristocratically aloof from the trickery that she was playing on the Count. RCM's The Marriage of FigaroJulieth Lozano & Sarah-Jane BrandonPhotograph: Chris ChristodoulouHarry Thatcher’s Count is a triumph. He plays the Count’s complexities of motivation, the sudden shafts of empathy, his distraction and simpler personality traits such as a very short temper with astonishing directness, and he has a voice that expands on Mozart’s already magnificently characterful music with great passion and insight. Thatcher’s big Act Three sequence is outstanding, as is his handling of ‘Contessa perdono’. The fact that he has film-star looks is a help and he wears the costumes with the assurance that clinches his portrayal as a whole. Lauren Joyanne Morris’s light, even mezzo suits Cherubino’s two arias very well, and her acting reduces the she-as-he gap to near invisibility, an even match both for the Countess as for Poppy Shotts’s enchanting and very knowing Barbarina. Katy Thomson sings Marcellina with formidable strength and acts her frail hold on grande dame status with great and funny awareness, Timothy Edlin sings Bartolo’s ‘La vendetta’ with malicious glee, and you could only fantasise about how or why they managed to produce Figaro. The RCM Opera Orchestra left scorch marks with its virtuosic account of the Overture, and Michael Rosewell presides over an impressively responsive orchestra, which sports some equally refined woodwind-playing and acutely close ensemble. In the accompagnato passages, the musicians played with a continuo-like alertness, and throughout they were with Rosewell and the singers all the way. There are two more performances. This cast sings on November 28.
