As I wrote again in 2013: ‘Michael Thorne proved himself totally “at one” with the expansive spirit, spaciousness, geniality and dramatic architecture of the work and although he hurried things along, he gave the music some much-needed time to bloom when necessary.’
Saffron Opera’s indefatigable Music Director Michael Thorne has a sure dramatic sense, very much to the fore in the company’s Don Giovanni last year, so I was surprised by a rather stately account of the overture, but thereafter things became more flexible and theatrical, with lots of fluent recitative nudging things forward. The woodwind and timps provided most of the Mozartean attitude and bounce, and the orchestral roles in the Countess’s and Barbarina’s arias were beautifully judged, as was the pressure Thorne gradually applied to the opera’s finale.
'Solid performances all round from the rest of the cast'
'As Elisabeth, Samantha Crawford was also inspired casting. She has the innocent presence and unconstricted soprano radiance perfect for this and other Wagner roles; the silvery gleam in her voice produced a trumpet- like 'Dich, teure Halle', and then she sang a beautifully remote prayer to the Jungfrau, Wagner's paraphrase of the Salve Regina. She engaged with the role, and it was thrilling.'
The young lovers were astonishingly well cast and – crucial for this opera I suspect? – they generally had youth on their side. Fiordiligi is the character who is most conflicted by events and has the biggest arc – which Jessica Cale with her bright eloquent soprano created perfectly – from professing Fiordiligi’s rock-like constancy in ‘Come scoglio’, her tenderly introspective ‘Per pietà’, to her succumbing to the impassioned Ferrando in their ‘Fra gli amplessi’ Act II duet.
