William Morgan / Reviews

That said the set is the star. The dilapidated conservatory in amongst the reeds and marshes feel like they have been part of the landscape for years, and sets just the right eerie tone. You are transported wholly into the house and its machinations, and Designer Soutra Gilmour must be praised for such an achievement.

The same could be said of Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, his invincible 1954 chamber opera based on Henry James’s novella. Psychic forces grip the Governess in charge of two children, who may or may not be in thrall to two ghosts. In this first Regent’s Park Open Air theatre/ENO venture, young singers from ENO’s Harewood Artists programme – Rhian Lois, William Morgan, Elgan Llyr Thomas – led a double cast (I heard the second), conducted with superb authority by ENO Mackerras fellow Toby Purser. The 13-strong chamber ensemble was impeccable. As the children Miles and Flora, Sholto McMillan and Ellie Bradbury were chillingly convincing. Sholto’s brilliant miming on a dummy keyboard (played for real by on-stage piano) was a tour de force, never mind the insolent purity of his treble voice.

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.

The Scottish Opera orchestra, under the baton of Derek Clark, delivers Sullivan’s exhilarating score with colourful, expressive gusto. It is, all-in-all, a marvellously no-holds-barred staging of an absolutely joyous comic opera.There is, in The Gondoliers, a few jokes at the expense of, Gilbert’s bugbear, the Joint Stock Companies Act of 1862 (whereby a large company, such as a major football club, to take an entirely random example, could declare itself bust, leaving creditors out of pocket, at very little personal expense to the major shareholders). There’s very much more on the subject in G&S’s lesser-known opera Utopia, Limited.Given a smart and engaging treatment here as a semi-staged concert (which plays at the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh on November 5), the piece is an enjoyable comedy in which the Anglophile King of Utopia declares his country a “company limited”.As Ireland is joked about in parenthetical asides, Gilbert makes an interestingly modern observation. In his passion for all things British, the Utopian regent makes no distinction at all between “Englishness” and “Britishness”.

Scottish Opera uses colour and movement to conjure up a feast for the eyes and ears. Derek Clark sets a good pace for the numbers, a few faster than might be expected. The orchestral excellence was very much appreciated and it was nice that the audience of traditional theatregoers allowed the overture to run in absolute silence. The brilliant string playing by a large section was perhaps occasionally drowned by ‘delicately-modulated’ brass in vocal passages, but this did not affect the singing, which was magnificent throughout.