Manchester Evening News review 24 July 2015

LOUISE, BUXTON FESTIVAL

Buxton Opera House

 

I CAN see why Buxton Festival decided to go for a concert version of Louise, the opera by Gustave Charpentier, rather than produce it as drama.

Nothing happens – well, hardly anything. It’s really a series of tableaux – a particularly spectacular one called for in the third act’s celebration of the ‘bohemian’ life of fin-de-siècle Paris (where everything takes place, anyway).

To do that justice, you would need a huge cast and lavish staging – rather like a really good Act Two of La Bohème, but without the story interest. Superficially, it is La Bohème – penniless would-be poet in love with naive but lovely girl – but the rest of the piece is a bit reminiscent of Pelléas Et Mélisande, as inter-generational issues get in the way. Her stuffy, lower middle-class parents don’t want her to join the free-love world of Montmartre. That’s about it: first she goes, then she comes back, then she leaves them again.

It seems a bit odd to see all the characters in dicky bows and posh frocks, regardless of their social roles, and they are almost totally motionless, even when the orchestra is roaring into a waltz theme that gives Ravel’s La Valse a run for its money (maybe it’s where he got the idea from).

But the music is the thing. It’s a vivid and imaginative score (early on, almost reminiscent of Debussy, though it gets more conventional later) and gives top-quality singers some lovely opportunities.

Conductor Stephen Barlow had the right singers. Madeleine Pierard (Louise) has a rich, warm soprano and power where it’s needed. Adrian Dwyer (a recent Opera North find) is a very good French romantic tenor indeed. Michael Druiett (Opera North’s Wotan) and Susan Bickley (one of our best dramatic singers, heard in the north west and over the world) are excellent as Louise’s parents. And Adrian Thompson makes a lot of his two rather surreal symbolic roles.

The Northern Chamber Orchestra belies its size producing a sumptuous string sound, and the Festival Chorus (augmented for one scene as there are several minor roles to play as well!) sounds wonderful.

But it’s a piece with many longueurs as well – probably one of the worst opera texts ever written and sheer nonsense in places. A curiosity, but not a discovery.

***

 

Robert Beale