Review of Buxton Festival's Albert Herring

Albert Herring is one of my favourites among Britten’s operas. It’s a gentle comedy of English village life, as it was just after the Second World War (even though it’s based on a French story originally), with a libretto brilliantly written by Eric Crozier and some priceless opportunities for characterization by the principal singers.
Basically the story is that the village committee of Loxford meet to choose a May queen, who must be a girl of unimpeachable morals and manners – and there aren’t any in the village. So they choose the dutiful and rather naïve Albert, who helps his mother in the greengrocer’s shop, and make him King of the May instead. At the fete his lemonade is spiced with rum by the young and lively couple, Sid and Nancy, and he disappears for a night of … well, we never find out, as he tells a good but unlikely tale when the village worthies, having convinced he must be dead, realize he’s OK after all. He asks Nancy afterwards ‘I didn't lay it on too thick, did I?’, so what really happened in his night of self-discovery remains a mystery.
Albert Herring can work in a large opera house and also in a small-scale setting. At Buxton, director Francis Matthews had the opportunity to present it in an ideal environment, and with designer Adrian Linford’s detailed and evocatively piecemeal sets – adapting quite neatly to the changing scenes – the visual presentation was delicious. We are reminded of the post-war time of the opera’s composition by little details of crumbling masonry and left-over hardware from the years of conflict, and part of the appeal of the piece is that it catches the note of liberation (especially of young people) that was just on its cusp at the time.
Musically the performance was of a very high standard: conductor Justin Doyle has done the piece before in one of Opera North’s interpretations and knows not only it but most of the cast extremely well, as a number of them are Opera North regulars. Yvonne Howard as the tweedy grande dame and moral crusader, Lady Billows, was magnificent, and Heather Shipp brought Mrs Glum to being Albert’s mum. Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts was the pompous ass of a mayor, Mr Upfold, and Mary Hegarty delightful as the schoolteacher, Miss Wordsworth.
Kathryn Rudge was a star in her own right as Nancy the red-lipsticked blonde bombshell, and Morgan Pearse (whose gifts are new to me) was a model of a singer in tone, diction and acting ability as Sid.
Lucy Schaufer, Nicholas Merryweather and John Molloy completed the ‘adult’ cast admirably, and Sophie Gallagher and Bonnie Callaghan as the girls Emmie and Cis were excellent (Nicholas Challier, as young Harry, walked his part the night I went while RNCM rising star Charlotte Trepess sang his role from the wings).
Best of all was Bradley Smith as Albert, a young singer of golden tone and impressive acting ability – never over the top but believably engaging as the hapless Albert.
However, there was one aspect of this production which I thought intrusive and pointless. Francis Matthews has invented a silent character he calls ‘The Stranger’ – in his trilby and double-breasted suit I’d call him The Spiv – who seems to shadow Albert a lot and in the long entracte between acts two and three interacts with him in a kind of slow pas de deux.
Symbolic of something? Maybe – it’s an idea that’s been used before and adds very little to the genius of the original.

Albert Herring - Bradley Smith as Albert. Credit Robert Workman

Albert Herring - Morgan Pearse as Sid and Kathryn Rudge as Nancy. Credit Robert Workman

Review of Buxton Festival's Macbeth

This was a real achievement by Buxton Festival 2017. They chose the 1847, original, version of Verdi’s first operatic adaptation of a Shakespeare play (and he didn’t try any others until in his old age), which gave the performance something of a collectable cachet and made it part of a trilogy of ‘early Verdi’, with Giovanna d’Arco last year and Alzira coming next.

It also – fully justifiably – put the opera into the medium-size theatre ambience it would originally have had. Buxton has to beware of trying to do pieces that are too ‘grand’ for its stage, and it normally keeps its chorus to a total of 16. On this occasion that number was doubled by the inclusion of ‘Young Artists’, which was enormously worthwhile – but the work is so taut and economical in construction and style that it seems ideal for the intimacy of Matcham’s opera house.

In Elijah Moshinsky the festival had one of the world’s great Verdi directors, and in festival artistic director Stephen Barlow an equally gifted Verdi conductor. Moshinsky may not have had the kind of spending budget he would get at the Met in New York, but he made use of every device he could to make this the super-charged Romantic drama Verdi saw in it. There may only have been one three-sided-box of a set and few moveable props, mainly schoolroom benches (not much room for anything else when you have a big chorus on stage!), but it was designed with a yawning perspective to imply a world of mystery (Russell Craig the designer) and video projection and sound effects were there to eke out its imperfections – weather noises for the blasted heath, clanking and rumbling for the assembling army, and so on. The spooky goings-on of Macbetto’s last prophetic encounter with the witches, and the final battle, were both visually evoked by Stanley Orwin-Fraser with considerable elaboration, though some of his imagery seemed to stray from the descriptions in the text (which follows Shakespeare’s remarkably closely).

But the musical drama and the characterization of the central couple were both very powerful, and Barlow and his principals, Stephen Gadd and Kate Ladner, deserve much praise for those. Because of the nature of the story, the other roles are relatively subservient – Duncano (Ben Thapa) and Banco (Oleg Tsibulko) each get done in by half way through, and Macduff (Jung Soo Yun) and Malcolm (Luke Sinclair) only come into their own towards the end, but each role was well acted and strongly sung (as were the lesser ones and the children’s appearances).

But Gadd and Ladner were superb, not just individually but in the portrayal of their relationship. They seem to catch an almost sexual charge as they plot their horrible deeds together (Ora di morte e di vendetta), in a way you imagine notorious murderer couples of more recent history may perhaps have done. 

He has an incisive timbre and the ability to make even the hell-hound evoke some sympathy from us – she brought richly-layered psychology to the role Verdi called ‘Lady’: evil beyond words in the duet when she and her husband realize returning were as tedious as go o’er – and in the sleep-walking scene able to create the kind of out-of-body vocalization the composer wanted, while keeping well on top of his purely musical demands.

It’s a demanding work in every sense, and this was one of the best non-comedy operas the Buxton Festival has mounted for some time.

Stephen Gadd as Macbeth

Kate Ladner as Lady Macbeth

Opera for all of us - Buxton, MIF and Clonter

Opera in this part of the world comes in concentrated bursts. Opera North often offer us an early week in the year and a late one, with three different shows each time, and right now we have the Buxton Festival with its three in-house productions and one from Music Theatre Wales, plus BambinO, the ‘opera for babies’ provided by Scottish Opera in the Manchester International Festival, and next week Clonter Opera in Cheshire swings into action with its main summer production, The Marriage of Figaro.
Buxton is presenting the rarely seen 1847 Florence version of Verdi’s Macbeth, Britten’s comedy Albert Herring, and (in co-production with The English Concert), Lucio Silla, an opera Mozart wrote at the age of 16.
The festival has secured a great Verdi director in Elijah Moshinsky for Macbeth, whose interest in early Verdi has already borne fruit in Giovanna d’Arco in 2015 and will continue with Alzira next year.
Stephen Barlow, now in his fifth year as artistic director of the festival, conducts Macbeth, with Stephen Gadd in the title role, Australian soprano Kate Ladner (a wonderful Giovanna in Giovanna d’Arco) as Lady Macbeth, Moldovan bass Oleg Tsibulkov in his UK debut as Banquo, and South Korean tenor Yun Soo Yun as Macduff. Remaining dates are 14, 18 and 21 July.
Justin Doyle is conductor for Albert Herring – after piloting the excellent, intimate production of the piece for Opera North four years ago, which never toured. This time it’s directed by Francis Matthews, and the cast includes Opera North favourites Yvonne Howard (Lady Billows), Heather Shipp (Mrs Herring), Mary Hegarty (Miss Wordsworth), Jeffrey Lloyd Roberts (Mr Upfold) and Kathryn Rudge (Nancy). Remaining dates are 12, 15, 19 and 22 July (the 19th is a matinee).
Laurence Cummings conducts Lucio Silla, and Harry Silverstein directs a team including Joshua Ellicott, Fflur Wyn and Rebecca Bottone, with the outstanding soprano Madeleine Pierard as Cecilio. Remaining dates are 13, 16 and 20 July (the 16th is a matinee).
Buxton is also hosting Music Theatre Wales’ new opera, Y Tŵr (The Tower) by Guto Puw –  the first time a work in the Welsh language has been toured outside Wales. That’s on 17 July.
Over to Clonter for The Marriage of Figaro. There’s a public preview performance on 20 July, and main ones on 22, 24 (matinee), 25, 27 and 29 July. It’s directed by Stephen Medcalf, who’s set it in 1930s Spain during the civil war, exploring class dynamics and a strong gender divide – plus, of course, the work’s wit and heartrending emotion. It’s going to be sung in Italian with English surtitles, and Clive Timms conducts the select Clonter orchestra.
So we have plenty of operatic choice, but for a limited period only. I’ve reviewed BambinO and Lucio Silla already, and Macbeth, Albert Herring and Y Tŵr are to follow – and also The Marriage of Figaro.

Macbeth - Jung Soo Yun as Macduff and Company (credit Robert Workman)

Albert Herring - the Company (credit Robert Workman)

Review of Buxton Festival's Lucio Silla

Mozart was 16 when he composed this opera, and capable of taking complete musical charge of the thing, supervising rehearsals and so on. He’d had two previous hit operas at the theatre in Milan (precursor of La Scala) already by 1772.

It’s getting quite trendy to explore his early theatre works these days, and inevitably we look for pre-echoes of the masterstrokes we know from the operas of his maturity. And some are there in Lucio Silla: the story itself, of how a nasty despot finds enlightenment and generosity of spirit in the end, has later parallels in Idomeneo and La Clemenza di Tito; the imaginative use of the orchestra to convey moods of tension, resignation, poignancy or passion as a background to the action; a scene in a graveyard that makes you think (a bit) of Don Giovanni; and several testing arias for the high voices, written as only Mozart could to bring out the best and most beautiful sounds in virtuoso singers.

For this Buxton Festival/The English Concert co-production, conducted by Laurence Cummings, the singers were well chosen and delivered excellent results – in one case, outstandingly so. Soprano Madeleine Pierard, in the hero’s role of Cecilio (two of the four men in this story sing with high voices, so they’re women in ‘trouser’) was a knock-out in her delivery of arias such as Il tenero momento and in the trio Quell' orgoglioso sdegno.

Rebecca Bottone was also on top form, as his faithful fiancée, Giunia, looking terrific and singing with beauty and sensitivity over a wide range (in, for instance, Frà I pensier più funesti di morte).

Joshua Ellicott makes the title role a study in the Roman ruler as inhuman monster … until his last-minute change of heart. He almost chewed the scenery, until a bit of it fell off prematurely … so he pulled all the flimsy stuff down anyway. Fflur Wyn (as Celia) and Karolina Plicková (as Lucio Cinna, the other trouser role) were both very fine, the former in Quando sugl'arsi campi especially, and the latter in De più superbi il core.

As a story, Lucio Silla certainly makes you wait for its best moments, as the happy ending only comes around two hours and 45 minutes in, and the first night audience found the final affirmations of sweetness and light quite amusing.

As a production (Harry Silverstein, design by Linda Buchanan), it bore the marks of shoestring budgeting, with one basic framework of a set, and costumes from the left-overs box. I was disappointed by the static, all-face-the-audience presentation of the graveyard scene and others employing the chorus.  But at least it was better than a concert performance.

Lucio Silla - Madeleine Pierard as Cecilio and Rebecca Bottone as Giunia. Credit Robert Workman

Lucio Silla - Joshua Ellicott. Credit Robert Workman

Lucio Silla - finale scene. Credit Robert Workman

Review of MIF's BambinO - the 'opera for babies'

I got into BambinO by special permission – strictly you shouldn’t be allowed to see it unless you have a baby in tow – but since even our Youth Panel wouldn’t qualify for a show designed for the six to 18-month age group, it might as well be a grandad who went to see it.

What I saw was pretty impressive. It’s an hour long, almost, with an Act One, interval and then Act Two, and it tells a complete story, about a little mummy bird who finds she has an egg, which hatches into a baby that then grows and eventually flies away to make its own life.

There are two solo singers (Charlotte Hoather and Timothy Connor) and two instrumentalists (cellist Laura Sergeant and percussionist Stuart Semple, although both also sing at the beginning and end, so there you have a complete vocal quartet, too).

The music, by Lliam Paterson, is very cleverly put together, although his skill with pastiche of baroque and classical opera is so great you begin to look for the parallels with well-known works – especially after a duet for two bird people with the words ‘Pu-Pu-Pu-Pu-Pulcino’ at its heart! Heard something similar to that before …

The opening, growing from a peaceful murmur with the added effect of bird calls, had us entranced from the start. Especially the babies (14 of them, by my count), who were the most attentive and responsive audience I’ve ever seen … most of the time.

The singing is mostly in Italian (a little English, too, I think) but that emphasizes the fact that at this stage in music appreciation the words don’t matter. It’s about slightly larger-than-life people in colourful costumes, acting a story and singing as they do it, and looking and sounding amazing. Which is what grown-up opera is about, too, really.

Review of Manchester Camerata at Manchester Cathedral

Manchester Camerata finished its season with a world premiere – a concerto for two cellos and orchestra by Colin Riley, titled Warp and Weft. Gábor Takács-Nagy conducted in this and a symphony each by Haydn and Mozart, and Adi Brett led the orchestra and was also soloist with Caroline Pether in Philip Glass’s Echorus, just after the interval.

The new work was described as the world’s first double cello concerto, and in Guy Johnstone and Gabriella Swallow it had top-class soloists to bring it to birth (and, incidentally, make up an all-Chet’s line-up in its creation, as they and Riley are all alumni of the music school).

It’s certainly unlike a standard solo concerto in make-up and impact, despite its apparent three-movement content. Beginning very softly with a single, long-held note for one of the cellos, at first it builds an ever-denser chordal texture and introduces long and languid solo lines for the soloists while a virtuoso percussion role brings most rhythmic and indeed colouristic activity to the sound. The soloists eventually take their cue from the energetic kitchen noises, while the latter eventually seem to collapse from sheer overload, while soloists and strings sustain high, multi-part chords.

The centre movement is marked by stillness throughout, with slow glissandi chords almost reminiscent of the magical similar effects in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Tension quickly grows to a passionate climax, with help from the ever-active percussion, and equally rapidly subsides into reverie and multi-layered chords once more. In the third movement the cellos sing a mournful song together, while the percussion provide both rhythmic drive and timbral interest, and tremolando strings form a halo of sound. The tempo quickens, then staggers to a halt, before an acceleration, a pause and then frantic flurries and guttural percussion leading to the finish.

So there is little opportunity for showmanship for the named soloists – indeed, they share their role at times with the orchestral cellos, making for a more concertante-style contrast than a soloistic one. The structure is episodic in effect, and though Riley has created several notable ideas it’s difficult to see how they interconnect or hold together. Maybe he was trying to achieve too many different things at one go. Significantly, the biggest cheer from the audience was for percussionist Janet Fulton at the end.

The short work by Philip Glass, played without conductor, made an interesting contrast. Its regular, repetitive unfolding of string textures over a simple chordal sequence (and figurations not unlike Bach’s opening prelude of the ‘48’) were full of atmosphere and thoughtfulness.

The two symphonies received the imaginative and neatly pointed treatment, from the full orchestra, typical of Takács-Nagy’s interpretations. Haydn’s no. 38 (the ‘Echo’) began with charmingly emphatic phrasing and awareness of the many respects in which echo effects permeate its construction (in the first movement as well as the more obvious examples in the second). Its third and fourth movements have marvellously brilliant writing for solo oboe, a challenge to which Rachael Clegg rose like a star.

Mozart’s ‘Linz’ (no. 36, K425) has almost equally prominent roles for both oboe and bassoon in its Minuet and finale, which was an appropriate piece on which to bow out for the Camerata’s long-serving principal bassoon, Laurence Perkins, making his final appearance as a member of the orchestra. Needless to say, it was impeccably played and modestly contributed – from a player who is both expert and self-effacing and will be much missed.

Chamber orchestras' major end-of-season events

The tempo of music in Manchester now relaxes for a while – in many ways the climax of the whole 2016-17 season was Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder, conducted by Sir Mark Elder with combined forces of the Hallé, BBC Philharmonic and three choirs on 4^th June – you’ll find my review on http://www.theartsdesk.com/classical-music/gurrelieder-halle-bbcpo-elder-bridgewater-hall-manchester

But we still have some excitement to come. Thursday sees the world premiere of Colin Riley’s Double Cello Concerto, at Manchester Cathedral, with Manchester Camerata and soloists Guy Johnstone and Gabriella Swallow. It’s billed as the world’s first double cello concerto, and Riley has taken melodic patterns, harmonic progressions and dance form structures from Bach’s unaccompanied solo cello suites to make a concerto with ‘counterpoint high on the agenda’.

It’s in traditional three-movement form, however, Riley says, with ‘a sensuous double aria’ in the middle one. So perhaps a touch of the Bach two-violin concerto, also?

Haydn’s Symphony no. 38, Philip Glass’s Echorus for Two Violins and Strings, and Mozart’s Symphony no. 36 (the ‘Linz’) are also on the agenda, and Gábor Takács-Nagy conducts.

On Saturday the Northern Chamber Orchestra makes its long-awaited debut at The Stoller Hall in Chetham’s School of Music. This is a concert in aid of dementia charities, part of a new departure for the NCO under its manager Tom Elliott. But there’s a lot going for it in musical interest, too, putting as it does Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ concertos against Philip Glass’s second violin concerto, aka ‘The American Four Seasons’, with Chloë Hanslip as soloist. And poet Mike Garry is providing new verses to link the music to its context.

Tom Elliott says: ‘Mind Music is the name of NCO’s awareness and fund raising campaign for dementia charities. Throughout the coming seasons, the orchestra will be

giving several high-profile concerts, which will raise vital funds for charities including Parkinson’s UK, the Alzheimer’s Society and the PSP Association.

‘NCO will also be embarking on a programme of small concerts and workshops in care homes aimed at taking the power of live classical music to people not always able to get into concert halls and investing in the general cause that aims to help people live well with dementia.

‘As well as offering obvious therapeutic benefits, these workshops will also provide crucial data that it is hoped will form the basis of new research into the ability of live music to actually improve and repair dementia sufferers’ cognitive function. Eighty per cent of the proceeds from ticket sales of this concert will be going to the three charities named above.

‘Everyone at the Northern Chamber Orchestra is thrilled to have such a wonderful new hall so close to their Manchester base, and they are very excited about making this one of their regular concert venues.’

He adds: ‘‘The PSP Association is particularly close to my heart, as I lost my father to this relatively rare form of dementia a few weeks ago. It was the dementia that the great Dudley Moore died of, also.’

The Stoller Hall’s opening in April was a major event in Manchester music, and if I’m not mistaken its razor-sharp acoustic is going to be ideal for expert small forces such as the NCO’s. Let’s hope this is the beginning of a continued NCO presence in Manchester – why should Macclesfield have all the fun?