Charpentier - La descente d’Orphée aux enfers (Buxton, 2025)

Marc-Antoine Charpentier - La descente d’Orphée aux enfers

Vache Baroque, 2025

Jonathan Darbourne, Jeanne Pansard-Besson, Gwilym Bowen, James Geidt, Betty Makharinsky, Naho Koizumi, Katie-Louise Dobson, Frances Gregory, Francis Gush, Lars Fischer, Michael Roche, Fi Silverthorn, Kenji Matsunaga

Pavilion Arts Centre, Buxton - 24th July 2025

Buxton often invite a specialist early opera company as an addition to the main programme at the Buxton International Festival, and this music always seems to be a good fit for the Pavilion Arts Centre in the town. Not equipped with an orchestra pit, it isn't always the best way to see reduced productions of full scale operas (Ethel Smyth's The Boatswain's Mate suffered from this last year) and the stage does need to be rearranged to accommodate a chamber orchestra as well as a stage performance for a baroque opera, but with some creativity - like the Liberata Collective's production of Handel's Orlando done with Baroque Gesture in the theatre in 2023 - it seems to work spectacularly well. This year Vache Baroque brought a thrilling and very rare work to this year's festival, Charpentier’s chamber opera La descente d’Orphée aux enfers, and it was one of the highlights of the festival.

The opera was composed between 1686-87 while Charpentier was commissioned to write works for Marie de Lorraine, Duchess of Guise, a wealthy cousin of Louis XIV who became his patron. Charpentier, with a small company of musicians and singers, of which he was one himself, composed a number of pastoral and allegorical works for the Duchess at her urban palace in the Marais district of Paris. La descente d’Orphée aux enfers (The Descent of Orpheus into the Underworld) however remained unfinished at the time of the death of the Duchess in 1688. Intended to run to three acts, only the first two acts were set to music, the music for the third act lost or never completed, although it still exists in libretto form.

Charpentier has been going through a revival lately with a great deal of work being done on that front by William Christie. Having rescued and almost exhausted works by Rameau and Lully that have remained unheard for centuries, he and his Les Arts Florissantes company have turned their attention to this composer and will actually be performing a version of this same work in Valencia later this year (still without a third act sadly - although if ever there was a case for putting AI to good use, an attempt at recreation of the final act would be worth hearing). I'm sure that production will be marvellous, Christie always successfully dusting off ancient works like this and making them feel fresh and invigorating, but even if it is only half as good as this production by Vache Baroque at the Buxton International Festival, it will be marvellous.

The work itself is simply a marvel. Of course, the Orpheus myth has been the drama behind some of the greatest and indeed earliest opera works ever composed, but the story of a singer/musician, half-human/half-divine who charms demons and the god of the Underworld with his song, is an inspirational one for any composer. Charpentier follows the story we are familiar with, perhaps not jumping straight into the mournful grieving of Orpheus for the already expired Eurydice before plunging straight into hell as in C.W. Gluck's pared back Orphée et Eurydice, but allowing the work to have more life and colour, from the wedding celebration of the couple in Act I to the proposed depiction of the death of Orpheus torn apart by the furious Maenads in Act III.

Even without the missing third Act, Charpentier's La descente d’Orphée aux enfers is revealed here truly as a thing of great beauty. The strength of the composition is in how the Charpentier expresses the depth and dynamic range of human sentiments that the myth offers and elevates it with otherworldly music that is persuasive enough to provide an instructive moral on the nature of being human and yet through all those challenges aspire to follow our better nature. It has the purity of sentiment matched with artistry that Gluck was aspiring to bring back to opera in the reformist agenda of his own version of this story, in the process revealing himself to be a kind of Orpheus in this regard, reclaiming the power and the purity of the lyric drama.

With two extant magnificent acts to work with, Vache Baroque in this production directed by Jeanne Pansard-Besson, find beautiful contrasts in the settings and the music for each act. The wedding of Orpheus and Euridice in Act I is all beautiful pastel colours in the wedding costumes, highlighting the colour of the occasion and the music before it all turns to horror when Euridice is bitten by a snake and dies. The lively performance was of course stylised but felt natural and celebratory, not just of the wedding but of the music composed for it. The second Act was just as engaging and stylised for the journey into Hades, the condemned souls Orpheus encounters there wearing black and white costumes like Gothic clowns somehow feeling strangely appropriate. The movement choreography also played an important role - all credit to Simeon Qsyea - with two dancers included in the team, mirroring the flow of the haunting music in Act II but also the journey from ceremony to chaos in the first Act.

The singing voices also fully matched the intent of the composition and its meaning, playing their part in the remarkable dynamic of the drama. The fervency of Gwilym Bowen's Orpheus was matched by the unyielding authority of James Geidt's Pluton. The sheer strength of will that is needed to overcome such an impossible endeavour could be felt in such contrasts. In between there was some wonderful ensemble singing and performing, but I also noted wonderful lyricism in Frances Gregory’s Persephone, the bell-like clarity of Naho Koizumi's Daphné and the beautifully blended bass of Martin Roache’s dual role of Apollo and the Promethean Tityé. All were only enhanced by the complementary harmonies of the other voices.

The musical performance under the guidance of musical director Jonathan Darbourne was exquisite. It's always a pleasure to hear period instruments playing such beautiful music, but it's just as thrilling to hear it blend so well with the beautiful writing for voices. Sitting in the front row of the Pavilion Arts Centre takes you as close as you'll ever come to being on an opera stage, to being actually in the opera - another charm of this venue - and from there the separation of voices, the beauty of each and the harmonising of voice types just hits you and brings the whole depth of emotion of the tragedy of the story of Euridice and the boundless ambition of Orpheus to the forefront. It really is a tragedy that the third Act of the opera is lost, but this absorbing work and performance nonetheless felt wonderfully complete.

External links: Buxton International Festival

Mozart - The Impresario (Buxton, 2025)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - The Impresario

Buxton Festival Opera, 2025

Iwan Davies, Christopher Gillett, Richard McCabe, Joyce Henderson, Owain Rowlands, Jessica Hopkins, Dan D’Souza, Conor Prendiville, Nazan Fikret, Jane Burnell, Jamie MacDougall

Buxton Opera House, 24th July 2025

As the director who is directing the drama where a director is directing a drama where an impresario is putting on a new opera production for Buxton to be called The Impresario notes while looking pointedly at the audience, the public love you breaking the fourth wall. I’m not sure how many walls are being broken in this production of Mozart's The Impresario, but as the critic enjoying putting this first sentence together, he's absolutely right. Or partly right. It would be a bit more clever if there was some sort of purpose to it, but it seems that the only purpose of this one is to use it as an excuse to gather a number of random Mozart arias into a comic situation. Which is fine, but it's not Der Schauspieldirektor and it's not really even an opera.

Christopher Gillet, the writer and director of this production for the Dutch opera company Opera Zuid in collaboration with the Buxton International Festival does give you fair warning however that what you are seeing is by no means the work composed in 1786 as Der Schauspieldirektor, which in any case was never intended to be an opera. More a "comedy with music", a play with a few numbers by Mozart included, it was felt that a comedy filled with in-jokes written for an 18th century Viennese audience wouldn't translate over to a contemporary audience. So while the premise of the impresario auditioning two sopranos for a prima donna role in a new opera is retained, the whole comedy drama as it was originally written by Gottlieb Stephanie was ditched and Gillet wrote a new context for Mozart's musical pieces.

If I can get a little bit meta and take this up another level - told you he was right about this fourth wall thing - I did wonder what the motivation was for Buxton to put on a fairly obscure Mozart work that wasn't actually an opera and which had very little original music. Buxton do have a very good track record for pasticcios like Giorgiana and comic opera. Gillet observes that he drew influence from Amadeus (since the original Der Schauspieldirektor was set up in competition with Salieri), but with its chaotic behind-the-scenes look at putting on an opera production, there's evidently a lot of Donizetti's Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali here, a work put on in Buxton as Viva la Diva. An opera within an opera, rehearsals, competitiveness, divas and everyone loves an opera about opera, Viva la Diva was a great success in 2022, so why not do more of that sort of thing? You're preaching to the converted, so you can't go wrong. Well, surely not too far wrong.

Unfortunately, The Impresario has none of the brilliance and verve of Donizetti's opera, and the comedy is rather tepid. None of that is the fault of Robert McCabe, the actor in a non-singing role who plays Leo, the impresario tasked with coming up with a new opera and trying to appease the two divas who turn up expecting to be the star soprano of the new work. Or rather, the actor who is playing the part of the impresario, being directed by an on-stage director (who is being directed by another off-stage director who is not actually the 'real' director of The Impresario put on at the Buxton Opera House, Christopher Gillet). Robert McCabe is actually brilliant at showing his frustration with the script and directorial choices, breaking the action to discuss options with the director, holding the whole thing together well. It's just not that funny.

Breaking the fourth wall of the fourth wall in fact is about the height of the comedy that includes a running joke about poffertjes (small Dutch pancakes), as well as making reference to the "wealthy" patrons of the Buxton audience. There is a diva with broken English for laughs (Nazan Fikret actually very entertaining in the role of Madam Herz with some wonderful asides) and a few obvious pop culture jokes at the expense of modern opera and Regietheater where it is noted that the archetypes of The Magic Flute can be fitted onto Star Wars. (I’d rather see that as an opera and I don't even like Star Wars and I didn't think Claus Guth's 'La Bohème in space' was too successful). I'm afraid I have no idea why the set within the set was a room from a Vermeer painting. Like the joke about poffertjes, I suspect this might be tailored for Opera Zuid's Dutch audience, which kind of defeats the purpose of reworking the original 18th century libretto to make it more relatable.

Musically, this was far from successful as an opera. To fill it out musically, classic arias from Die Zauberflöte, Così fan tutte and Le Nozze di Figaro were inserted as audition pieces (all of those auditioning just happening to choose Mozart arias as their showpieces). I'm not a fan of opera galas or recitals myself, since removing arias from their original dramatic context drains them of their power and meaning, though they can work in a pasticcio. This was a sort of pasticcio, I suppose, but none of the pieces used connected with any dramatic developments or sentiments. 'Papageno, Papagena' in particular has no relevance whatsoever outside of the context of The Magic Flute.

It's telling that the best parts of The Impresario were the pieces composed by Mozart specifically for Der Schauspieldirektor, which come late in the performance: 'Ich bin die erste Sängerin' (I am the prima donna) and the finale of 'Jeder Künstler strebt nach Ehre' (Every artist strives for glory), a chorus about art for arts sake. Thin pickings I'm afraid for sitting through a collection of unremarkable gala renditions of Mozart arias held together by a few jokes. Conducted by Iwan Davies, the whole thing was well performed, the singing excellent, the numbers unfortunately lacking purpose, meaning and sentiment when divorced from their original context. A light entertainment with Mozart arias, The Impresario was barely a gala performance within a drama, much less an actual opera.

External links: Buxton International Festival

Bernstein - Trouble in Tahiti & Poulenc - La voix humaine (Buxton, 2025)

Trouble in Tahiti - Leonard Bernstein
La voix humaine - Francis Poulenc

Buxton Festival Opera, 2025

Iwan Davies, Daisy Evans, Charles Rice, Hanna Hipp, Chloé Hare-Jones, Harun Tekin, Ross Cumming, Allison Cook

Buxton Opera House, 23rd July 2025

There have been double bills of short operas at the Buxton Festival in the past that have adventurously even managed to connect two different works that appear to have very little in common. I reviewed The Maiden in the Tower & Kashchei the Immortal by Sibelius and Rimsky-Korsakov in 2012 and La Princesse Jaune and La Colombe by Saint-Saëns and Gounod in 2013, but I don't think there has been one since then. This double bill for the 2025 Buxton International Festival is a hard sell however; two works with a very bleak outlook on relationships which, for all their differences, are actually complementary on some level. It still takes a little creativity to link Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti with Poulenc's La voix humaine, but in the Buxton tradition Daisy Evans managed to do that quite successfully, even if that meant doubling up the misery.

As bleak as the outlook is in each of these works individually, their strength is that they are very good at what they do. What they do is present a miniature opera with a concentrated intensity that suits material that would probably be less effective (and unendurable) if they were drawn out any longer. Their very concision make them special, allowing a singular mood to be explored, offering a rare intensity that would feel out of place in a longer work (although Ambroise Thomas has a go at rivalling such emotions with his long soliloquies and a mad scene that lasted a whole Act in Hamlet at the Buxton Festival on the previous evening). Whether the two works gain or not from being connected - or whether they even should be brought together - is debatable, but as far as the Buxton production went it did intensify the works without overburdening their inherent simplicity.

Trouble in Tahiti is a challenge in itself, almost setting itself up to be deeply unlikeable in a way that is hard to define. Bernstein's treads a tricky line between parody and satire, between seducing the audience with catchy show tunes that celebrate the ideal of the typical suburban American married couple (of the 1950s) by setting it to sunny music, with a cheesy chorus, radio jingles and musical numbers while at the same time throwing in some dissonance that hints that there is a dark and corrupting side to the American dream that lies beneath the surface. The libretto throws out some cliched lines, undoubtedly sold by idealistic musicals like the film 'Trouble in Tahiti' that Dinah goes to see, but yet they also reveal truths about the circumstances of a married couple at a standstill in their relationship and about to grow more distant.

There is a lot to 'unpack' in the contrasts of the sunny music and the reality of the disintegration of a relationship, so what you probably don't need in a production of Trouble in Tahiti is anything that just makes it even more 'troubling'. Or maybe you do, because while the opera hints at Sam being a bit on the fresh side with his secretary - something he doesn't even consider as cheating, but just a part of conforming to the natural law of being a man - Daisy Evans' production went further to show evidence of Sam's philandering. She does this quite cleverly (and maliciously) by tying Bernstein's work into Poulenc's La voix humaine.

The presence of Allison Cook behind a lace curtain in a warmly lit room off to one side of stage was an early clue to what was to come in the second part of the double bill, the little box room practically an ideal of a typical set for Poulenc's La voix humaine, a room designed to feel perfectly claustrophobic for a woman waiting on a phone call from her lover, feeling trapped and caged with no way out of her predicament. What you might not have expected however was Sam to wander into the room while he is supposed to be out at the gym and start undressing the lady in the room. It's there that Sam goes to deliver his master of the universe soliloquy, boasting of his masculine superiority, winning another kind of 'trophy'. Is the lady of La voix humaine his secretary, Mrs Brown? She's going to be let down by the time we get to the second part of the double bill. Things really aren't going to get any more cheerful.

"That was the most depressing opera I've ever seen", a lady exclaimed at the interval in the bar of the upper circle at the Buxton Opera House. "Wait until you see the next one", I warned. I didn't of course spoil it for the lady by telling her that La voix humaine is about a woman unravelling at the breakup of a relationship who attempts - and maybe even succeeds - in committing suicide while on the phone to her ex-lover. Perhaps I should have said something, as I'm sure she went home traumatised after Allison Cook's performance as the lady left hanging on the telephone.

That indeed is the unfortunate premise and fate of the lady of Poulenc's (what is usually a) monodrama. The perspective of the double bill production changes accordingly however, the little box room off to the side of Trouble in Tahiti opening up to show a woman spilling sleeping tablets over the dresser and floor as she tries to reconnect a faulty telephone connection so that she can pour her heart out to a man who traditionally we don't actually see on the stage. It's usually the case that no other figures are seen and no other voices heard - or needed in this intense piece - but here the phone is picked up in the home of Sam and Dinah.

Given this insight into the other side of the phone line serves to take in the wider context of what we are witnessing. We see Sam making silent gestures, trying to be placatory and being somewhat insensitive to what he probably sees as emotional blackmail, while it's clear that it really amounts to a call for help to simply hear a sympathetic human voice. That isn't found either when Dinah, tired of these mysterious calls to her husband, picks up the phone and is devastated by what she hears. Not for the woman's sake, of course, but for her own marriage and for which she will probably forgive her husband in the end.

La voix humaine doesn't need this. It's debatable whether it helps in any way to visualise the person on the other end of the line, and take such a determined stand on what their nature might be. We already get hints of that from the one-sided conversation, so it doesn't need to be spelled out. There is something to be said for just letting us see the woman, 'Elle', and Allison Cook did not need any additional props or bodies (the chorus from Tahiti also make mournful appearances) to get across the state of mind of her character. But the touches and the connections were subtle and unobtrusive, and it seemed that rather than opening up the claustrophobic drama, it may indeed have made it feel even more traumatic.

There was perhaps a greater challenge for Iwan Davies and the Buxton Festival Orchestra to marry together the two completely different styles of music for the two short operas, but they presented both superbly. As with the outstanding Hamlet the previous evening, the key to really making all these pieces work is in the singing. Perhaps even more so here since there is a lot of intense solo singing, although Hamlet had that too. Charles Rice as Sam and Hanna Hipp as Dinah were both tremendous, engaging you in their own personal worlds and making you feel the depth of their troubles in their clashes. Allison Cook, much like her Gertrude the previous night, also had a rather extended physical meltdown in this production of La voix humaine as 'Elle', and carried you along, all too emotionally involved in the torment she was going through. 

Whoever was responsible for pairing these two operas together - I imagine it was the Festival Opera director Adrian Kelly - really challenged the audience and put you through the wringer. You weren't going to see many smiling faces when you left the opera house, but it would be hard not to be impressed with the unique qualities of these works, the performances and the creative artistry in making two short operas that never sound all that appealing in synopsis come fully alive and show deep insights into their human characters.

External links: Buxton International Festival

Thomas - Hamlet (Buxton, 2025)

Ambroise Thomas - Hamlet

Buxton International Festival, 2025

Adrian Kelly, Jack Furness, Alastair Miles, Allison Cook, Gregory Feldmann, Richard Woodall, Yewon Han, Joshua Baxter, Tylor Lamani, Dan D’Souza, Per Bach Nissen, John Ieuan Jones, James Liu

Buxton Opera House, 22nd July 2025

Adapting Shakespeare's Hamlet as a grand opéra would necessarily have imposed certain conventions that could only work against the dramatic flow of the play, not to mention the surely unacceptable requirement to rewrite the play's bleak conclusion, so you can't really fault Ambroise Thomas then for the approach he takes. I doubt that even Verdi, a contemporary of the French composer, would have done it much differently since his own versions of Shakespeare take similar necessary liberties with the plot and characterisation to fit with the conventions of the opera form. Well, he might not have included three (not just one, not just two, but three! Or at least two and a half) grand opéra drinking songs, but you can't fault Thomas for excess when it comes to this particular work. To state the obvious, there is a lot of drama in Hamlet.

And death. A lot of dark drama, death, madness, vengeance (you almost wish Verdi had given it a go on that basis, but we have Macbeth and Otello, not to mention Falstaff, and those are all great in their own way) and, drinking songs notwithstanding, that's the ominous tone that rightly dominates in Thomas's Hamlet. Correspondingly, that's the tone that is established in the 2025 Buxton International Festival production directed by Jack Furness and conducted by Adrian Kelly. It's dark, dramatic in voices, ominous in the music, dynamic in its performance, matching the pent up anger of the production's Hamlet, Gregory Feldmann, who paces the stage like a tiger, raging out self-absorbed soliloquies. It maintains this mood so effectively that it comes as no surprise then when we come to the Act IV, we find that Thomas has composed not just a mad scene for Ophelia, but a whole mad Act.

But there are genuine valid reasons for such excess of emotion in Hamlet. Perhaps Thomas's lyrical score and the truncated French language libretto shorn of the original's poetry don't get to the heart of the many factors that contribute to its depth of expression, but the music although romanticised is dramatically attuned. What it needs to work on stage (and rarely achieves in my experience) is a director who is prepared to delve into what remain contemporary and relevant themes in the play that are not fully exploited in the opera version. Jack Furness does just that in a direct and simple way without over-imposition. One of the many themes that can be drawn out of Hamlet for greater attention is the subject of what it is like to live under surveillance in a corrupt, self serving and authoritarian state and the impact this has on society. If there is any theme that is more relevant to the world (and the UK) today, a way that lets us see deep into the heart of the drama of Hamlet and see the changes happening in our contemporary world reflected back at us, it's this.

This is handled well by the director with simple side touches that don't impose on the dramatic content of the opera, but rather give it depth and context. We get a hint of it right at the beginning of the production when a lone protestor runs to the front of the stage during the wedding of the new king Claudius to his dead brother's wife Gertrude with a poster that suggests 'No Kings' or 'Not My King'. He is quickly bundled off stage by heavily armed militia who continue to carry out brutal arrests and beatings in the musical interludes between acts. At the beginning of the final act a hooded woman is led across the stage, knelt down and summarily shot in the back of the head to the shock of the audience.

Where this is relevant is in how it feeds into Hamlet's behaviour. With such state oppression and killing of civilians going on in the background, his fury at the man who he believes has killed and taken the place of his own father is compounded by his inability to translate that righteous anger into action and prevent such wider crimes against the populace. You can feel that in every scene; it's not self-pitying grief but self-questioning doubt. Hamlet rages impotently and hates himself for it, retreating into madness. In that context, the original 'happy ending' composed by Thomas which hurtles in there with no warning, works really well here. Or is made to do so by Jack Furness in the Buxton production.

Thomas's original ending sees Hamlet alive and crowned king, but since it wasn't felt that this twist would be accepted in Shakespeare's own country, it had to be reworked for the opera's London premiere a year later in 1869. Not that Hamlet expiring over the dead body of Ophelia in the final scene is any truer to Shakespeare, but letting Hamlet live and become ruler opens up more questions that it resolves. Here, since the director has laid the groundwork for what a corrupt ruler has done to his people, Hamlet knows that action is needed; the voices of the dead tell him. He knows also that he can't just unleash chaos and leave it for someone potentially worse to come along, but needs to own it. Even Shakespeare's play, although it ends on a completely different note, nonetheless has a similar message that Hamlet's story must serve as an example to others.

What also helped the opera work so well in the Buxton International Festival production was a balanced restraint in the set designs and presentation. For the most part the drama takes place on narrow platforms on a wide staircase. It looked like Sami Fendall's set designs would be inadequate for such an epic drama but - a little like Olivier Py's production of this opera - it recognises that the real drama in Hamlet is an interior struggle. As such, Jake Wiltshire's hugely effective lighting and swirling mists provided a great deal of support to make Thomas's score feel much more ominous than it might have otherwise. There were however additional touches where required; a slatted wall a cage where Hamlet prowled like a tiger unable to pounce on his vulnerable uncle, and the riverbank scene for Ophelia; both scenes simple but effective. The underlying menace was ever present in the US ICE-like immigration military troops maintaining order by rounding up protestors and troublemakers.

Conducted by Buxton's musical director Adrian Kelly, the festival orchestra gave a balanced reading of the score with no inappropriate Verdi-like bursts of thunder. Instead, the flowing melodies and the dramatic accompaniment of the score were allowed to work within the context of the stage production to achieve the necessary impact. Best of all was the singing. There was well-deserved acclaim for Yewon Han's Ophélie. She very much has a key role in the opera and not just a scene stealing role despite being written to appeal to a French audience in thrall to the character, but here the role was dramatically coherent and, as sung by Yewon Han, vocally effective. Allison Cook was excellent as Gertrude. Often the victim of Hamlet's anger and abuse, she rose to the challenge of the role and you really felt Gertrude's conflicted position. Alastair Miles is still one of the best bass singers in the UK and was outstanding as Claudius. Gregory Feldmann's intensely delivered soliloquies as Hamlet were met with surprising silence during the performance. That was more of an indication that they were too raw, too real, and it seemed rude to intrude upon his grief with applause that would have broken the spell. At the curtain call however he received and deserved every plaudit and cheer.

I haven't had a lot of time for Thomas's Hamlet up to now, but to be fair it is not performed that often and as an opera it has to compete with one of the greatest plays in the English language, in French moreover and in a grand opéra format, so the challenges are considerable. The production I saw in Strasbourg in 2011 appeared to have been heavily cut and seemed to me disjointed and I couldn't get past what had been done to Shakespeare's poetry and dramatic drive, As an actor himself, Olivier Py showed that there was considerably more you could do with the work in his 2014 production for at La Monnaie in Brussels, but Jack Furness and Buxton have proved again that neglected works with perceived flaws can have those weaknesses turned into strengths. What they do here in opera terms is what any dramatic presentation should do when confronted with a complex work like Hamlet, which is make it feel vital, relevant and relatable. And any production of Hamlet whether theatrical or operatic should have you gripped, shocked and impressed, and this superb production at Buxton did just that.

External links: Buxton International Festival

Smyth - The Boatswain's Mate (Buxton, 2024)

Ethel Smyth - The Boatswain's Mate (Buxton, 2024)

Buxton International Festival, 2024

Rebecca Warren, Nick Bond, Elizabeth Findon, Joshua Baxter, Theo Perry, Richard Woodall, Rebecca Anderson

Pavilion Arts Centre, Buxton - 19th July 2024

It’s worth saying a few words about Ethel Smyth, since she is a rare and unusual composer and not just because she is a woman - there are few enough of those achieving any prominence even today, never mind back in the early 20th century - although her gender is certainly significant and plays into her work. It may even be seen as a factor in a light comedy opera like The Boatswain’s Mate.

Ethel Smyth is English of course, but musically educated in Europe in Leipzig, where she was familiar with, studied alongside and was on speaking terms with many notable composers of the day. Aside from her scandalous affairs, mostly with women, probably the most significant thing about Smyth was her dedication to women's rights and the suffragette movement, which even led to her serving time in prison. She composed the anthem for the movement, 'March of the Women', and the music for that even appears within the overture to The Boatswain’s Mate. If it has any significance there however, it's only to the extent that the opera features a strong woman at the centre, one rumoured to be based on Emeline Pankhurst.

Directed by Nick Bond, the Buxton International Festival production notionally sets this in the 1980s, but it could be set in the original period of the composition (1913-14) or as an 18th century Richard Brinsley Sheridan comedy of manners for all the difference it makes. It has that timeless essential English character which even if you brought it up to date with mobile phones and social media (set in the 80s may be the most modern you can get without having to consider such technology), it wouldn't age or date the material in the slightest. The whole farce takes place within the most traditional of places that have scarcely dated over the ages; an English pub. It could even be an episode of EastEnders only for the fact that it's not full of miserable people.

Well, there is one miserable person. Harry Benn has been continually making what he believes are honourable advances on the widowed landlady of The Beehive, Mrs Waters, and he can't understand how she could possibly turn down a genuine catch like himself, a former services man, a retired boatswain. He enlists the services of a passing visitor at the pub, another former serviceman Ned Travers, to help him win over Mrs Waters. He arranges for Ned to break into the Beehive at night and stage a fake burglary so that he can come to an heroic rescue. Unfortunately, things don't go as planned and, catching on to the scheme, Mrs Waters gets her own back by pretending that she has shot the unknown intruder dead.

Based on a story by W.W. Jacobs, The Boatswain's Mate doesn't have the most complex of plots and the characters aren't particularly deep, but it's a very entertaining and amusing piece nonetheless. It's as quintessentially English as Gilbert and Sullivan or Britten’s Albert Herring and just as delightful. Whether you can apply the same judgement to Ethel Smyth's music is rather more difficult to judge from the Buxton International Festival performance in the Pavilion Arts Centre. The venue only really permits a reduced version of the score and it's not one authorised by Smyth herself; a piano trio, with violin and cello, led from the piano purposefully by musical director Rebecca Warren.

There is nothing that jumps out about the arrangements other than their suitability for the comedy drama. It starts out with some scene setting, some lager louts singing (another thing that never changes regardless of whatever period you set this in), some spoken dialogue observations by the main characters to inform the audience of their predicament, each of them given an aria to express that more lyrically. The score develops as the work progresses, dropping the spoken dialogue as the rolling drama takes over. It's light and very easy to just let the flow carry you along, none of the scenes, arias or colourful secondary characters overstay their welcome in a two-part one-act opera.

The singing from the three principals is excellent. Elizabeth Findon as Mrs Waters, Joshua Baxter as Harry Benn and Theo Perry as Ned Travers​ bring great character to their roles, each with voices that can carry much more forcefully than the reduced musical score and the smaller sized Pavilion Arts Centre theatre could reasonably accommodate. With a couple of good character roles from Richard Woodall as the Policeman and Rebecca Anderson as the barmaid Mary Ann, not to mention the boisterous singing of the chorus of drunks, all performed in an attractive and functional set, there was much to enjoy in this entertaining production.

There is however nothing here that you could reasonably characterise as 'feminist' by today's standards or even by the standards of the kind of roles male composers of the same period and even earlier were writing (Violetta Valery, Tosca). It is what it is however, a light comic opera, and you can't reasonably expect any great revelations here either musically or in the libretto other than observations along the lines of 'Men, they're all alike'. Other than a strong woman at the centre, I'm not sure you can even gain any real insight into Ethel Smyth, her musical character and what she is about from this work and this production. Perhaps a look at the other recently revived Smyth opera The Wreckers might help give a more rounded view. As rare works alongside the main stage opera at Buxton however, The Boatswain's Mate and Haydn's La Canterina provided a pleasant diversion that balanced out the rather heavier fare of Verdi and Handel in the festival's main programme.

External links: Buxton International Festival

Handel - Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (Buxton, 2024)

George Frideric Handel - Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno

Buxton International Festival, 2024

Christian Curnyn, Jacopo Spirei, Anna Dennis, Hilary Cronin, Hilary Summers, Jorge Navarro Colorado

Buxton Opera House - 18th July 2024

Performances of Handel operas can be hard work for the audience as much as a challenge for a director to make something of them, but they really shouldn't be. His oratorio works evidently need an extra little bit of dramatic action when performed as staged works, and those that you could categorise as allegorical fables even more so. The Buxton International Festival production of Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno ('The Triumph of Time and Disillusion' as it is normally referred to in English) does its best to find a suitable context to get across the moral message without being too stuffy about it, and if it doesn't entirely make it work dramatically, it at least succeeds in getting across the meaning of the work and highlights the extraordinary beauty of the piece.

Much as he 'excavated' Rossini's La donna del lago to bring it into the present day for Buxton in 2022, director Jacopo Spirei comes up with a fine modern-day situation that establishes the right character for each of the allegorical figures of Beauty, Pleasure, Time and Disillusion (or Disenchantment but closer to meaning Truth). Not quite as hard-hitting as Krysztof Warlikowsi's production for Aix-en-Provence in 2016, here these figures are at least more clearly of a whole, depicted as a family in a drab living room which you could probably call life. It's Christmas time moreover, so there is a little optimism at home even if it's just the delusion of Beauty who thinks this is the way it will always be, that nothing will ever change. Beauty and her sister Pleasure certainly live in the moment, but their father and mother, Time and Disillusion, have some harsh realities to lay out before them.

And they don't mince their words. Well, the words are fairly flowery, as you would expect in a Handel work, one moreover with a libretto written by a Cardinal, Benedetto Pamphili, but the director has a way of making sure the truths hit home. Not so much perhaps in Act I, which drags its feet a little, as do Beauty and Pleasure who refuse to accept the wisdom and experience of their elders. The Second Act, which has one or two of Handel's most beautiful arias including the famous and beautiful Lascia la spina, is a different matter as reality starts to hit home. The opening of the Christmas presents for Beauty turns out to be is a disappointment, but it's not half as stripping of any illusions as Time dragging a coffin onto the stage to remind her that Beauty fades and dies. Nothing too subtle about the delivery of that message.

That's as much as you can do without going the full Warlikowski with this work, where the director of the Aix production layered on elements of the personification of these competing ideas as being on opposing hemispheres of the brain and made allusions to the works of Derrida. What designer Anna Bonomelli manages to do to elevate the Buxton production to a suitable sphere somewhere between reality and moralising is place this within a beautiful set with effective lighting design that contributes to establishing the nature and tone of the work.

It can still be a bit of a slog but that's the nature of Pamphili's somewhat overly florid and solemn libretto, and it's also the nature of Handel's graceful musical treatment, striking something of a mournful note throughout. There are no Vivaldi-like sprints to enliven the uniformity of tone here, but there are some nice directorial touches that find an underlying dark humour and bring out the poignancy that is most definitely there to be found in the music and the situation.

For all its moralising solemnity, Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno is still an astonishing work of great beauty, particularly if you are fortunate enough to hear it played live in a suitable venue with singers of quality and suitability for these roles. That is where the Buxton production succeeds brilliantly. The Buxton Opera House itself is also perfect for reduced orchestration, an ideal size for intimacy and acoustic fidelity. With Christian Curnyn conducting the period instrument orchestra of the Early Opera Company - as previously with their Acis and Galatea here in 2021 - it sounded marvellous, beautifully paced and measured, the music balanced with the singing, allowing you to hear and feel the playing of every instrument and get the meaning behind every sentiment.

Ultimately, the brilliance of the work is in the singing. These are gorgeous roles in a range of complementary voices and the casting was impressive, each of them given the opportunity to express their characters. I was particularly taken with the fullness of voice of Hilary Cronin as the Goth dressed Piacere/Pleasure. Hilary Summers' darkly seductive contralto made Disinganno/Disillusion an irresistible force for unwelcome truths, giving the role an otherworldly quality as well as making it feel real and something you could relate to. Which I suppose is the best you can do with a work like this, and it's clear that this is the intention of the director. Jorge Navarro Colorado as Tempo/Time was marvellous, blending beautifully with Summer's Disinganno in their Act II duet. There was some fine singing too from Anna Dennis as Belleza/Beauty, conveyed all the superficiality of the character as well as her deeper emotional response to the dawning - if never wholehearted - acceptance of her fate. 

Not a cheery work by any means, but as far as the Buxton International Festival's treatment of Handel's oratorio goes, this is one regard in which beauty and pleasure win out.

External links: Buxton International Festival

Verdi - Ernani (Buxton, 2024)

Giuseppe Verdi - Ernani

Buxton International Festival, 2024

Adrian Kelly, Jamie Manton, Roman Arndt, André Heyboer, Alastair Miles, Nadine Benjamin, Jane Burnell, Emyr Lloyd Jones, Theo Perry

Buxton Opera House - 17th July 2024

"Please be aware: This production involves death, blood, themes of physical and mental abuse, torture and suggestion of gun violence"

If you didn't know which opera you were going to see, the trigger-warning signs placed around the Buxton Opera House would at least give you a reliable hint that it could only be an early Verdi opera. In fact it could be any early Verdi opera. In this case it is indeed one of those rarely performed works, Ernani, with Act II just before the interval resounding to cries of "Sangue e vendetta!" ("blood and vengeance!"). I wonder how they managed without trigger-warnings in Verdi’s time when this was first performed in 1844. Perhaps that's why there was so much oppression and war being waged by authoritarian rulers and dictators back then, whereas now ...oh, hold on…

Sangue e vendetta indeed, there is not a lot of subtlety in early Verdi, but as was noted recently in the early Verdi compilation opera Rivoluzione e Nostalgia at La Monnaie in Brussels, there is quite a lot of rousing music and singing and a lot of full-blooded drama in these works. Engaging plots not so much, in fact with three powerful men struggling for the hand of one woman, Ernani is not unlike the situation that La Monnaie developed for their early Verdi mixtape, in as much as it's fairly standard plot fare. Attila, I seem to recall, has much the same situation. It's tempting to compare this one with Don Carlos, which itself isn't perfect, but it shows up the vast difference between early and later Verdi. One need only compare how Don Carlo (later to become Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor) here reflects on power in his aria at the tomb of Charlemagne with a similar tomb scene in Don Carlos (over the tomb indeed of Charles V) and the difference in emotional torment and soul searching is apparent.

Not that it matters greatly as far as Ernani is concerned. Plot and character isn't everything. Well, it is perhaps for most other works of opera and drama, but Verdi is a special case. In some respects the composer is tied to tradition and to the taste for historical melodrama of the day, to characters making wild romantic gestures and binding themselves unforced into grand promises that only serve to make the plot even more dramatic. There is only one thing that can make that even more dramatically powerful (powerful doesn't necessarily mean credible) and that’s Verdi's music played at full tilt.

And he really goes for it in Ernani, as does the Opera North orchestra under conductor Adrian Kelly at the 2024 Buxton International Festival. The music is not as heavy-handed as you might think, but never passes up an opportunity to throw in a huge chorus with a punchy flourish at the end. The main feature that Verdi also relies on is the need for singers of an exceptionally high standard for the four of the demanding central roles. You get that right and you have something powerful on your hands, but weaknesses in any of those roles and the whole thing falls apart. There is no question that the exceptional cast assembled here were as good as you could hope for this opera a fighting chance of success, but the options for the director Jamie Manton were limited and despite the strengths elsewhere in the music and the production, he wasn't able to find a way to make it work successfully as a drama.

Considering what he had to work with as a plot, it seems like a reasonable idea to focus instead on character and the interaction between the principal figures of the drama. It's an option I suppose, but it turns out not to be a particularly fruitful avenue to explore. The plot and the motivations of the characters are not complicated as much as a bit daft, or daft to non-existent, certainly in the first two acts. Somehow all three pretenders for the hand of Elvira all contrive to be in the same place as the unfortunate lady is being prepared for marriage, and they have a big row about it. That's about the height of the first half of the work. 

Acts III and IV involves some contrived twists around a secret society of conspirators,  the secret identity of the bandit Ernani being in reality Don Juan of Aragon, a king in disguise and an unusual vow where Ernani promises to kill himself on the sound of a bugle. You would hope that he doesn't come within earshot of just some random bugler. If it wasn't for the fact that they are notable medieval historical figures all squabbling for the hand of the Duke's niece (including the Duke himself), it would be a banal romantic drama. Which, since it's not being played historically in this production, I'm afraid that's how it comes across. It's undoubtedly hard, but with Verdi's score surely not impossible to make these figures something a little less one-dimensional.

The stage production design relied on dramatic lighting which was highly effective for the charged scenes, the all-purpose triangular recessed set serving well for bedroom, court and crypt. Not related to any period however, it felt rather generic and it didn't place the drama into any kind of meaningful context that would make it feel relatable or even credible. That's a tall order I must admit, and based on a previous viewing of this opera in a more traditional setting it may indeed be an impossible ask, but it didn't get a lot of help in direction and character that lacked the conviction to match the overheated drama.

The singing and dramatic performances however were not lacking in any way. Let's start with the chorus as they play a major role in ramping up the tension throughout. They were in fine voice here, providing those big moments to lift the work up above the banal individual romantic and personal dramas. All too often in these Verdi works it's the female soprano in an extremely demanding role that is often the weak link, but that certainly wasn't the case here. Nadine Benjamin was simply outstanding as Elvira with a big voice and fiery delivery. Roman Arndt was terrific as Ernani, presenting a strong pairing with Benjamin's Elvira. The the other two pretenders for her hand also have to be made of stern stuff, as Don Carlo is a king and Don Ruy Gomez de Silva is a duke, both needing to be formidable challengers to Ernani. André Heyboer and Alastair Miles ensured that was the case.

Musically, this was a thrilling account of Ernani, certainly worthwhile to demonstrate the often underrated qualities of Verdi's early work, particularly when you have singing and musical direction of this calibre. Unfortunately, Francesco Maria's Piave's libretto for this old-fashioned romantic melodrama does not hold up well, and despite his best efforts of the director Jamie Manton, there is little depth of human character to be found in these stock historical caricatures.

External links: Buxton International Festival

Handel - Orlando (Buxton, 2023)

George Frideric Handel - Orlando (Buxton, 2023)

Liberata Collective, Buxton International Festival, 2023

Adrian Butterfield, Christian Joel, Joanna Harries, Olivia Doutney, Susanna MacRae, Jolyon Loy

Pavilion Arts Centre, Buxton - 10th July 2023

Although I'm very much in favour of modernising and keeping opera productions relevant and meaningful to a contemporary audience, I'm not opposed in principle to historically informed productions. Like any production, it's how well it's done and how much it is in service to the work that counts, and if either approach means that you just get to hear more from Handel and other baroque opera composers - particularly with period instruments - then I'm all for it. The Liberata Collective certainly put an interesting spin on their production of Orlando for the 2023 Buxton International Festival by staging it in the authentic Baroque Gesture style.

I've never seen a Baroque opera performed in the style of the period, other than Pierre Audi's rather dull historical versions of Tamerlano and Alcina, so it was hard to know what to expect. With Baroque Gesture, there are strict guidelines on posture and stage position that might not even really be evident to a modern audience, but the acting and exaggerated signifying hand gestures risk being appearing mannered to a bemused audience rather than informative. Or silly even if it turned out to be anything like the odd period style acting I witnessed at the Opéra Royal de Wallonie, Liège's 2013 production of Grétry's Guillaume Tell, which was something of an acquired taste to say the least. On the other hand, if the period acting turned out to be as revelatory as hearing such early opera works performed using period instruments, this Orlando would be of great interest to anyone looking for as authentic a performance of Handel as possible.

And in some ways it was, although perhaps more for academic interest than for bringing out any other newly rediscovered dimension out of Handel's Orlando. The Liberata Collective helpfully provided a booklet with the kind of gestures to expect to see on the stage as well as and what they mean, and also gave some historical background on the practice. Since this opera would have been performed in the original Italian on its original performance at the King’s Theatre in London on 27 January 1722, surtitles would obviously not have been provided, but a translated libretto would have been handed out. The audience would also be familiar with the gestures operating like signifiers or pointers to what is being described on the text. So lots of swooning and pointing to the heavens, but the mannerisms are there just as much to serve the function of dramatic style and expression.

And, if this Orlando is anything to go by, they do hold the attention in a 'look at me, look at me!' kind of way, although translations displayed to the screens at the sides of the stage may have distracted from a focus on the performers and the gestures now and again. You could look at this as the best of both worlds, as there were moments to enjoy in the gestures and the performances as well as in the English translation without too much being compromised.

Orlando however is not the most exciting episode in Ludovico Ariosto’s epic poem Orlando Furioso, nor indeed the most interesting of the three Handel operas based on the work. To compete with the magic enchanted isles of Alcina and the romantic medieval melodrama of Ariodante, Handel even introduced the characters of Dorinda and Zoroastro, neither of whom appear in the original work and, unlike many of the works he created when he moved to England which reused elements from earlier works, composed entirely new music for Orlando. Nonetheless, it's still a challenge not just to hold attention as really invite you to care about the romantic drama going on on the stage. 

The premise in Orlando is laid out at the start. Zoroastro, unhappy about the complicated and unresolved love drama going between the Orlando, Angelica the Princess of Cathay, the prince Medoro and the shepherdess Dorinda, casts a spell on the knight to turn him away from effeminate love and get back to doing what he is best, which seems to be being prone to fits of madness and violence, taking up a sword and slaughtering Saracens in the Crusades. Thereafter, both women and Medoro are left rather confused about Orlando's attentions and quite keen to get away from him, until Zoroastro relents and brings him back to his senses.

The focus may be on gestural expression, but the production doesn't fail to recognise that nature also features in the libretto and suggests another dimension to the work. Two laurel trees decorate the stage indicating the bucolic setting, but the focus on nature and what it says about the nature of man is not emphasised or explored quite as successfully as it was in the direction of Mozart's Il re pastore which ventured deeper into that territory the previous evening at the Buxton International Festival. There's an interesting comparison to be made on the respective approaches to this kind of Baroque opera, and one wonders whether the Mozart would have gained anything from a Baroque Gesture style performance. As it is, each opera worked in its own terms, but it shows that for all their superficial simplicity there are many ways to bring out deeper aspects from such works.

Here of course, with Adrian Butterfield directing the Ensemble Hesperi from the violin and with the use of period instruments, the emphasis was on the quality of the music of Orlando and its ability to carry the dramatic intent of the opera. And being Handel of course, it's absolutely beautiful. With the small ensemble to the right of the stage, it was more than enough to spring this work into life. There was some fine singing as well from Christian Joel singing countertenor as Orlando, and Jolyon Loy's drop-in appearances as Zoroastro had the necessary impact. Despite the gestured mannerisms and the sometimes playful bemused response to Orlando's conflicted emotions, the quality of the performances of Joanna Harries as Medoro, Olivia Doutney as Angelica and Susanna MacRae as Dorinda all commanded attention. 

Attention is vital in Orlando, to feel involved in the drama and what the music brings to it. If there is one aspect that Baroque Gesture brought to this, it's some indefinable sense of balance and movement. The entrances and exits felt natural and timely, adding a sense of order and structure that suggests that this lost art is an essential element of Baroque opera. Everything felt in its right place to the extent that when Zoroastro steps in and repairs the harm that Orlando has done, it doesn't feel quite as much the deus ex machina that Baroque opera can often provide. That is something that Il re pastore could possibly have benefitted from, but each had their own merits in an excellent Buxton programme. I would have loved to have seen their production of La Sonnambula as well, but sadly missed that due to a very long flight delay on the way over to the festival.

Links: Buxton International Festival