theartsdesk at the Buxton International Festival - power and glory in early Verdi

Buxton International Festival offers one thundering success, one uneasy compromise and one surprisingly enjoyable experience, in its three mainstage operas this year.

Verdi’s Ernani is the thundering success. For the first time in years, the festival has the Orchestra of Opera North in the pit at Buxton Opera House, under artistic director Adrian Kelly’s hand, and the size of its string section and richness of its sound (with cimbasso underpinning the brass) are there from the moment the overture starts. The festival chorus – 24 of them if you count in the minor roles some members take – are also full-toned and punchy.

And the principals are a powerful team. There are three male voices and one female – the opera notably puts tenor, baritone and bass into contention, as each wants the same girl, Donna Elvira (Nadine Benjamin). She’s the niece of Don Ruy Gómez de Silva (Alastair Miles) and he’s prepared to force her to be his bride. Ernani (Roman Arndt) is a nobleman in disguise as a rebel and there’s true love between them: however, Don Carlo (André Heyboer), the king of Spain who’s looking to be made Holy Roman Emperor too, also has designs on her.

Ernani was Verdi’s first collaboration with Piave as librettist, basing the opera on a play by Victor Hugo, and it’s both remarkably concise and also full of the sort of stirring stuff he was to write later for stories about noble rebels and bitter feuds. It was the first Verdi opera to come to England, and though the musical structures are conventional at the outset, with two-stage arias, there’s a point in Act Two where tension builds through escalation of tempo and inventive figuration that is vintage Verdi, and it never looks back from that.

First impressions show how the soloists intend to go on. Roman Arndt brings warmth and accuracy to his singing of Ernani from the first cavatina (Come rugiada al cespite), and Nadine Benjamin gives a lovely cadenza to Ernani, Ernani, involami. Alastair Miles is in rich form for his Infelice!, and in the succeeding finale of Act One his voice is the foundation of the whole tonal spectrum. André Heyboer has his chance to show what he’s made of in Act Three’s Oh, de’ verd’anni miei – though sounding a mite too strident for such romantic musings with eloquent cello solo accompaniment. The three minor roles (Jane Burnell as Giovanna, Emyr Lloyd Jones as Don Riccardo, and Theo Perry as Jago) are taken by highly gifted younger singers.

The setting for the opera, by Sami Fendall, is indeterminate but simple, with a triangle created by two multi-panelled sides, and the present-day costuming matches the dramatic shadows and pools of D M Wood’s lighting.

Jamie Manton’s direction is stark and keeps the chorus active (movement by Corina Würsch), even including what 19^th century performers used to call a “Huguenots Rush”, where you get everyone in a line at the back and they all hurtle to the front of the stage together. There’s a vivid torture scene (of Silva by Don Carlo), and the theme of vendetta soon overpowers all, before a suicide scene complete with tremolando strings à la Traviata.

As the one big opera in the festival that’s an unalloyed BIF production, this must have taken a generous share of its resources, and the result is exceptionally good. 

La tragédie de Carmen is another thing. It was first devised by Jean-Claude Carrière and Peter Brook in the 1980s as a kind of Carmen-lite: the singing roles are reduced to four, with three spoken ones that can be done by one man, with the instrumentation also cut down and no chorus. In order to achieve this, the story as presented by Meilhac and Halévy is telescoped and changed, with an appearance by Carmen’s first husband, Garcia – but it’s not simply a return to Merimée’s novella, as it keeps in the character of Micaëla (invented for the opera) and has Escamillo as a toreador (not a picador).

What you do get are the most famous tunes: Carmen’s Habanera and Seguidilla (and the card-reading aria), Micaëla’s plaintive songs, and of course the Toreador’s Song. Oddly, for the last act the orchestral music is heard in recorded sound, so it’s back to full-orchestra Bizet at that point, but not played live.

Buxton’s director, Katharine Kastening, has explained her approach to readers of this website (First Person: Katharina Kastening on directing slimline Bizet in a year rich in 'Carmen' productions), and the phrase “femme fatale” is displayed on a large panel over the stage for much for the time.

The principals –- Niamh O’Sullivan as Carmen, Elgan Llŷr Thomas as Don José (both pictured above), Steffan Lloyd Owen  as Escamillo, and Erin Rossington as Micaëla – all sing strongly, though rather as if performing operatic excerpts rather than developing character: maybe that's intended, as there's a somewhat Brechtian approach to performance being asked of them (there’s also a “silent narrator”, Cameron Cook, who mimes as well as speaking the non-singing roles), and Iwan Davies conducts effectively with members of the Northern Chamber Orchestra in the pit, but as musical drama there’s something missing. That production is a joint one with Norwich Theatre and is to be seen there soon, too. 

The enjoyable surprise of the festival mainstage operas is another collaboration, this time with the Early Opera Group, and it’s in Handel’s first oratorio, Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno, turned into a staged story by Jacopo Spirei.

Joining forces with Christian Curnyn’s lively specialists in 2021 created a memorable Buxton version of Acis and Galatea (set as a 1960s academic symposium), and this is no less ingenious. The text of the 1707 Italian piece is a dialogue between allegorical characters (Beauty, Pleasure, Time and Disillusion) about what lasts and what doesn’t – but Spirei, with the help of a lovely home interior set by Anna Bonomelli, sees it as a British family Christmas dinner in (I think) the 1970s. There are mum, dad and two rather sassy grown-up daughters, and, as family get-togethers easily can, it ends with a serious bust-up.

There’s a lengthy sequence of recitatives and solo arias, with one quartet and a few duets, but much of the music is quality Handel – and one number in particular jumps out: Lascia la spina, the original version of what’s better known as Lascia ch’io pianga in his opera, Rinaldo (like others, recycled by him in later life).

The performance is remarkably lively, with clever variety in the instrumental accompaniments, and its four singers – pictured above – are gifted actors as well as stylish interpreters of the music (da capo repeats, of which there are a lot, and all).

Anna Dennis, who was Galatea in 2021, is Bellezza (Beauty), rich-toned and comfortable in her party clothes; Hilary Cronin, having a lot of fun as the bovver-booted, scruffy Piacere (Pleasure), is equally lovely to hear and delivers Lascia la spina with a seriousness that jars with Spirei’s scenario somewhat but wins you over just the same. Hilary Summers as Disinganno (Disillusion) plays the long-suffering mum (but one who’s prepared to join in a spot of post-prandial dancing) delightfully and has the outstanding lower range to deliver writing that must surely have been intended for a castrato in the first place. Jorge Navarro Colorado (another voice from the 2021 Acis and Galatea) as Tempo (Time) is equally versatile. 

Two short comedy operas, with singers who are in the chorus (or in minor roles) for the big Verdi show as principals, and “BIF Young Artists” or “Young Instrumentalists” as chorus and in accompaniment, complete the bill at Buxton, but both in the smaller Pavilion theatre rather than the Opera House.

One is The Boatswain’s Mate, Ethel Smyth’s one-act comedy written just before the First World War and capable of being seen now as a proto-feminist piece, as it’s about a man (and his hapless friend) who thinks he’s God’s gift to a particular pub landlady but gets his comeuppance from her with no mistake.

It’s done with piano trio, not orchestra, which upsets the balance between full-powered operatic voices and accompaniment somewhat, but Nick Bond’s direction is straightforward and tells the story well (its location moved from Margate to Buxton, if the arrival of one character as an Ordnance Survey map reading hiker is anything to go by).

Elliott Squire’s staging creates the pub deftly with a small bar and a handful of tables and stools, and there are neat touches as the tale unfolds (like the way the beer glasses go flying when a “burglar” climbs in).

Elizabeth Findon (pictured above), Joshua Baxter, Theo Perry and Richard Woodall and the small male chorus all sing in tune and act in character, so much fun is had by all.

 The shortest opera in the schedule, at just 50 minutes, is Haydn’s La Canterina (The Songstress). There are interesting comparison points with the festival’s major works: like Ernani, the story is based on three men all fancying the same girl (only in this case there’s the added twist of some gender-bending, with her true love written for a man who can sing in high register and pretends to be her mother, and her noble suitor’s role given to a female mezzo-soprano); and a reflection on the style of opera seria current in the day, in a comic “singing-lesson” scene where the aria in question has interminable instrumental ritornelli – not so far removed from Handel’s way of doing things.

But it’s basically a light entertainment (an “intermezzo” designed to give light relief in an evening of heavy stuff) with Haydn’s charm and suavity in every note and a series of jokes for the discerning: the lesson aria is described as written with accompaniment for “horns strengthened by mutes”; the heroine sings a long, dramatic number telling us she’s lost her voice; and as a typical singer, when she’s lost all her worldly goods the only possessions she clings to are her comb, her make-up and her mirror.

The actual singers (pictured above) are Jane Burnell (also Giovanna in Ernani) in the title role, who’s RNCM trained and has appeared for Clonter Opera: she doesn’t over-act it but is alert to all the comic nuances and has a warm and versatile voice; Dominic Mattos, a rich-toned counter-tenor as her boyfriend-pretending-to-be-mother; Helen Maree Cooper lyrical as the en travesti nobleman (and also the bailiff); and Jonah Halton as the “maestro” – a singing teacher who fancies himself both as composer and histrionic tenor soloist, an opportunity well taken.

Toby Hession conducts the eight-strong ensemble with precision and obtains excellent voices-to-accompaniment balance, keeping things lively and adding his own skills at the fortepiano. Lysanne van Overbeek’s direction is straightforward and keeps the comedy at just the right level.  

• · Remaining performances: Ernani tonight, 14 and 17 July, La Tragédie de Carmen 13 and 16 July (and at Norwich Theatre Royal 26-28 July), Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno 15 and 18 July, The Boatswain’s Mate 14 and 19 July, La Canterina 18 and 20 July. 

• · More opera reviews on theartsdesk