Dvorak rarity on the Buxton Festival bill

The Jacobin: three and a half stars

Orfeo ed Euridice: four stars

With a deserved reputation for adventurous programming, the Buxton Festival has turned this year to a rare work by Antonin Dvorak, of whose eleven operas only one, Rusalka, is given with any frequency in the opera houses of the world.

The Jacobin, the eighth from his pen, was premiered in 1889 and focused on events of almost a century earlier, concerning the impact of the French Revolution on his native Czechoslovakia.

Back from Paris, aristocrat’s son Bohus is wrongly presumed by his father , Count Harasova (Andrew Greenan) , to have been infected with dangerous ideas about freedom, equality and all that. So angry is he, indeed, that he has cut off Bohus in favour of his scheming cousin Adolf.

Will the natural order be restored and happiness reign? That it will owes almost everything to the influence of music, after the despised daughter-in -law - as she had been - softens the count’s heart with a traditional lullaby once sung by his adored late wife.

The opera is at once, then, a celebration of the transformative effects of music and specifically of those native melodies with which Dvorak is so closely identified, and which are heard here to glorious effect from singers and orchestra under the baton of the festival’s artistic director Stephen Barlow.

Less glorious is the staging of this welcome revival. Influenced perhaps by the name of the villain, director Stephen Unwin has been unable to resist shifting the action to the 1930s and the Europe of the dictators. As portrayed by James McOran-Campbell, Adolf suggests the obvious villain, with his slick of hair and toothbrush moustache. One sees, too – and the impression is underlined by the uniforms of his soldiers – more than a touch of Mussolini.

But for this member of the audience, at least, the portrayal seemed not so much of these leaders but of PG Wodehouse’s parody of them in the shape of Bertie Wooster’s nemesis, Roderick Spode, the leader of the Black-Shorts.

This is because of a strong comic element to proceedings, which was presumably intended by its composer (but can we be sure?) and is here emphasised by the opera’s delivery in an English translation by Rodney Blumer which employs heroic couplets throughout. The impression this gives is of operetta, Gilbert and Sullivan perhaps, with the pantomimic aspect of some of the characters – Nicholas Folwell’s preposterously pompous steward Filip, for instance – underlining this. The comic mood does not always sit well with the darker themes.

Musically, as I said, the production has much to commend it. There is fine work from the chorus and, some surprisingly very junior members of it, who are seen rehearsing pieces in praise of the count under the tutelage of choirmaster Benda (Bonaventura Bottone), an affectionate portrait in some respects of Dvorak’s own music master.

Oxford Mail:

In song: Michael Chance as Orfeo (picture: Robert Workman)

Bohus and his loyal wife are well presented by Nicholas Lester and (despite occasional mudiness of tone) Anne Sophie Dupreis, with Matthew Newlin and Anna Patalong supplying a fine picture of eager lovers lower down the social scale, among the villagers so engagingly shown.

For the festival’s second main opera offering Buxton’s audiences are being treated to a compelling revival of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice in the Italian version of 1761.

Tosca, it ain’t – in the words of one celebrated conductor in an allusion to its shortage of plot and musical variety. Something obviously has to be ‘done’ with it - it is usually thought - to create added interest.

This time director Stephen Medcalf brings it bang up to date with Orfeo, he of the magnetising melodies, transformed into a rock star and his famous lyre jettisoned in favour of an electric guitar.

It was unfortunate, perhaps, that on the Sunday afternoon of the first performance, the pseudo rock music was accompanied by the unwelcome intrusion into the Opera House of the real thing being pounded out for public consumption from the roof of the nearby Pump Room. Still, at least this lasted only until the interval and was often drowned out by louder passages, the choral ones especially, from the stage.

As in The Jacobin, there is plenty for the chorus to do, including, in the Dance of the Blessed Spirts showing us an Elysium transformed into a beach resort (paradise of a sort for some).

They are also required to shift around the large illuminated letters spelling out the hero’s name, which in various arrangements provide the principal stage ornaments (designer Francis O’Connor) here. An ‘A’ and an ‘M’ are later added to assist in the spelling out of Amore (Love) whose triumph is celebrated in the climax to the opera.

The character’s first appearance, in fact, comes from below through the hole of the ‘O’. Amore (Daisy Brown) later watches through the same orifice as Orfeo fails to follow his orders not to look at his wife Euridice (Barbara Bargnesi) as he escorts her out of the Underworld.

Singing and playing are again of a high standard under conductor Stuart Stratford. The role of Orfeo, however, is a tough one and the strain is starting to show on the voice of the respected male alto Michael Chance long before the opera’s best-known aria, Che faro senza Euridice? is reached.

There are further performances of The Jacobin on July 15, 18, 24 and 27.

Orfo ed Euridice is given again on July 16, 19, 22 and 25.

For the full festival programme go to buxtonfestival.co.uk

Oxford Mail:

Block buster: Amore - Daisy Brown, left, and Euridice - Barbara Bargnesi (picture: Robert Workman)