Don Giovanni goes cruising

Mozart: Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni      Ashley Riches
Leporello     John Savournin
Donna Anna      Lauren Fagan
Don Ottavio     Ben Johnson
Donna Elvira     Victoria Simmonds
Il Commendatore     Graeme Broadbent
Zerlina     Ellie Laugharne
Masetto     Ian Beadle

Dane Lam, conductor
Oliver Platt, director
Holland Park Chorus and Orchestra

Holland Park Opera, London, 16 June 2017

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As so often at Opera Holland Park, this new production blew all the cobwebs away.  Naturalistic acting, increased contemporary recognition and originality to put many a major opera house production to shame.

The idea here was setting the opera on a luxury cruise ship circa 1910.  Anyone who has seen Titanic will be familiar with the divisions between first class passengers and those on the lower decks.  This provided the platform for the class divisions that are so central to the plot: aristocrats versus peasants.  Time and again the search and costume change scenes came over as much more dramatically plausible than is normally the case.  It was smart acoustically also, projecting the voices most effectively in a difficult open air location.

Ashley Riches as Don Giovanni

Oliver Platt directed a lean version of the score, not always controlling the orchestra's volume to allow the voices to come across clearly.  One voice that needed no accommodation was Lauren Fagan's Donna Anna, providing the most arresting moments of the evening with her dramatic and thrilling grip on every note.  Ashley Riches and John Savournin were a well-matched pair as Don Giovanni and his servant Leporello.

Lauren Fagan's powerful Donna Anna

Leporello's Catalogue Aria

The Commmendatore was consigned to the cooler after his demise and arrived in full ghoulish form at the climactic dinner scene.  How good to see a genuinely horrible Commendatore instead of the rigid, powdery statue which is the norm.  At the conclusion Don Giovanni is not consigned to the flames but rushes over the ship railings to a watery death. 

Don Giovanni! I've come to dinner

At the very end there were some ill-advised recitative cuts.  Zerlina/Masseto, Don Ottavio/Donna Ana, Donna Elvira and Leporello received no chance to wrap up their plots.   The only genuine misstep in a most enjoyable and stimulating production of Mozart's eternal masterpiece.

High farce Die Fledermaus

Johann Strauss II Die Fledermaus
 
Ben Johnson, Gabriel von Eisenstein
Susanna Hurrell, Rosalinde
Jennifer France, Adele
Joanna Marie Skillett, Ida
Peter Davoren, Alfred
Gavan Ring, Falke
Robert Burt, Dr Blind
John Lofthouse, Frank
Samantha Price, Prince Orlofsky
Ian Jervis, Frosch

John Rigby, Conductor
Martin Lloyd-Evans, Director
City of London Sinfonia

Opera Holland Park, London, 23 July 2016
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This most famous of operettas was given a full English update at Opera Holland Park to marvellous effect.

First up was the setting, moved to 1930s England and enhanced by Alistair Beaton'sfree but  vivacious English translation.  Singing in English brought obvious benefits in conveying the wit of the comedy, and allowed some contemporary references to despised Brexit politicians to be folded in. 

Some creativity came with the adaptation, most of it trumphant.  The 4 London bobbies dancing with their Prison Chief, a stunned reception to the night's exotic dancers, and lashings of broad English humour and innuendo, almost Carry On at times.  This linked to a nice framing of the Eisenstein/Falke tension as stemming from Oxbridge antics.

Curiously the amorous Alfred was played as an Italian with an accent so massive it was almost Australian.  More seriously, the night's Prince Orlovsky was anything but dominant vocally and physically, and Gavan Ring's Falke placed the Prince quite in the shade.  This was perhaps the most light hearted Orlovsky ever seen, in little need of encouragement to laugh, which did nothing for dramatic impetus.  At various other points there seemed a similar disregard for the plot in the search for gags. Adelle's famous Laughing Aria, when she is protesting to all she is indeed a high born princess, had her openly kneeing Eisenstein in the groin. 

The acting was excellent and suitably over the top throughout.  Vocally, some of the big numbers fizzled slightly.  Susanna Hurrell's Czardas did not catch fire. Of the singers, Jennifer France as Adelle was the most spectacular, her high notes ranging from whispers to ringing floods of sound above the choruses.  Through it all, John Rigby directed a fine, punchy performance from the City of London Sinfonia, tight but with a willingness to relax at key moments. 

So a very fine evening, and such a pleasure to see an adaptation done so well.  It may have lost the elegance of the Viennese original, but it quite intentionally chose an English farce instead.