Opera elitist? No chance

Sadly not for me the grandeur of the Met in New York or even of Covent Garden. The opera productions I am enjoying at present are at the likes of the Coronation Hall, Ulverston or the Curve in Leicester or even the Perth Concert Hall (a rare excursion north of the border) as well as at Snape Maltings and the Lighthouse in Poole. Not a black tie in sight and no interval picnics.

The English Touring Opera’s Spring Tour is well underway and its standards are as high as ever and the choice of operas nicely balanced between the well-known and the rarely seen. The ETO has been delivering excellence on the move for nearly thirty years in one form or another.  And 2019 is no different.

I thought I knew Mozart’s Idomeneo all too well and arrived in the Arts Theatre in Cambridge expecting to loll complacently in my plush stall seat. But Director James Conway set me on edge with a thoughtful and enjoyable production. Touring operas have to travel light and scenery has to convey suggestion as much as the concrete image. Here Conway and the team (Designer Frankie Bradshaw especially) excelled using the chorus (in fine voice) as a kind of extra prop oscillating across the stage and spread either side of a set of multiple sliding doors.

Galina Averina as Ilia and Catherine Carby as Idamante balanced well against the strong tones and emotional colouring of Christopher Turner as Idomeneo. Paula Sides conveyed amply the despair suffered by Elettra as she pined to return to her homeland, an ancient echo of the lament of migrants across the ages. The music was expertly conducted by conductor Jonathan Peter Kenny.

Stirred by the quality of Conway’s Idomeneo I wanted to see the other two operas in the current ETO repertory, but I had by then missed the performances in Cambridge and so a few days later I set off across country to Snape on the Suffolk coast to catch Rossini’s Elizabeth 1 (Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra). I was not disappointed. The opera is a rarity and new to me on stage. First performed in Naples in 1815, Rossini – who was to make a prominent and profitable visit to England a decade later – was already a post-Napoleonic admirer of England. What he was not – along with librettist Giovani Schmidt – was a faithful recorder of history and anyone who knows the era will be startled to learn that Leicester, not Essex, was her forlorn love.

But none of this matters because Rossini illustrates the tension between Elizabeth as Queen and Elizabeth as an individual with her own feelings so well. Again the minimalist stage design and use of the chorus help drive the drama. Supported by fine orchestral playing under John Andrews’ direction, the cast were strongly led by the beautiful coloratura voice of Mary Plazas as Elizabeth and counterpointed with an especially well-suited Luciano Botelho as Leicester and a very well-acted, as well as well sung, Norfolk, by John-Colyn Gyeantey, who incidentally performed as Arbace in Idomeneo.

So with two out of the three of the ETO’s touring triptych under my belt, I must make sure I catch their performance of Verdi’s Macbeth, whether in Canterbury or Perth or Exeter…  If you have the chance, do try to get a ticket; you won’t regret it and you may not even have to travel far.