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Mark Le Brocq as Houston Chamberlain, whose theories were a dreadful forerunner of the Third Reich, with the Wagners - Isolde (Alexandra Lowe) and Siegfried (Andrew Watts) Longborough Festival Opera New Banks Fee ***** Scarcely an hour from Birmingham is the charming Cotswold village of Longborough, where - believe it or not – there has grown up over the past three decades one of the most important Opera Festivals in the country. Opera does occasionally surface in England’s second city. Welsh National Opera can be found, often three times a year, for a week at the Hippodrome. They’re the tops. The redoubtable Ellen Kent sometimes brings her traditional east European companies, usually from Moldova or – pleasingly – the Ukraine, in at least the most popular repertoire. BOC (Birmingham Opera Company), the blissfully imaginative creation of, sadly, the late Graham Vick, is bolder, and still draws in great numbers from the community and uses them all marvellously. But there is nothing within reach like Longborough Opera Company. Of all the summer festivals (there are many), Longborough has always, since its founding roughly 30 years ago, felt the most welcoming. Not posh: you don’t have to dress up but you can if you enjoy that. Its origins were not at some vast historic building, but at what was once a large barn pecked around by chickens (they’re still there, somewhere). It’s blossomed and enlarged: comfy raked seating was grabbed and saved from the bonfire when the Royal Opera House upgraded: it now has two (virtually three) storeys for you the audience, copious back rooms (e.g. for the cast changing), an ample stage, and an astounding orchestra pit - plus the most beautiful rococo façade of any chicken barn in England. The fabulous welcome every time we owe to Martin Graham, his wife Lizzie, and indeed the whole family. Their home, New Banks Fee (named after their fine old house, Banks Fee, where, for a few years before, opera was cheerfully staged in the garden), was actually built, with a new wing added, by Martin, a businessman and builder by trade, and his loyal team of carpenters and brickies. You could watch Martin himself, hands-on as ever, with spade or trowel or cement at the ready.
Martin Graham, the genius and wizard who dreamed up the much-loved Longborough Opera House, its fabulous period facade behind him We must mourn him too, for he, aged 83, passed away in Spring this year. But what he and Lizzie engendered was a setting of great beauty and charm. Seat prices have risen somewhat, but the value of being there has accentuated too. It’s a pride of the Midlands, three joyous weeks or so: you might seriously consider a visit to the Cotswolds at that time. Longborough’s speciality, since its start, and to this day, has been on inspiring stagings of the operas of Richard Wagner, who changed the whole direction of music. In particular his four-part Ring cycle, which is immersed in the explosive stories of the German and Norse myths, especially its hero and heroine, Siegfried and Brünnhilde, but also the guiding hand of their chief god, Wotan. Other of his operas there have included The Flying Dutchman, Tristan and Isolde, and Tannhäuser – all myth-based. Easily enjoyable and accessible for it gives you the English translation. You can still find at Longborough more popular fayre if you prefer. Puccini’s La Bohème, Bizet’s Carmen, Beethoven’s Fidelio, Verdi’s La Traviata, Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Rossini; even Les Miserables, or Sonheim’s wicked Sweeney Todd: the last two by Longborough’s Young (now ‘Emerging’) Artists, whose excellence has been clear in immensely polished Baroque (18th century) operas, by Handel especially. By way of departure, last season Longborough introduced a fascinating dark opera, The Dead City (Die tote Stadt), by the post-Wagner Viennese prodigy (later Hollywood film composer) Erich Wolfgang Korngold. It was a triumph. Enraptured full audiences. Above all, that was owed to the lead, Mark Le Brocq, and to the scintillating direction of Polly Graham, inspired by her parents and her own daring to become one of Britain’s most acclaimed opera directors. It was this pairing which brought vividly alive this year’s main production. No Ring, but Wagner was not absent. This was a new opera, or at least one not ten years old, entitled Wahnfried, featuring a superb score by the composer Avner Dorman. Utterly brilliant in every way: its subtle orchestration (including a special emphasis upon woodwind, not least flutes and piccolos).
Avner Dorman, composer of the bristling and brilliant score of Wahnfried Every note of this music seemed to tell, or enhance, or equate with, the story, which focuses on a disastrous figure, the English, then naturalised German, Houston Chamberlain (1855-1927): philosopher, botanist and ardent Wagnerite, whose thoughts, theories, writings and proclamations are seen, rightly, as a major forerunner and spur to the antisemitism, hostility and murder which had long smeared itself across much of Europe, and found its apogee in Nazism and the Holocaust. Wagner’s own antisemitism is well-charted, and throughout the opera his presence, and bust, are unshakeable. Polly Graham found in it numerous layers, a production both colourful and eerie, blithe and nasty. Avner’s librettists, Lutz Hübner and Sarah Nemitz, field a large cluster of characters – not just five members of the Wagner family (including his wife Cosima – the awesome, disturbingly disturbing Susan Bullock - and two stepchildren), but Hitler, the Kaiser, and sundry others; yet most dazzling of all, and chilling, a genie, or djinn, demonic, ghastly, a parody of dreadful grotesquerie, manipulative, mocking, a masterly, electrifying performance from Oskar McCarthy, a kind of lime green slimy toad, from which he and Graham – and the ingenious Costume Designer, Anisha Fields - produced the most scintillating, grisly results. Staging Wahnfried was a stupendously daring decision by Longborough – although it seemed tailor-made for this unstoppably vital company, and its gift for not just entertaining, but educating us. Longborough’s other notable departure here was staging what has (incorrectly) been described as Debussy’s only opera: like several of his finest contemporaries – Chausson’s Le Roi Arthus, Lalo’s Le Roi d’Ys, D’Indy’s Fervaal – soaked deeply in myth. The story of Pelléas et Mélisande came from Belgian playwright Maeterlinck (who didn’t much like the opera, I think). It’s essentially monochrome – all centring on an apparently illicit relationship and the fatal jealousy it incurs.
Oskar McCarthy, incredibly ghoulish and frightening in Avner Dorman's Wahnfried This was notable casting: Mélisande (Kateryna Kasper, Ukrainian and famed especially in Germany), Karim Sulayman (Lebanese-American) singing and coping with the (not always easily characterised) victim Pelléas, and most distinctive of all, the marvellously tortured (jealous husband, but originally the young lost Mélisande’s saviour, Golaud (Brett Polegato, who has performed resplendently, his baritone ‘burnished, nuanced, well-focused’ – I would add compelling, subtle, impressively - on the British and European stage: Germany, France, Holland – as well as New York and his native Canada, in early years, not surprisingly, finalist in the Cardiff Singer of the World. Yet two other roles all but made the deepest impression, as often they can in this opera. Julian Close, whose exceptional deep bass and slender towering presence (literally: he dominated from the tower), stands out in every role he assumes. A performer of magnificent authority already even when I saw him as a young beginner. The other treat was beautiful Yniold (Nia Coleman), the boy who, sorely pressured by his infuriated father (Polegato’s Golaud) to spy on the two lovers (Pelléas is his half-brother) and report, supplies more or less the most famous – and touching – music of the opera, like a kind of unhappy L’Enfant et les Sortilèges (Ravel), or a little boy intoning Mussorgsky’s The Nursery (Children’s Songs: Debussy loved the Russians, especially Mussorgsky whose mastery and orchestration Debussy and others thrilled to, at the Paris Exhibition of 1889), all roles in this haunting opera shed perfect light on by the wise, insightful, inspiring and deeply knowledgeable and experienced chief conductor, Anthony Negus. Despite viewed by many as a tremendous success, the whole scheme and scenario presented felt not unflawed. The massive ‘castle’ which formed the whole background loomed splendidly, the whole point being that the kingdom of Allemonde was an immensely gloomy location: and so it was. But it ruled, dominated, crowded the whole scenario, not always to advantage. The only meaningful light came, quite frequently, when a door in this forbidding fortress opened, the tiny rectangles brightly, even fierily lit; or when torches were brandished around on the darkened stage. Glass cages periodically enveloped characters – not a bad idea to further suggest the claustrophobia of this bottled-up medieval province. Silver foil crumpled to represent a lake looked simply silly; but when the action frontstage moved better lit (Peter Small), subtly successful, when given scope; almost everything picked up and occasionally shone. (some fine spotlighting for instance). The other most celebrated scene, when Mélisande, a kind of Lady of Shalott, is induced to let down her tresses from high above. Here no high, and no hair. That symbol of mixed submission and in a way control was - inevident. Jenny Ogilvie moved her cast as best she could, which was not much. Trapped in an unkind world - Nia Coleman, magnificent as Golaud's innocent young son Yniold The saving grace was the playing of the Longborough orchestra – mastering Debussy’s glorious individual sounds, finessed and refined throughout under Negus, whose penetrating knowledge of Wagner must surely have helped. Here, as one hoped, was the expertise that really mattered. The most beguiling aspect was the score. For anyone who loves music, the playing was truly wonderful. Longborough also fielded The Barber of Seville, (libretto Beaumarchais, source of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro), which I avoided, although in my diseased view Rossini, let alone famously overegged Rossini, should have no role at such an imaginative venue as Longborough; but also a production by Norwegian Erlend Samnøen of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. A good choice, for Longborough’s young ‘Emerging Artists’, a splendid development by this company, one dating back nearly two decades, which has seen displays of repertoire by a host of Baroque composers – Monteverdi, other Purcell (The Fairy Queen), Cavalli, lots of Handel. Time and again both their stagings have proved bright, intelligent, imaginative, the singing of these ravishing young performers generally top careers further enhanced by being rewarded with this tremendous opportunity. The special element in this year’s Purcell was the involvement of the outstanding period band Barokksolistene, founded by Norwegian violinist Bjarte Eike in 2005: a marvellous innovation by Longborough, typical of this bold, and so often progressive company. Richly rewarding is a good term with which to endow Longborough Festival Opera’s past, present and assuredly future. Martin Graham would surely be cheered by the onward progress of the Festival he founded. And to which his wife and daughter are so important. If you’re within reach, go there, take a picnic and see for yourselves. You will not be disappointed. Rather, overjoyed. You’ll want to go again and again. Roderic Dunnett 08-25 Longborough Festival Opera 2026 Orlando: 30 May; 2, 4, 6, 7 June Tristan und Isolde: 20 June; 2, 5, 9, 12, 18 July Macbeth: 1, 4, 7, 11, 14, 16 July Hansel and Gretel: 30 July; 1, 2, 4, 6, 8 August |
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