Sheer Joy of a Summer Special

09.04.09
The Opera Show
Daily Express

By Paul Callan

This is a gem of an opera and dance evening set in the rolling grounds of a huge 19th-century country house hotel.  The theatre is an open-sided big top with a sail-like roof, good acoustics and easy viewing.  This is an ideal show for a balmy late summer evening – but the first night was marred by heavy rain. (Maybe they should have included Handel’s Water Music.)

The programme is in three acts that cover opera from the baroque, through the recording revolution and on to today’s electronic era.  The music, mostly arias from well-known operas is charmingly familiar.  It is a joy to hear again such treasures as Papageno, Papagena from Mozart’s Magic Flute, the lovely Flower Duet from Lakme by Delibes and even the dear old Toreador’s Song from Bizet’s Carmen.  Five dancers, despite the occasional clumsy turn, add a great vitality to the show.

The four singers – two sopranos, a tenor and a baritone – bring a tender passion to their performances.  I was particularly moved by Anna-Clare Monk’s hear-touching interpretation of Dido’s Lament from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.

There is a subtlety of approach that, coupled with the warmth on her tone, prove totally captivating.  Equally, the excellent James Cleverton brings a lively, comic bravura to the Largo Al Factotum from Rossini’s Barber of Seville.

Clare Eggington joins this duo for all the sparkle of the Drinking Song from Verdi’s La Traviata.  As sinewy dancer Amber Doyle weaves around them, they sound like ice jingling in a glass.  Shaun Capewell’s sensual, even wicked, dancing – is he double jointed? – is exceptional and he moves at times like a sinister panther.

But the high point is Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor as you have never heard it.  Played on an electronically enhanced violin by Laura Stanford, the cadences reverberate around the theatre.  And frenziedly tap-dancing around her like a wound-up toy, Dharmesh Patel could have taken off.  Together, they produced a fiercely brilliant act.