The Opera Show

09.04.09
The Opera Show
The Stage (UK)

By Pat Ashworth

Taking 24 well-loved arias and pouring them out into the night could have been just a concert with the plus factor of Kilworth House Theatre’s spectacular open-air setting. But Mitch Sebastian fuses them together with a thread of choreography that digs deep into the soul and speaks volumes about the human condition.

It is consummately beautiful. He opens with the outrageously costumed and impudent Baroque, a tapestry of eight arias from eight composers. Without drawing breath and with a studied intensity that never lapses, it moves seamlessly from the mischief of Mozart’s The Magic Flute into the medieval fires and skulls of Handel’s Rinaldo.

Act II exchanges gilded extravagance for a war montage, a poignant and exuberant story set in the simplicity of a family home and a recording studio in forties Madrid. There is pure sensuousness in arias like Catalini’s Ebben, Ne Andro Lontana, physical comedy in the Drinking Song from La Traviata and electrifying flamenco from Carmen.

And then it turns into the Electronic Revolution. Every stop is pulled out for the huge rock gig that is Nights in White Satin, before Laura Stanford’s solo violin sets the stage alight. Her whirlwind Bach taunts dancer Dharmesh Patel into ever new heights of daring until he surrenders and the mood slips into the rhapsody of Dvorak’s Song to the Moon.

The performances from just four singers, five dancers and eight musicians are faultless. It is an explosion of light and colour and it burns itself on the mind.

Production information Kilworth House, Leicester, September 2-13
Director/choreographer: Mitch Sebastian
Producer: Celia Mackay for To Be Productions
Cast includes: James Cleverton, Clare Eggington, Anna-Clare Monk, Amar Muchhala, Shaun Capewell, Lisa Donmall, Amber Doyle, Dharmesh Patel, Sarita Piotrowski
Running time: 2hrs 30mins