At its outset, in 2007, Grimeborn’s punning name warned of a challenge to operatic safety and a blunt one at that. Who was this festival for? What was its aim? Would those susceptible to the bucolic lure of its assonant counterpart, Glyndebourne itself – high prices, world-class standards – also have the credentials to engage with this audacious newcomer, based at the Arcola, an old paint factory in east London? Or was it essentially a form of operatic class war?
So much has changed on the opera scene since Grimeborn began that it’s hard to think these questions needed asking. It’s vital that they were, and continue to be addressed by this and other plucky, small-scale outfits, too many to list. This month alone, Tête à Tête, Opera in the City, Fulham Opera and Leeds Opera festival are all hard at work. It’s no longer a case of either or. Opera needs this mixed artistic economy to thrive. Grimeborn may now be an essential fixture, but it remains as bold and cage-rattling as ever, its ambitions capacious. Classics are transfigured, new works premiered, young artists given opportunities, older ones with experience welcomed to the fold. If you’re sensing that this six-week event is a quixotic rattle bag for everyone, you’ve grasped its ethos. The frustration, for me, is in being unable to go to all 16 shows.
Das Rheingold, the first part of Wagner’s Ring cycle, was an opening highlight. Jonathan Dove’s pared down version, made in 1990 for City of Birmingham Touring Opera, manages to be an authentic sketch of the original, never mind the loss of orchestral amplitude. A total of 18 players in the pit – the excellent Orpheus Sinfonia – may sound small, but it’s a large number for the Arcola. The brass were hidden away in a gulley to the rear, an effect that worked, containing but not muffling their dark resonance. The voices easily soared over the ensemble, while the ear, ever beguiled by Dove’s faithful ingenuity, quickly adjusted to the thin (but capable) body of strings.
Many of the Rheingold team are already far along the Wagnerian road. The conductor, Peter Selwyn, has worked on seven Ring cycles and assisted at Bayreuth. Paul Carey Jones, bursting and rigid with cold self-regard, vocally magisterial as Wotan, a Wagner prize winner in 2013. (Look out for his forthcoming Wotan at Longborough.) Claire Barnett-Jones (Fricka) and Harriet Williams (Erda) also have Wagner on their CVs. Seth Carico’s mysteriously charming, rich-voiced Alberich, Kiandra Howarth’s impassioned Freia/Woglinde and Gareth Brynmor John’s pretty boy Donner all stood out. Julia Burbach’s production – following a top-class Rape of Lucretia here last year – consisted of precarious piles of cardboard boxes and bags of polystyrene “gold”, in Bettina John’s sets. Basic, yes, but it told the story effectively, spelling out loud and clear the folly that comes with greed.
Between now and 7 September at Grimeborn, you can see works as varied as Bushra El-Turk’s new opera Silk Moth, Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie, Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha and Amy Beach’s Cabildo. With that choice, I wouldn’t automatically, schedule reasons aside, have opted for an arrangement of Johann Strauss II’s Die Fledermaus, staged by Baseless Fabric Theatre. I’m glad I did. The aim of this south London company, who also perform on the high street or in promenade, is to “reimagine opera for London life today”. Librettist/director Joanna Turner, and music director/bassoonist Leo Geyer, together with four singers, an accordion player (Ilona Suomalainen) and a violinist (Henry Rankin), had whisked the frothy original into a nimble 50-minute snapshot of modern life, a touch of klezmer now tinting Strauss’s delicious, waltzing score.
The action took place, arena style, in an open white space, the compact staging – mostly reliant on costumes – designed by Marina Hadjilouca. A philandering husband (David Horton as Eisenstein) can no longer escape scot-free when smartphones, Instagram and Facebook are there to like/share/track his every trespass. His wily friend Falke – James McOran-Campbell in Batman T-shirt – the nanny Adele, got up as Rhianna (Abigail Kelly), and Rosalinde (Claire Wild), the cool, long-suffering wife, were assured and witty, both musically and dramatically. The plot could have had more #MeToo stiffening to make its humour sharper. When Rosalinde raised an eyebrow to her love-rat husband and fell into his arms once more, you longed to shout “Don’t do it!”. An operetta that, in the wrong hands, can outstay its welcome was over too soon.
Grimeborn runs at the Arcola theatre, London E8, until 7 September
