We can be better people. This truth, simply expressed, is key to both works in English Touring Opera’s autumn season. Morals and happy endings can make dull art. To say ETO’s productions hit home because of the times we live in is certainly the case. It shouldn’t obscure the quality, deftness and originality of these two shows, staged on a tight budget and adaptable for eight different venues. Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail, sung in English as The Seraglio, and Kurt Weill’s The Silver Lake will tour from Durham to Exeter in the coming weeks. Each piece, contrasting in nearly every respect but both characterised by the use of spoken dialogue, makes you think, listen and feel.
At Hackney Empire, members of Streetwise Opera joined a well-drilled chorus. Different local choirs will participate in every locality. If ETO did nothing else, that logistical task alone would be an achievement. The Silver Lake – Der Silbersee – by Kurt Weill and Georg Kaiser, first performed in Germany in 1933 three weeks after Hitler became chancellor, and banned by the Nazis as degenerate, has a greater generosity than the composer’s later collaborations with Brecht.
Yet its satire remains sharp, attacking political extremism, exposing the effects of poverty, pillorying the rich. The skilful cast, led by David Webb (Severin), Ronald Samm (Olim) and Luci Briginshaw (Fennimore), excelled. James Holmes, a Weill expert, conducted a performance that was rhythmically taut but jazzy and flexible. Staged and in large part conceived by ETO’s artistic director, James Conway, this play-with-music built to a compelling climax. Humanity wins the day.
Thanks to Adam Wiltshire’s designs, it was a short step from the bare, cage-scaffold structure of the Weill to the lavish, Topkapi-inspired prison of the Pasha’s harem in Mozart’s The Seraglio. Acknowledging but surmounting stereotype – this is a tale of Christians and Muslims that turns out well – Stephen Medcalf’s traditional but never staid production emphasised humour and tenderness. Lucy Hall as Konstanze and John-Colyn Gyeantey as Belmonte were secure in the vocally challenging “straight” roles. Alex Andreou put flesh on the spoken role of Pasha, which can on occasion be wooden. Matthew Stiff’s big-hearted, bullying Osmin, Richard Pinkstone’s impish Pedrillo and Nazan Fikret’s no-messing Blonde provoked ready laughter. Comic antics never fought with the fertile invention of Mozart’s music, incisively and insightfully conducted by John Andrews. Die Entführung, sometimes overshadowed, shone here in all its genius. ETO’s versatile orchestra, classy woodwind section deserving top marks in both operas, gave their all.
Space is too limited – the gods smile occasionally – to permit too detailed an account of English National Opera’s new staging of Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld (1858/74), conducted by Sian Edwards, directed by Emma Rice (ex-Shakespeare’s Globe) in her operatic debut, designed by Lizzie Clachan. Offenbach lampooned, with exquisite precision, any social or political target in his line of vision. The death of a baby was not one. This was the extraneous scene-setter in Rice’s new version, complete with “Baby” floral wreath and tiny coffin. The image indelibly imprinted on our mind’s eye, all joy was smothered in the opening minutes. It was the prelude to a night of flat jokes and dramatic miscalculations.
Striving for positives: ENO’s cast had individual strengths – Mary Bevan as a spirited Eurydice, Ed Lyon making the most of the slight title role, Alex Otterburn terrific as a sleazy Pluto, Willard White bemused as Jupiter but singing seductively and nobly as ever. The American baritone Lucia Lucas, in a promising ENO debut as Public Opinion, was coerced into cockney cabbie mode. A US limo driver might have fitted better with the Beverly Hills-style Mount Olympus of Clachan’s sets. Witty one-liners were lost, the words of the ensemble of gods inaudible (with the exceptions of Anne-Marie Owens and Keel Watson), unless you stayed glued to the subtitles.
Everyone needed more direction: either towards choreographed exactitude or to anarchic freedom. Each would have worked. Comedic purgatory is no destination for Orpheus in any telling of the story. The chorus, wearing white balloon-tutus, injected what energy they could. Edwards coaxed some eloquent if still too stately playing from the orchestra. It may quicken into life as confidence grows in the many performances of this run. All three stars are awarded to the performers.
No such uncertainty with William Alwyn’s Miss Julie (1977), long neglected and receiving a semi-staging (by Kenneth Richardson) by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sakari Oramo, with a top quartet of soloists led by Anna Patalong, sensational, strong and vulnerable in the title role. Benedict Nelson, a heroic late replacement, was chillingly convincing as the conniving Jean, given perceptive support by Rosie Aldridge as the cook-lover Kristin and Samuel Sakker as the drunken Ulrik.
Alwyn (1905-85), best known for his film scores, wrote his own libretto based on August Strindberg’s tragedy. The opera’s emotional style, cinematic and impassioned, hardly sat well amid the atonal sobriety favoured in the mid-1970s. We’re over such heinous divisions, in music anyway. Time for a full staging. A recording is due shortly. Catch it on BBC Sounds and be enthralled.
Star ratings (out of five)
The Silver Lake/The Seraglio ★★★★
Orpheus in the Underworld ★★★
Miss Julie ★★★★★
The Silver Lake and The Seraglio tour to Durham (18-19 October), Bath (21-22), Snape Maltings (25-26), Saffron Walden (1-2 November), Lancaster (7th) and Exeter (12-16)
Orpheus in the Underworld is at the Coliseum, London, until 28 November
