Glee, spite and heart fuel Verdi’s Falstaff, a comic universe unto itself and his final work. Opera North’s new production, sung in English and conducted by Garry Walker, wrests every joule of warmth from this combustible masterpiece. It also launches the company’s “green season”, in which sustainability is the axiom. That cloud-scudding sky? Borrowed from last season’s Orpheus. The antlers? Shed by deer at nearby Harewood House. Only Falstaff’s caravan was a new purchase. Dating from the 1970s, complete with period-piece drinks cabinet and rusty patina, it too earns the status of preloved.
In Olivia Fuchs’s staging, designed by Leslie Travers, the home counties in which wealthy Alice Ford and Meg Page reside – Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor is the libretto’s main source – is a dream of Dynasty-era aspiration. Big hair, big suits, shoulder pads, colour. A game of tennis matters more for the designer whites worn than for a quality lob or volley. In contrast, scurrilous Sir John Falstaff, the role deliciously inhabited by a fully padded Henry Waddington, is on his uppers, eking out an existence on the leftovers of entitlement and another bottle of sack.
Waddington has the vocal flexibility, from mock falsetto to lyrical melancholy to basso bluster, as well as the acting skills to make the vain Falstaff sympathetic rather than ludicrous – not always the case. He jumped the hurdles of the Act 1 “honour” monologue with panache, the orchestra mustering all its energy to spit out the raucous, raspberry-blowing trills that follow in response. Richard Burkhard’s super-oleaginous Ford, Paul Nilon’s properly dull Dr Caius and Kate Royal’s glamorous Alice led a spirited ensemble alongside the well-drilled chorus of Opera North. Two young singers – the light-voiced tenor Egor Zhuravskii and the pure-toned soprano Isabelle Peters – were ideal as the wittily thwarted lovers, Fenton and Nannetta.
The decision to sing in English, in the late Amanda Holden’s tongue-twisting translation, gave this text-heavy opera bite and immediacy. The show sprinted along, with only the tiniest of first-night slips, before the swift denouement in which apparent chaos masks Verdi’s crystalline musical clarity. The soloists who kick off the opera’s fugal finale stepped forward one by one – through a jolly strip curtain (made from an old bouncy castle). Was this a device to make transparent the structure of this most complex few minutes of music? But then the orderly fugue unravels in a labyrinth of polyphony, the threads now a riotous tangle of laughter. Verdi’s last work for the stage ends on a high, especially here at Opera North.
The 12th Hatfield House chamber music festival, four days of top musicians performing in the magnificent childhood home of Elizabeth I, took as its title “A Family Affair”. The theme was partly inspired by the Salisburys who still live in the house. They also support and attend the festival, devised by the cellist Guy Johnston. A family tree of siblings, partners, extended families and long-term friendships shaped the lineup of performers, among them Johnston with his violinist brother, Magnus Johnston; various Kanneh-Masons and singers from the Bevan family. In the house’s beautiful marble hall, under the gaze of Elizabeth herself, the soprano Ruby Hughes, pianist Huw Watkins, with Guy Johnston, gave a powerful recital of Bach, Brahms, John Tavener and Berlioz. Their collaboration was especially affecting in Schubert’s The Shepherd on the Rock, the usual clarinet part taken, with delicate beauty, by Johnston on cello.
Later in the day, the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective and Orsino Winds, led by violinist Elena Urioste, gave a sparkling performance of Beethoven’s Septet, a work of unbridled originality. Each member of the ensemble shone, with buoyant displays from clarinet and horn. The other work in the concert was a world premiere of the bassoon quintet by Robin Holloway, the fifth in a series of chamber works for solo woodwind and strings.
Ridding the bassoon of comic tendency (we heard plenty of that in Falstaff), Holloway here celebrates the instrument’s capacity for lyricism and melancholy, in wistful interaction with string quartet. Amy Harman, the star basoonist for whom it was written, played with customary brilliance and expression. She was co-dedicatee. The other was – cards on table – me. It’s said no one ever erected a statue for a critic. Who’d want a statue when you can be associated, in however modest a way, with the birth of a living, breathing, entrancing piece of music. I’ll settle for that.
Star ratings (out of five)
Falstaff ★★★★
Hatfield House chamber music festival ★★★★
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