The exclamation mark in the title warns you. No collective strikes, rebellions, revolutions, except outside and over there – or when a chorus is needed. Instead, the closeup struggles of the individual: boils on the bottom, nooky with the housekeeper, another trip to the pawnbrokers. Marx in London!, first seen in Bonn in 2018, is Jonathan Dove’s 32nd opera, according to the composer’s own uncertain calculations. A skilful libretto by Charles Hart (Bend It Like Beckham, Phantom of the Opera) wriggles with internal rhymes, puns, jokes, to recreate a single crazed day in the life of one of the towering intellects of the 19th century: the German Karl Marx, during his time in political exile in London.
Scottish Opera’s new production, the UK premiere, opened at Glasgow’s Theatre Royal on Tuesday, conducted by David Parry, who also led the Bonn premiere. To list all the plot twists, witty musical references, the operatic tropes – from Wagnerian incest to Falstaffian concealment in a trunk – would be an act of deflation. The joy of this farcical work is its buoyancy. Just as you fear an episode is about to lose altitude, it rockets up again with a new surprise. Dove’s agile score likewise flickers rapidly between pumping minimalism to Psycho-style mock horror to full-blown romanticism. For any student of orchestration, he offers a model of what can be done, especially when piano, celeste, sampled harmonium and low brass and woodwind are added to standard forces.
This capacious Dove-Hart miscellany is embraced fully in Stephen Barlow’s stylish production, designed with magical ingenuity by Yannis Thavoris. Bustles, silks and penny farthing fix the action in the 1870s. Using the techniques of toy theatre, backdrops are taken from maps and prints of Victorian Bloomsbury, the British Museum reading room, London seen from Hampstead. In the title role, baritone Roland Wood – a spitting image of the father of communism thanks to identikit hair and beard – is outstanding. He elicits sympathy despite the humiliations this mighty intellectual is obliged to endure.
A lively ensemble cast is led by Orla Boylan as Marx’s longsuffering wife, Lucy Schaufer as the smart, chess-playing housekeeper, and Rebecca Bottone as the teenaged daughter with a penchant for stratospheric coloratura. Alasdair Elliott’s angel-winged Engels, Paul Hopwood’s Melanzane and William Morgan’s Freddy, along with excellent orchestral playing and robust chorus work, all contributed to this company achievement. Was it too long? Probably by a good half hour, but the laughter flowed.
Whichever neural pathways make us chuckle – the late Dr Jonathan Miller, a stickler for medical precision, would have told us – they were in rare overdrive, operatically speaking, last week, with not one but two comedies. Miller’s 1987 production of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville (revival director Peter Relton) was back at the Coliseum for the first time since 2017, in Tanya McCallin’s period designs. It feels dated and not always as crisp as you might hope, but bursts with humour and spirit.
Rossini’s anarchy, stamped into every bar of the score, shone through thanks to good casting, notably in the shrewish brilliance of Irish soprano Anna Devin, making her house and role debut as Rosina. Charles Rice played the manic charmer Figaro, with Simon Bailey adding new dimensions to Dr Bartolo and Innocent Masuku, light-voiced and wry as Count Almaviva. The conductor Roderick Cox made a rewarding ENO debut, with a natural and commanding sense of pace. The text, in Amanda Holden and Anthony Holden’s sharp translation, has lost none of its edge.
As this column was going to press, news broke about ENO musicians, who called off strike action last week, reportedly receiving redundancy notices via email mid-performance on the last night of The Handmaid’s Tale. No announcement has been made and we must wait to establish details. If true, ENO’s already bleak recent history grows darker. Meantime, support this company if, or while, you can.
Two symphonic epics, at the Barbican and the Royal Festival Hall, must make do with short mentions. With the 200th anniversary year of Anton Bruckner (1824-96) now underway, the London Symphony Orchestra gave two concerts of his music this month, conducted by Nathalie Stutzmann, an acknowledged devotee. The second, last Sunday, featured his unfinished Ninth symphony – dedicated to God – followed, without a break, by his Te Deum, the choral-orchestral work he called the “pride of my life”. The union, suggested by Bruckner himself, was fascinating to experience, probably best filed as “memorable curiosity”, with expert singing from the London Symphony Chorus and red-blooded playing from the LSO. If this expert, hard-working orchestra sounded a fraction below par, it is a cause for empathy not complaint.
In its Icons Rediscovered series, linking works by two late romantics – Sergei Rachmaninov and Edward Elgar – the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra showed its mettle. The orchestra’s game has been lifted to new levels by the arrival of Vasily Petrenko as music director. In Rachmaninov’s mighty Symphony No 2, the strings were precise and unanimous. Balance across every section of the orchestra was ideal. Petrenko gave seemingly infinite space to the slow movement (the clarinet’s long, poetic “song”, eloquently played by Sonia Sielaff), but the rest was tight, detailed and rigorous. Attentive and silent throughout, with barely a cough, the capacity audience erupted at the end. The standing ovation was noisy and deserved.
Star ratings (out of five)
Marx in London! ★★★★
The Barber of Seville ★★★★
LSO/Stutzmann ★★★
RPO/Petrenko ★★★★
Marx in London! is at the Theatre Royal Glasgow tonight, then transfers to the Festival theatre, Edinburgh, 22 & 24 February
The Barber of Seville is in rep at the London Coliseum until 29 February
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