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Opera Review

Obscure Operas, Festival Darlings

‘‘The Maiden in the Tower,’’ the only opera written by Sibelius, at the Buxton Festival. The director Stephen Lawless treats it as a children’s story and sets it in a nursery.Credit...Robert Workman

BUXTON, ENGLAND — A festival boasting eight opera productions and more than 100 other events can hardly be called a well-kept secret. But the Buxton Festival is overshadowed by better-known events in Britain, like Glyndebourne and Edinburgh. Situated in a pleasant city in Central England, the festival, which describes itself as “a happy marriage of music, opera and books,” includes talks on literary subjects plus recitals and chamber concerts. But opera has top visibility, and this year offerings constitute a trove for the operatically curious.

Not that that is unusual for Buxton. The festival specializes in lesser-known operas, producing them in a charming 900-seat opera house dating from 1903 and situated along the city’s picturesque, expansive central park. This year has something for nearly everyone. Sibelius fans can see his only opera, “The Maiden in the Tower.” Strauss connoisseurs can savor his bourgeois comedy “Intermezzo.” And 18th-century aficionados are well supplied too.

Of the four productions I saw, top honors go to Handel’s oratorio “Jephtha” as staged by Frederic Wake-Walker and performed by excellent soloists supported by the period-instrument Orchestra of the Sixteen and the Buxton Festival Chorus led by Harry Christophers. I admit to being partial to 18th-century sacrificial dramas, like Mozart’s “Idomeneo” and Gluck’s Iphigenia operas; Handel’s biblical drama about the Israelite warrior Jephtha, who rashly vows if victorious to sacrifice the first thing he sees on returning home, also ranks among the best.

Curiously, Mr. Wake-Walker’s staging depicts what you’d expect from an oratorio, and it involves a fair amount of silliness. But he vividly underscores important dramatic moments, especially when we get to the heart of the work and Jephtha’s daughter Iphis greets her returning father while he stands frozen, dumbstruck. With John Bishop’s lighting trained solely on him, James Gilchrist, as Jephtha, goes on to sing the incomparable “Waft her angels” intensely yet beautifully. Iphis, reconciled to her fate, sings “Fairwell ye limpid springs,” here lent a special poignancy by Gillian Keith’s fragile, quavery singing. All these moments take part in an emotionally overwhelming sequence.

The domestic travails of the central couple of “Intermezzo,” modeled by Strauss on himself and his shrewish but (at least to him) adorable wife Pauline, are thin stuff by comparison, which is one reason the opera remains a rarity. Another is that its highly verbal nature (Andrew Porter’s translation is used) makes it difficult to cast, especially the crucial role of “Christine.” Janis Kelly gives an outstanding performance as the volatile wife enraged by a supposed affair involving her husband. Ms. Kelly gives meaning to every word — and there is a torrent of them — while singing handsomely, if without that final measure of vocal radiance that is sometimes Christine’s most appealing quality.

Stephen Gadd sings warmly as Robert and Stephen Unwin’s streamlined production is admirably straightforward. The rub comes with Strauss’s sumptuous orchestral interludes, which severely tax Buxton’s players, otherwise led persuasively by Stephen Barlow.

The chance to hear Sibelius’s opera on a double bill with Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Kashchei the Immortal” was one to jump at, but the Finnish composer’s 35-minute work, of which he forbade further performances pending revisions he never made, turned out to be shockingly flimsy. It is hard to know what to make of this tale of a maiden imprisoned in a tower, but the director Stephen Lawless’s decision to treat it as a children’s story set in a nursery can’t be right — after all, the girl has a lover who tries to rescue her from her captor, the bailiff’s son.

The opera contains much captivating music in a lighter vein, often with bouncy syncopations, and also has an appealing prayer for the Maiden, but a big love duet proves unfocused and over all the opera lacks theatricality. Rimsky-Korsakov’s dramaturgical skills never seemed more potent than when “Kashchei” got going after intermission, its similar story treated by Mr. Lawless as a kind of sequel to the Sibelius. Décor remains largely the same, but he irritatingly laces the stagings with meaningless parallels. The best singing comes from the baritone Owen Gilhooly as the Bailiff’s Son and as Ivan, the lover in “Kashchei.” Stuart Stratford ably conducts, showing due regard for Sibelius’s rhythmic liveliness and Rimsky’s felicities of melody and orchestration. Both operas are sung in Rodney Blumer’s lucid new translation.

“Jephtha,” “Intermezzo” and the double bill are all Buxton Festival productions, but guest productions also figure in the mix. In a nod to the forthcoming Olympics, Metastasio’s durable libretto “L’Olimpiade,” which was set to music more than a hundred times, has been seized on by several enterprising impresarios. The plot involves a ploy by an ancient Olympics contestant to have a superior athlete compete in his name, with predictably dire results. Other settings, such as Pergolesi’s, may rank ahead of the one offered here by Vivaldi, which was already been seen this summer in another production at the Garsington Festival. But Vivaldi’s contains some splendid arias, and they are generally well sung and stylishly played in this guest production from the period-instrument ensemble La Serenissima, co-directed musically by Adrian Chandler and James Johnstone.

The stage director Richard Williams gives the opera a single locale — a victory celebration with festive tables and balloons — but he sometimes trivializes the drama. When the better athlete Megacle, fearing he has lost his beloved Aristea (Rachael Lloyd), sings the despairing aria “Se cerca, se dice,” Louise Poole’s eloquent and touching performance is undermined when she takes snorts from a flask. Still, this is a welcome opportunity to experience a worthwhile opera and get to know a plot that, as opera-seria revivals continue, one may encounter again.

Buxton Festival. Through July 25.

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