Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation
Betrothal in a Monastery
Florid … Betrothal in a Monastery. Photograph: KK Dundas
Florid … Betrothal in a Monastery. Photograph: KK Dundas

Betrothal in a Monastery – review

This article is more than 12 years old
Theatre Royal, Glasgow

Prokofiev's 1940s comic opera is hardly ever done – the UK's only other professional production was at Glyndebourne in 2006 – so this Scottish Opera/Royal Conservatoire of Scotland collaboration was a chance to do something original. Their annual joint ventures have really worked in the past, making the flimsy am-dram feel to this year's effort surprising. Though composed in wartime Soviet Russia, Betrothal's plot is a classic comedy of errors based on Sheridan's 18th-century play The Duenna.

It has star-crossed lovers, swapped identities, nocturnal elopements and a baddie buffo daddy, but by far the most interesting thing about the opera is its score. This is Prokofiev in direct-to-the-heart filmic mode with crooner love songs and uproarious crowd scenes, all shot through with a wit that shifts quickly between acerbic and slapstick.

The long instrumental interludes would be a gift to an imaginative director; unfortunately, Rodula Gaitanou, who updates the action to 1980s Spain for a post-Franco liberation reading, lays the cliches on thick. Lurid sets are pinched from Pedro Almodóvar films, dialogue is soap opera-stilted and Kally Lloyd-Jones's choreography (gangs  of punks breaking into florid flamenco gestures) is over-symbolised and clunky.

The SO orchestra was beefed up by 20 RCS students, but still sounded drab and scrappy under conductor Timothy Dean. Overall, the student calibre seems down from last year. The exception is tenor Ronan Busfield, who makes a superb bustling Don Jerome, vocally secure and flexible, with a real comic flare. There is a sweet seduction scene between Mendoza the fish merchant (Andrew Tipple) and the Duenna (Lynda-Jane Nelson), but things generally pick up after the interval with a decent game of football and some antics involving nuns, drunk monks and punks in the monastery.

Comments (…)

Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion

Most viewed

Most viewed