L’Olimpiade, Garsington Opera at Wormsley, review

The cast of this Olympics-themed opera by Vivaldi battle heroically against the elements in this oudoor performance

Going the distance: Emily Fons as Megacle in Vivaldi's 'L'Olimpiade'

I FIND it hard to review this performance objectively as my perceptions were befuddled by the driving rain and freezing temperatures which attended it – despite thermal layers under my dinner suit, I ended up with chattering teeth, wrapped up in a blanket. Garsington Opera’s airy new pavilion on the Wormsley estate is a thing of great beauty, but its location in the Chiltern Hills leaves it vulnerable to the vagaries of the English summer. Attempts have been made to improve the heating, but in future wouldn’t it just be wiser to run the opera season through July rather than June?

This year’s major revival is opportunistic: Vivaldi’s L’Olimpiade, an opera dating from 1734, focuses on a scam in which the aristocratic athlete Licida persuades his indebted friend Megacle, a far fitter fellow, to enter a race under Licida’s identity and win him both the gold medal and the hand of fair Aristea. Of course, this being the world of baroque opera where nothing is simple, Aristea loves Megacle, and Licida ought to do the decent thing and marry Argene, who lives disguised as a shepherdess.

Even though issues of honour and a death sentence are at stake in the ensuing intrigue, it is hard to take this sort of thing seriously, and the director David Freeman shrewdly tackles it with a light touch. Against a landscape of classical statuary, the chaps wear tracksuits and trainers, and the scene of the games themselves involves a witty allusion to Vangelis’s immortal theme tune to Chariots of Fire, but the jokes never sink to the tiresomely crass. The pace is swift, the tone wry, the look stylish.

Vivaldi’s score, characteristically extrovert, muscular and brisk, merits little comment. Despite the best efforts of the conductor Laurence Cummings and the orchestra, it is totally unmemorable, assembled out of the baroque pattern-book, with the arias sewn together through yards of plainly stitched recitative. Even in more clement climatic conditions, I doubt I could ever engage emotionally or viscerally with this sort of music.

If the audience suffered from the weather, heaven knows what the bare-limbed singers endured: their breath froze as it left their mouths, yet they heroically did not falter. Gold medals all round for an exceptionally well-balanced cast, with special honours to the counter-tenor Tim Mead (Licida) and mezzo-soprano Emily Fons (Megacle), both of whom brought sweetness and warmth to the bleakly cold night.

  • Until June 29. Tickets: 01865 361 636