Vert-Vert, Garsington Opera at Wormsley, review

The cast of Offenbach's Vert-Vert is pretty much faultless but this operetta set in a girls' school is a silly story lacking in satire or point

Vert-Vert at Garsington Opera, with Geoffrey Dolton as Baladon,  Fflur Wyn as Mimi, Robert Murray  as Vert-Vert, Yvonne Howard as Mme Paturellle
Vert-Vert at Garsington Opera, with Geoffrey Dolton as Baladon, Fflur Wyn as Mimi, Robert Murray as Vert-Vert, Yvonne Howard as Mme Paturellle Credit: Photo: Alastair Muir

It’s seldom that I’ve witnessed an operetta by Offenbach as well performed as this – the British première of the complete version of Vert-Vert, a piece dating from 1869 about amorous fiddle-faddle at a girls’ school. It could scarcely be done better, but should it be done at all?

Hats off in any case to David Parry, the crisp and rigorous conductor of a full-blooded orchestra, who has provided an amusing and idiomatic translation, and to Martin Duncan, for a staging which stylishly evokes the French provinces of the Maupassant era through brightly colourful designs by Francis O’Connor. It’s all good clean fun and, refreshingly, not heavy-handed or vulgar.

The cast is pretty much faultless. Robert Murray has the ideal sweetness of voice for the plonker of a hero, and the security of his soft singing above the stave is exemplary; Fflur Wyn is all pert charm and diamond sparkle as the infatuated sixth former in hot pursuit. Quirijn de Lang and Andrew Glover make a dashing pair of heavy dragoons, while Naomi O’Connell radiates seductive glamour as a diva of the music halls.

Best of all is that supreme operetta artist Geoffrey Dolton, playing an effete dancing master secretly married to Yvonne Howard’s formidable but susceptible headmistress. Dolton’s crystalline enunciation and perfect comic timing put him in the great Savoyard tradition of George Grossmith and Martyn Green. His brilliant execution of a number narrating the history of dance (complete with step demonstrations which even Craig Revel Horwood would have applauded) is the evening’s highlight.

Vert-Vert

Vert-Vert. PHOTO: ALASTAIR MUIR

But, oh dear, what a silly story – one entirely lacking in Gilbertian resonance, satire or point. Convent girls mourning the death of their pet parrot Vert-Vert decide to adopt Valentin, a clot of a retainer-concièrge (his precise institutional position being left oddly unclear), as their mascot. He turns out to be not so clottish after all, but the intrigue, romantic and comic, is all paper-thin and without ingenuity.

The music really isn’t much better either, with an awful lot of one-two, up-down, in-out stuff that Offenbach could have written in his sleep. A long and rumbustious medley overture and a couple of attractive ensembles in the final scene lift the general level of mediocrity at either end of the show, but the remainder is just froth, and despite Garsington’s exemplary advocacy, this is not a piece with the heady exhilaration or melodic abundance that marks operetta at its best.

Vert-Vert, Garsington Opera at Wormsley (until July 9). A performance on July 9 will be broadcast on screen live to the beach at Skegness. Phone 01865 261636 or click on www.garsingtonopera.org