Director Jo Davies has had a remarkable run of success at Opera North, proving equally adept at operetta (Ruddigore), musicals (Carousel) and Mozart (the Marriage of Figaro). Little wonder that the company should have invited her back to brush up its Shakespeare.
Opera North’s Broadway excursions have encompassed heavyweights such as Kern, Gershwin and Rodgers – this is the first time it has taken on anything so frothy as Cole Porter. Yet Porter’s late, and greatest, hit was as close as he came to writing an opera – or, at least, a scintillatingly witty deconstruction of the Taming of the Shrew.
Davies’s great achievement is to amalgamate a group of classically trained singers and musical theatre specialists into a unit so cohesive you can no longer see the joins: indeed, the backstage drama of a fractious company putting on a show seems naturally to evolve from her recent Marriage of Figaro, which ingeniously flipped the set round to expose the chaos unfolding behind the scenes.
The two productions also contain a common cad: the compelling Dutch baritone Quirijn de Lang was a dashing, moustache-twirling Almaviva – here he’s an equally magnificent rotter in the role of Fred Graham, whose attitude towards women is hardly any better. At least Jeni Bern gives as good as she gets as his former wife Lilli; a genuinely operatic part that gives her fine, upper extension a workout.
Tiffany Graves’s Lois steals three reprises of Always True to You in My Fashion, which still isn’t enough; Ashley Day takes the prize for most accomplished hoofing as her partner Bill, while Joseph Shovelton and John Savournin’s pair of hapless hoodlums are a joy.
Colin Richmond’s set looks a picture – a Gozzoli-esque fresco to be specific – and there can be no conductor in the world with a more intimate understanding of this piece than David Charles Abell, who edited the critical edition of the score. With a full complement of saxophones and additional brass, the playing of the Opera North orchestra is so darn hot it’s practically a fire-risk.
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