01.03.2015

Share:

Founded in 1989 by businessman and philanthropist Leonard Ingrams to entertain family and friends, Garsington Opera In Garsington Manor in Oxfordshire has become renowned for promoting British talent and little known opera classics. In 2011, Mark Getty moved the festival to his estate at Wormsley Park in the Chiltern Hills, a larger and even more spectacular setting. This has allowed Garsington Opera to develop its potential even further. With its award-winning Pavilion and high artistic values, Garsington fills a unique niche in the British and probably in the entire opera world.

The new Garsington Opera Pavilion designed by architect Robin Snell, was created to retain the atmosphere and ‘semi-outdoors experience’ established by Ingrams at the original venue. Offering stunning views across a lake, deer park, cricked yard and the woods beyond, this new lightweight structure features sliding screens, extending platforms, verandas and bridges that link it to the landscape. It is a unique, fantastic set to perform opera. With performances running from May to July, the design needed to deal with the broad range of climatic conditions which can be expected during this period. Whilst it was never the intention to generate the level of comfort which is normally associated with opera houses, the strategy for providing comfort conditions involved a three-stage iterative process consisting of passive response, high level radiant heating, and a simple displacement system.



Garsington Opera’s formidable reputation was built on pioneering on rare opera and repertoire ones. This year’s rarity is Jules Offenbach’s Vert-Vert, a hilarious comedy about a talking parrot whose funeral opens the drama; this turns on a series of clandestine marriages plus sundry seductions. Vert-Vert was first performed at the Opéra-Comique in 1869, although it was performed in London in a much-reduced version at St. James’s Theatre in 1874, the current run of performances at Garsington is its first complete staging in England. A real rarety. David Parry  recently recorded the complete Vert-Vert opera for Opera Rara.

Martin Duncan’s production and Francis O’Connor’s sets are excellent. They present the convent school as a tower-like structure that meshes Gothic and Renaissance architectural styles, stylised trees grace the stage assuming the pre-Art Nouveau shapes, while light and colour are used to delineate thdaytime settings of Acts I and II, and the night sky of Act III. The direction and choreography oscillate between the highly slick and slightly pedestrian. There is a lot of very fine and enjoyable music in Vert-Vert and David Perry who also translates (extremely well) the libretto conducts it well.

There is also some excellent singing. Robert Murray as Valentin has a clean, yet round and assertive voice  Fflur Wyn as Mimi demonstrates great maturity with her voice. Raphaela Papadakis, Katie Bray, Andrew Glover and Quriijn de Lang are persuasive as the quartet of lovers comprising schoolgirls and dragons officers.  Naomi O’Connell as the singer La Corilla takes the stage with a beautifully rich,  silvery voice. The acting from several cast members during the spoken dialogue is not so convincing, but Yvonne Howard as Mademoiselle Paturelle and Geoffrey Dolton as Baladon are great.

Massimo Corsini