Concept/Director: Valentina Ceschi
Conductor/Piano: Erika Gundesen
As part of its Shakespeare season, accompanying Bellini’s version of Romeo and Juliet, English Touring Opera came up with the neat idea of a studio production of a sort-of-opera which ingeniously weaves twenty Shakespearean settings into a story-line. The result, always pleasant to watch and listen to, becomes oddly moving in its later stages. Valentina Ceschi’s concept involves a man dying in a hospital bed while memories, happy and sad, flood back. The originality lies in the fact that the four singers take several parts while the dying man is a realistic puppet, created by Matt Hutchinson and skilfully manipulated by the singers – other puppets fluttering in and out add to the charm of the piece.
The simple, but effective, setting consists of a hospital room with a door at the back and – a welcome touch of beauty – a window at the side with a blind that reveals a garden – or a moon. At the other side is the eager Erika Gundesen at the keyboard with her trio from the ETO Orchestra: violin, cello and flute.
Many of the songs are totally apposite to the story-line, though one feels that calling a baby Sylvia may just have been an excuse to bring in Schubert’s delightful Who is Sylvia?! Similarly Thomas Arne’s wonderful setting of Where the bee sucks is splendidly sung by Tamsanqa Tylor Lamani while examining x-ray plates. And the early morning start is a more than acceptable reason for Henry Bishop’s Lo hear the gentle lark, one of the first hit records by a classical singer (Nellie Melba) here delivered with authority, if a touch more harshness than Dame Nellie, by Alys Meredid Roberts, combining neatly with the famous flute obbligato.
As the piece progresses, less familiar settings appear alongside such favourites as Finzi’s It was a Lover and his Lass, sung, with suitable affection, by Samuel Pantcheff as the blind comes up to reveal Lamani and Emily Hodkinson entering from the garden. Two fine songs by Amy Beach make their mark, as does a dramatic instrumental Dance of the Winds by Purcell.
It’s round about Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s mesmeric setting of The Merchant of Venice, beautifully sung by Lamani and Hodkinson, that you feel that this is more than a pleasing entertainment. Hodkinson then moves on to Madeleine Dring’s Take, O take those lips away followed by Pantcheff returning to Finzi with Fear no more the heat of the sun – both performed with powerful restraint.
Reviewed on 1st March 2023.
