Composer: Otto Nicolai
Adaptator: Lars Harald Maagerø
Directors: Kristin Lundemo Overøye and Lars Harald Maagerø
Arcola’s annual Grimeborn Festival celebrates opera with a radical mindset often missing from some of the more traditional purveyors of the form. Its 16th year opens with a visit from Norway’s Queer Voices Opera, the country’s first and only solely LGBTQIA+ opera company. Queer Voices’ take on Otto Nicolai’s The Merry Wives of Windsor hues closely to the original comic opera, but with gender roles and gender presentation nowhere near as rigidly adhered to.
The story is still the same: the rogue Sir John Falstaff has wooed two married women, who join forces to get the better of him and, as a side benefit, their own controlling husbands. Falstaff is no rotund elder knight here, though: instead Mae Heydorn’s portrayal is rooted in 90s lesbian chic, a studded dog collar matched with oversized plaid shirts and red leggings. The gender-fluid portrayal (the character is still referred to as “Sir John” by the singers, although in places the surtitles also use “she” and “lady”) replaces the character’s usual geriatric lechery with a much more youthful – if still misplaced – charm.
Heydorn is engaging and warm in her portrayal, even though the character barely registers in the opera’s first act. That is dominated by Therese-Angelle Khachik’s Mrs Ford, whose soprano rendition of Nicolai’s arias impresses from the outset and remains this production’s greatest asset throughout. Maria Dale Johannessen gives ample support in the mezzo-soprano role of Mrs Page, but this is Khachik’s show and the production is all the better for it.
Alongside the farcical elements of the Falstaff-based comedy is a romantic subplot in which the Pages’ daughter Anne is being wooed by three suitors: two who are individually supported by each of Anne’s parents and her true, penniless love, Fenton. As the latter, Eldrid Gorset delivers a sweet vocal performance: moving what is normally a male tenor role up to fit the female voice provides some original and effective contrast to the soprano of Ville Johnsbråten’s Anne.
Elsewhere, unfortunately, the vocal performances tend more towards the satisfactory. They are not as distracting, though, as the quirky attempts at make-up, with each character’s face sporting either large patches of random colours, what look like paper adornments, or both. If there is a thematic or dramatic reason for such bizarre accoutrements, it remains elusive.
That misstep is nothing, though, compared to the costume for Patrick Egersborg’s Mr Ford, in which a grey suit jacket and white shirt sit over a mismatched skirt and high heels. The concept of playing with gender-based outfits would be interesting if Egersborg did not clomp around the stage as if it were the character’s first time in heels. The unfortunate impression is less of a genderfluid character and more of a middle manager who’s done a bit of cross-dressing to give the lads on his stag do a bit of a laugh.
The lively and fun Act I gives way to second and third acts where the pace often grinds, if not to a halt, then to an extreme crawl – even despite the best efforts of pianist Kelvin Lim, who admirably reproduces the whole opera’s score solo. The production fails to invest much in Anne’s romantic quadrangle so that every visit to that subplot feels like a distraction.
And while Falstaff’s eventual comeuppance is rather more brutal than one would expect – and which, given the LGBTQIA+ focus of the piece, is a stark reminder of the violence members of the community face every day – it brings to an end a light opera which, by its conclusion, has begun to outstay its welcome.
Continues until 22 July 2023
The Reviews Hub Score
Engaging but overlong
