G & S go back to college . . . and it’s a real masterclass
HOW thrilling to encounter this rarely-heard G&S gem and find the title role is taken by a future star — Irish soprano Emma Walsh.
She sings Princess Ida’s two great airs with beautiful tone, arching phrasing and a rare commitment, so you wonder why this gloriously un-PC opera — poking fun at the then-new women’s colleges — is not in the regular repertoire.
It features persuasive Sullivan music and an inimitable Gilbert creation, King Gama. Under the Irish team of director Vivian Coates, choreographer Mary MacDonagh and conductor Aidan Faughey, the National Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company do it proud.
Paul Lazell’s sets suggest Victorian fairytale books and Gilbert’s tilts at Darwin are nicely done. Rival Kings Hildebrand and Gama are superbly portrayed by Donald Maxwell and Richard Suart — the latter scuttling around on two sticks like a comic Richard III.
As the three young men who infiltrate Ida’s university in drag, we have Scottish tenor Laurie Slavin — already in mellifluous voice — second tenor Nick Sales and baritone Matthew Kellett.
Ida’s fellow proto-feminists include Gaynor Keeble as the ridiculous Lady Blanche, Katie Grosset as Melissa and Natalie Montakhab as Lady Psyche. Though love triumphs, Gilbert inadvertently makes powerful points for the women’s movement.
Of Hildebrand’s three oafish sons, Arac stands out for his marvellous spoof-Handel song, magnificently delivered by James Cleverton.
Emma Walsh is also the star of the new Pirates Of Penzance, inserting Donizetti into Mabel’s air ‘Poor wand’ring one’ and throwing off dazzling coloratura. Conductor Andrew Nicklin restores a few passages which are often cut, but apart from Richard Gauntlett’s well-practised Major-General the rest of the singing is humdrum.
TOUR dates for the National Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company can be found at gsfestivals.org.