A two for one offer from Opera North
Company: Venue: Review by: Rating: HE Little Greats is an innovative piece of programming by Opera North. The company is staging six one-act operas in double bills of differing combinations. Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci and Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortileges provide a stimulating contrast and ultimately, despite some mis-steps with Pagliacci, a thoroughly rewarding opening evening.
Pagliacci, one of the first verismo operas, relies dramatically on its setting among ordinary people and the conflict between real and acted life. Canio brings his troupe of players to a village. His jealousy of his wife, Nedda, is well founded as she is having an affair with Silvio.
Eventually his fury boils over as he is acting the part of a jealous husband and the opera ends with violence and death.
Charles Edwards, designer of sets and lighting for The Little Greats, directs this one opera and his clever updating is too much concerned with introducing the whole series. In his version an opera company is rehearsing. As a result the story-line is blurred and the identity of the chorus (cast members or audience?) is confused.
Fortunately there are many compensations, mainly in the one to one confrontations. Elin Pritchard’s passionate and vocally secure Nedda goes to the heart of the opera in her first scene with Phillip Rhodes’ ardent Silvio.
As Canio Peter Auty raises his game after a rather pallid opening and brings out all the intensity of Vesti la giubba. Richard Burkhard, wryly self-deprecating in the Prologue, is suitably menacing as the bitter Tonio. After a less incisive start than usual the orchestra plays with characteristic elan for Tobias Ringborg.
Any doubts disappear with a delightful and pitch-perfect L’Enfant et les Sortileges. The “lyrical fantasy” (it’s also very comic) deals with a naughty child getting his come-uppance when all the objects and animals he has damaged or hurt gang up on him until he shows some care for others.
Wallis Giunta as the Child conveys the initial high spirits and stages of confusion and despair superbly without over-acting. Vocally she has all the precision and expressiveness the part demands. The remaining cast members mainly take on two or three parts with a winning grotesqueness, John GrahamHall’s crazed schoolmaster for Arithmetic a particular treat.
With wonderfully witty designs from Charles Edwards and Hannah Clark, inventive movement from Theo Clinkard, and the orchestra alert to every nuance and contrast, director Annabel Arden and conductor Martin Andre lead a memorable production.
The production will be staged at Leeds Grand Theatre on Friday, September 29 and Saturday, October 7.