100 YEARS OLD AND ALWAYS READY TO FACE THE MUSIC...

TAKE an opera singer who has crossed over to popular music, another singer of operatic arias who never appears in operas, and a comedy actor who, as far as I know, has never been seen as a singer and what do you get? The answer is Carousel at the English National Opera and, it is rather wonderful.

I have long been puzzled by the supposed difference between musicals and comic operas. Musicals admittedly have spoken words between the songs while operas more often than not have music from start to finish. But both tell stories with music and I have always wondered why they seem to attract different audiences. Almost anyone who loves musicals would, I feel sure, love any comic opera by Mozart, Donizetti or Rossini, yet there seems to be something of the perceived elitism of opera that puts them off.

Two years ago, the ENO hit on an imaginative way to combat this by combining their efforts with those of the GradeLinnit Company to put on a blockbuster musical around this time of year. They began with a sensational version of Sweeney Todd, followed with Glenn Close in Sunset Boulevard last year and now it is the turn of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel which is looking like another triumph for which much of the credit must go to director Lonny Price for the glorious casting.

Alfie Boe began his career by gaining acclaim as an opera singer before heading resolutely downmarket to reach a much larger audience with last year’s Christmas No.1 album Together.

Katherine Jenkins has done much the same, training as an opera singer but bringing her deliciously pure voice to arena tours and recordings rather than actual opera performances.

As for Nicholas Lyndhurst. Well I know he has excelled in Shakespeare and other serious acting but isn’t he best known as Rodney Trotter in Only Fools And Horses?

All three, however, excelled in their first night performances in Camelot, bringing great joy to the packed crowd. Katherine Jenkins showed that she can act as well as sing; Nicholas Lyndhurst showed that he can work with singers as well as actors and while we all knew that Alfie Boe can both sing and act, he ditched his usual nice boy image and got to grips with the leading role of the thuggish Billy Bigelow in very impressive style. Singing without a microphone in opera and with a microphone in musicals demand very different techniques but Boe has mastered both.

With Boe and Jenkins singing their hearts out, a delightful cameo by Lyndhurst and a fine supporting cast all accompanied by the wonderful ENO orchestra, it added up to a splendid evening’s entertainment. Two of the rest of the cast deserve special mention: Gavin Spokes belted out the part of Enoch Snow and sounded the most authentic musicals star of all, while Brenda Edwards sang You’ll Never Walk Alone in a way that banished the image of countless football crowds ruining a good song. For that alone, this production of Carousel is worth seeing. Do go and see it then try some comic operas.