Page 91 - FINAL_Guildhall Media Highlights 2019-2020 Coverage Book

Ema Nikolovska (Celia), Robert Lewis (Fileno). Photo credit: Mihaela Bodlovic.

Barlow suggests that when he read through the libretto, his first thought was that it was
essentially an episode of Love Island. Fortunately, his reflections did not stop there, and
his production is a charmingly insouciant mishmash of pseudo-antiquity, eighteenth-
century Classicism and modern-day motifs - a burlesque which effortlessly blends past
and present, exposing the foibles of others and ourselves.

Against a Claude Lorrain ‘landscape with piping shepherd’ back-cloth, Adrian Linford’s
set slopes rakishly down from a tentacle-embossed seascape, across a Delphic shrine,
towards the run-down back entrance of a hostelry. A ‘ceiling’ open to the skies enhances
the artifice. Amaranta arrives, larger than life in floral mantua and high wig, and
precedes to smash her way through the devotional relics, sending floral and edible
offerings flying - noisily. Perruchetto wheels in on a roaring motorbike - his ‘luxuriant’
locks trailing behind him in the breeze - in search of a bottle, or two, of Bordeaux and a
girl to swig it with. A Cambridge punt, stacked with trunks, tomes and teddy-bear
facilitates Fileno’s entrance, his cricket whites gleaming under lighting designer David
Howe’s Elysian sunbeams. Nerinda’s polka-dot cigarette pants are a walking
advertisement for 50s’ style and the sharp-suited Lindoro matched her for sartorial
elegance.

At times the lighting emphasises the artificiality of proceedings, elsewhere the sincerity
of the sung sentiments. In the latter stages, several arias are sung just before the soloist
leaves the stage, and Barlow foregrounds the theatrical pretence, and the opera’s
eighteenth-century origins, by having the singers return to the stage to formally accept
the applause post-aria. Similarly, a trap-door provided a welcome store of props as
required.

Haydn may be criticised for lacking Mozart’s theatrical nous and insight into human
relations. But, his score is wonderful, the seven main characters well-drawn, and the