Page 492 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024

08 June 2024
Blond Eckbert, Aldeburgh Festival: The 75th

edition opens with a deliciously disturbing fairy-

tale

Judith Weir’s whimsical woodland psychodrama gets a film noir treatment – with a score so taut it
threatens to burst
Claire Jackson8 June 2024 • 10:32am

Blond Eckbert at Aldeburgh Festival CREDIT: Richard Hubert Smith

Abird sings from a rooftop, her melismas swirl and twirl, eventually forming words to introduce
the inhabitants of the house below. A couple, seemingly content in their solitude, emerge from
Hitchcockian shadows. They fill the silence as any mid-century character would, chain-smoking
into the void. Thin plumes rise in a bare living room, where Blond Eckbert – the titular character
in Judith Weir’s opera – sits with his wife Berthe.

Everything about Aldeburgh Festival’s new production, which will go on the road with English
Touring Opera, is pared back; the chamber version of Weir’s dark fairy tale is scored for 10-piece
ensemble and just four soloists. Coco Chanel is said to have recommended the removal of one
accessory before leaving the house in order to achieve a perfect outfit – Weir has done the
orchestral equivalent, creating a score so taut at times it threatens to burst its seams.