Page 550 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024

repeated. Bad gags are replayed too. One-liners, funny walks, waggled
bottoms, pratfalls, all win chuckles and applause. The actor Tom Edden, in
the spoken role of Njegus, embraced excess but carried it off well. The best
joke was the simplest: a Ferrero Rocher pyramid being offered, via butler
service, at the most inopportune moments of intimate disclosure.

The production benefits from a reworked English translation (by Stephen
Plaice and Marcia Bellamy). A new edition of the score (by Lee Reynolds)
added transparency to Léhar’s taut rhythms and waltzing melodies. Wilson,
who like the composer grew up with brass band music in his bones, brings
precision and impeccable pacing to the performance. Those many moments
when the orchestra plays snatches of melody over dialogue, hushed, tender,
wistful, are some of the most touching. Wilson has drilled the London
Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as the Glyndebourne chorus, to the highest
standards. These musicians, above all, reveal the operetta for what it is: a
masterpiece of the early 20th century.

Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, composer and tenor, life partners,
founded the Aldeburgh festival in 1948, wisely choosing early-mid June
when the East Anglian landscape is at its best, and possibly – though not
last week – its least chilly. This year’s festival, the 75th, is also Roger
Wright’s last as chief executive. He has masterminded a decade of change
and expansion, both physical, on the revitalised Snape Maltings site, and
artistic. This transformation has taken place almost by stealth. He has not
lost sight of continuity.