Page 172 - FINAL_Theatre of Sound Coverage Book

Covid cast its pall beyond lockdown: the tragic death of director Graham Vick did not, however,
stop the Birmingham Opera Company from staging his community version of Wagner’s RhineGold
in the summer: “a melancholy triumph,” wrote Ivan Hewett here. Glyndebourne got going with a
dazzling new production of Rossini’s Il Turco in Italia directed by Mariame Clément, full of fun,
and a classically spare and restrained Luisa Miller, directed by Christof Loy. (Although, in an
overblown and chaotic new Fidelio with rewritten dialogue, Glyndebourne also served up the
turkey of the year.)

There was a thirst for fun as theatres reopened. Scottish Opera launched with a Gilbert and
Sullivan double: the reliable hit The Gondoliers, and the neglected Utopia, Limited. Welsh
National Opera welcomed audiences back with a revival of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville and then
scored with a thought-provoking Madam Butterfly staged by Lindy Hume that airbrushed out
imperial Japan. Opera North, very active digitally in lockdown and boasting fine new facilities in
Leeds, did not quite convince with its new Carmen.

Shape of things to come: Lisette Oropesa as Gilda and Carlos Alvarez in Rigoletto at the Royal Opera House CREDIT: Alastair Muir

For me, starting my role as this paper’s opera critic this autumn, the absolutely outstanding opera
performance was not in a theatre: the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s concert revival of
Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage under its new chief conductor, Edward Gardner, at the Royal
Festival Hall took a work often criticised for incoherence and revealed a glorious piece of rhapsodic
music, brilliantly played and sung.

Will 2021’s gruelling experiences bring permanent changes to opera? Will there be more digital-
only work? I don’t detect huge enthusiasm from the large companies, which regard streaming as
an add-on activity to their live shows rather than as a new art form, but there were plenty of
smaller companies which did go down that path, notably Irish National Opera with its 20 Shots of
Opera, a series of newly commissioned five-minute pieces.

There were several pointers towards adventurous small-scale work: Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle
reworked as a picture of dementia, Cabildo by Amy Beach at Wilton’s Music Hall, the American