Page 176 - FINAL_Theatre of Sound Coverage Book

than ever 46 years on, had the best overall cast I’ve ever seen in the work, young singers
Frederick Jones, Nardus Williams (the two pictured above by Sisi Burn with the Glyndebourne
Chorus in the Bedlam scene) and Sam Carl plus Rosie Aldridge as a crystal-clear Baba the Turk
bringing new vivacity to the work.

Garsington aimed high with Bruno Ravella’s new production of Der Rosenkavaier, using the
Kloke reduction of the Strauss score as Jurowski had in Munich; it sounded rich in the beautiful
pavilion on the Wormsley Estate, and is well worth catching for free on the excellent, EU funded
OperaVision website.The hit of the season, though, was a predictable riot of gags from Cal
McCrystal for Rossini’s Le Comte Ory, complimented by double-jointed and coloratura activity by
the stunning Andrea Carroll (pictured below with Patricia Bardon and Ladies in Waiting). Getting
round social distancing problems in the substitute bed-trick trio involved quite some ingenuity.

As Richard Bratby, who also chose the Garsington Rossini, points out, “if HMS Pinafore [English
National Opera’s second new production of 2022] hasn't responded quite so well to McCrystal’s
knockabout aesthetic, he's still the best thing to happen to comic opera in this country for a very
long time."

From Spamalot history to a more earnest chronicle, this time Russian, and Grange Park Opera
pulled off a triumphantly well cast and conducted (by Mikhail Tatarnikov) double whammy of
Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Maid of Pskov and its “prequel”, The Boyarina Vera Sheloga, as Ivan the
Terrible (two more Korsakov rarities to tick off the list). Clive Bayley metamorphosed into Stalin –
not too subtle an historical parallel, this, from David Pountney – most convincingly (pictured
below by Manuel Harlan) RIchard and Stephen Walsh also hailed this major coup in GPO’s very
impressive Theatre in the Woods, an Italian-style opera house without the trimmings but with
very impressive acoustics (in my first experience of the venue).