English National Opera
Hairy McMungo is right again. For years he has been trying to explain that the Scottish, the Scottish, the Scottish are best, he wouldn’t give a farthing for all of the rest. Especially the English (apart from Mrs McMungo of course, but she’s married to a Scotsman and her children are half-Scottish so she is almost Scottish herself although for some reason she laughed when Hairy pointed this out to her).
But if any opera company was never going to agree with Hairy, he’d have expected it to be the ENO. All the best English singers get to sing at the Coliseum and very few of the best Scottish singers. (Hairy McMungo is beginning to think he’s the only tenor in the world who hasn’t sung Count Almaviva in this production.) But then along comes this production of The Barber of Seville. It’s true that none of the cast are Scottish but a surprisingly large number of them aren’t English.
Scotland, however, is represented by the gifted Rory Macdonald, a former Young Artist at the ROH who conducted one performance of this opera whilst on the Programme. For the ENO, he conducts them all. From the first moments of the overture, Rory leads the ENO Orchestra in a warm and spirited performance. Rossini’s music is full of musical jokes which trip lightly off his baton. In this revival by Ian Rutherford (note that Ian is a Scottish name), Jonathan Miller’s production is as much fun as ever, although Hairy thinks the creaky scenery change before Scene 2 doesn’t need to be quite that noisy. If oiling the set is too expensive (which Hairy could quite understand) perhaps Rory could start the orchestra early and drown out the sound of the creaks. At the moment it sounds like Rosina has been eating too many baked beans.
Count Almaviva is Canadian. John Tessier manages to sing all the notes in the correct time-span and does it rather beautifully too. The Swedish Rosina, Anna Grevelius, sings the English text with the clarity of a Scot and she’s also very amusing. Wales is represented by Jennifer Rhys-Davies, an excellent Queen of the Night for Scottish Opera, here an amusing Berta. Hairy doesn’t think there’s any need for all that sneezing and fortunately Rhys-Davies doesn't need to sneeze in order to be funny. What’s so funny about sneezing anyway? Hairy McMungo prefers a bit of subtlety.
And there’s plenty of subtlety from honorary Scot Andrew Shore as Bartolo. As always his performance is full of invention. Hairy McMungo has lost count of the number of times he has seen Shore as Bartolo and quite often he knows what Shore is going to do next but he’s still very funny. Hairy thinks he might have made a few small variations on his last performance but maybe, like with all the best whisky, Shore only improves with age.
Garry Magee sings Figaro. The other Figaro, the Mozart one, was sung by the great Scottish bass-baritone Iain Paterson and Hairy is slightly disappointed Iain won’t be singing the earlier incarnation of one of his greatest roles. But with a surname like Magee, Garry is always in with a chance of giving a great performance and that’s what he does here. He sings his big aria steadily and his Figaro shows signs of being a real human being rather than just a source of comedy. Julian Hubbard, in Hairy’s estimation a Figaro of the future, grabs the chance to steal the opening scene as Fiorello and the members ENO Chorus (which must be full of Scots, it’s the only explanation) are so good, they could probably star in chorus-only productions, should the ENO ever decide to go for the cheap option.
HAIRY McMUNGO
primi-divi at hotmail.co.uk