British Youth Opera at the Peacock Theatre
It’s not often now we get to see an opera none of us have seen before. Particularly not four in the space of two weeks. But this is exactly how the new opera season began, and British Youth Opera started it off by offering a double bill of two short comedies by Rossini, Il Signor Bruschino and La scala di seta.
Il Signor Bruschino tells the story of Florville, who arrives at the house of Sofia, the girl he loves. He is told that Sofia is to marry a man named Bruschino, whom no-one in the household has ever met, and who is due to arrive shortly. Fortunately for Florville, Bruschino has been locked in an attic, and is unable to make this planned appearance. So Florville decides to pretend to be Bruschino, in the hope that he might fool everyone long enough to get to marry Sofia.
The plot had great promise, but was rather disappointing in practice. Despite being such a short work, there just didn’t seem enough plot somehow to fill the opera, and few of the characters came over really strongly. Thomas Herford sang Florville’s challenging arias with beauty and dexterity, and there was certainly something likeable about him. But he had very little personality, and I do feel that was much more to do with the opera than with Herford. Florville lacked Count Almaviva’s ability to think on his feet (which the Count can do even without Figaro’s help but he wasn’t one of those pathetic yet very likeable heroes who need to be looked after, either
Elena Sancho seemed to have similar trouble with the role of Sofia. She, too, had some very showy arias, typical of Rossini, and these were despatched easily, if not quite with aplomb. But there’s very little for Sofia to do. She mostly seems quite meek and mild, and ready to let others take care of her – not like Rossini’s Rosina, Isabella or even Cenerentola.
But then towards the end Sofia inexplicably starts being very cruel to Bruschino’s father. Thomas Kennedy played him as quite annoying, but with his limp and his injured foot he also seemed quite a vulnerable character. But even if he hadn’t been, there was no call for Sofia to behave towards him as she did, teasing him unkindly and tricking him in ways that made him hurt his injured foot. Maybe Bruschino padre is a bit of a hypochondriac, but, on this evidence, Sofia is a bit of a psychopath. It was probably supposed to be funny, but there’s nothing funny about bullying an invalid. And Bruschino padre really isn’t that bad a person.
The humour in the work came from just three characters. Eliot Alderman was great as the Commissario (Sofia’s father), his performance full of small humorous details that were actually much funnier than the more obvious and sometimes crude humour in the rest of the opera. The Commissario is one of the villains of the piece, keeping Sofia and Florville apart by trying to marry her off to someone else, but, like Rossini’s Bartolo, he’s not really someone you dislike, despite the fact you’re emphatically not on his side. And whilst Adam Kowalczyk only appeared briefly as the real Bruschino flglio, he certainly made a big impression, as well as making you feel that locking him in the attic wasn’t an entirely bad move.
There were also excellent performances from Benjamin Cahn as the servant Filberto, an energetic Figaro type, and the wonderful Adriana Festeu in the small role of Sofia’s servant Marianna. Marianna has very little to sing, yet she was onstage for much of the opera, adding so much to the comedy with just a gesture or a facial expression. Her singing was great too – she sounds like a contralto, and there aren’t enough of those.
La scala di seta had a weaker story, but director Jamie Hayes, far from trying to disguise this, attempted to make the story even sillier. The result was a very enjoyable and extremely funny comedy that kept the audience entertained throughout.
Natalya Romaniw, who represented Wales in the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition this year, sang the role of Giulia. Like Sofia in the previous opera, she is about to become the victim of an arranged marriage. However, Giulia is already secretly married to Dorvil, and he visits her nightly by climbing up a silken ladder to Giulia’s bedroom window.
Romaniw is still a young singer, not fully in control yet of her amazing voice, and inclined to sound under pressure at times. But it is a lovely voice, and she clearly loves being onstage. She spends a lot of the opera running about all over the stage, which she does with great energy, and she really is excellent at the comedy. It’s only a shame that there are relatively few comedy roles for singers with her type of voice, or at least few that come immediately to mind.
Understudy Peter Brathwaite, replacing the indisposed Gary Griffiths as Germano, also gave an assured performance. It was difficult to imagine how Griffiths, or indeed anyone else, could have performed the role better. Eliot Alderman again took the role of the heroine’s father – his Dormont was not less amusing yet very different from his Commissario in Il signor Bruschino – both, incidentally, were a great contrast with his Gremin Eugene Onegin for the same company a few years ago. Hanna Hipp (Lucilla) and Aaron Alphonsus McAuley (I’ve been told to mention that he’s Scottish) as Blansac completed a very strong cast – every single one of them was a joy to watch.
Robert Dean conducted both operas – the music probably wasn’t on the level of Rossini’s better-known operas in terms of its inventiveness, but the music in both was a lot of fun.
Cunning Little Vixen