Summer opera festivals have gone Wagner mad

Another week, another Wagner production at a summer opera festival. This never used to happen. When John Christie launched Glyndebourne in the 1930s, he hoped to stage the Ring. So he gathered a team of refugee musicians from Germany, who quickly assured him that it was impossible and he should stick to Mozart. The man who changed all that was Martin Graham, the plimsoll-wearing founder of Longborough Festival Opera, who died in April at the age of 83. Graham was irrepressible; a self-taught enthusiast. With no one around to tell him it couldn't be done, he pushed ahead regardless, staging the Ring cycle twice in as many decades.
And now look. We've got Parsifal at Glyndebourne (its third Wagner staging), a chamber-sized Tristan coming up at Grimeborn and a full Ring cycle starting next year at Grange Park Opera – which, having built its own back-garden theatre, has followed the Martin Graham playbook still further by importing Longborough's music director Anthony Negus. Meanwhile in Notting Hill, Opera Holland Park has taken a first step into the Bayreuth club with The Flying Dutchman, Wagner's shortest opera, and the least Wagnerian that actually sounds Wagnerian, if that makes any sense.
It certainly makes sense for OHP, which is still operating on a Covid-era stage that places the orchestra in the middle of the performance space. That's not invariably a bad thing: the orchestra is the sea on which this drama sails, and with Peter Selwyn conducting, the City of London Sinfonia went at Wagner's (moderately reduced) score with suitably salty vigour. The apron stage thrust the singers towards the audience, the roof of OHP's tent was configured to suggest sails, and out among the shrubs and the five-a-side pitches, the peacocks gave their best impression of seagulls.
There was plenty to admire in Julia Burbach's production, too, plus a few things that weren't so great. Senta (Eleanor Dennis, bright and austere) was on stage almost throughout and her rusty skeleton of a house is tilted like a shipwreck. When Daland (a bluff Robert Winslade Anderson) brings the Dutchman (Paul Carey Jones) home to meet her, gravity propels her towards him – a neat visual metaphor. Neal Cooper as Erik, and Angharad Lyddon, as Mary, found more (both musically and dramatically) than you'd have thought possible in these thankless roles, while the masked ghost crew stalked the action in silence. The Holland Park set-up gives the big choral scenes a real physicality.
The negatives? OHP performs the opera in its three-act form, which is unusual these days but valid enough. A pity, though, to lose the orchestral postlude that Wagner added in a later revision, and there was some curious textual jiggery-pokery at the end of Act One, introducing a female chorus into an act where Wagner's sonic palette is built around the darkness of male voices. Possibly it's authentic – Wagner tinkered with The Flying Dutchman a lot, and it'd take a musicologist to unpick all the variants – but it rang false, even if the score as presented was a better fit for Burbach's vision, which was more concerned with obsession and social isolation than transcendence.
The City of London Sinfonia went at Wagner's score with suitably salty vigour
Again, that's a valid approach, but it meant that the ending of the opera was confusing. Senta simply wandered off stage. And it was a bumper night for 21st-century-opera-director mannerisms (chilly, distant lovers; domestic violence; silent doppelgangers populating the overture) though if you're a regular operagoer, you price that in. Overall, though, the energy and atmosphere won through, crowned by Carey Jones's weatherbeaten Dutchman: rough in all the right places and positively sulphurous in the depths. Carey Jones was a formidable Wotan at Longborough. Clearly, a rising tide lifts all boats – even ghost ships.
It's not every year, moreover, that the UK sees two different but comparably fine productions of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra. Close on the heels of Opera North's touring production, Grange Park Opera has opened its season with what turns out to be a revival of David Pountney's 1997 staging for Welsh National Opera; complete with costumes in the colours of renaissance frescos and shifting, sea-dappled abstract sets by the great Ralph Koltai.
Insert your own bitter aside about how a national company has been defunded by the Arts Council (Welsh and English: both are culpable) to the point that only private festivals can now afford to revive classic productions that were once public property. What matters here is that Grange Park has done it proud, with excellent singing in every role. Otar Jorjikia, as a purposeful Gabriele, made a particularly strong pairing with Elin Pritchard's Amelia: a performance in which pathos burned as bright as passion. Gianluca Marciano conducted vividly, and Simon Keenlyside was a noble Boccanegra – by turns expansive, belligerent and vulnerable in one of Verdi's most Shakespearean title roles.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Daily Mail​

2 days ago

• Daily Mail​

EXCLUSIVE Karaoke star who stunned stag do revellers with stunning version of Nessun Dorma says he's 'ecstatic and flabbergasted' after video went viral

A Karaoke star who stunned stag do revellers with his astonishing version of Nessun Dorma has said he is 'flabbergasted' after a video of the rendition went viral. Welshman Timothy Richards was recorded belting his heart out in Tallinn, Estonia where he gave the 'once in a lifetime' performance to a room full of Brits. Footage filmed in the Satumaa Karaoke Bar shows dozens of men brought to their feet by the powerful performance as they sing along to the iconic piece of Italian opera. But the most soul-stirring moment of all comes at the aria's climax where the partygoers raise their arms high in the air with whoops and cheers as Mr Richards perfectly hits the famous concluding note. Following the spectacular showing of May 11 this year, a video was finally uploaded last night - though it was only a matter of hours before it surpassed one million views and amassed thousands of likes. Speaking to MailOnline, Mr Richards, who currently lives in Germany but had been performing in Richard Wagner's romantic opera Lohengrin the night before in Estonia, said he had arrived at the karaoke bar in a group of six - having never previously been to one in his life. The singer said: 'I was in town at the same time as these guys - I didn't even know who they were. 'We had a few drinks and soon I was up. I enjoyed it. They [the revellers] all knew it that's why sang together. 'I just went with it. I left the building straight away and then sort of forgot about it - until today. 'I only heard about the video from children who use TikTok. I was ecstatic and flabbergasted to see the response and I am still pinching myself.' Mr Richards, who studied at the Royal Northern College of Music Manchester, made his professional operatic debut in 1998 as Alfredo in La Traviata for Welsh National Opera. The Tallinn stag do groom, Sam Stride, who Mr Richards is now in contact with, also recounted the memorable event which he described as the last night of his stag do. Mr Stride also told MailOnline he was now looking into the process of 're-uniting for the big day' with Mr Richards. He described the experience as a 'just a complete right time, right place'. 'It's not something you expect to see. I've seen Fulham get promoted and a lot of other big things. But this was better than all of that together. Mr Stride recalled the bar was 'pretty packed with British people'. He said people from the smoking area came 'flooding in' as the song was performed and the moment was 'pretty magical'. Following circulation of the video on X, a number of people commented to sing the praises of Mr Richards. Someone said: 'Cancel the wedding, it does not get better than this.' Another person added: 'Absolutely unreal.'

Times

5 days ago

• Times

The 5 best country house opera festivals — an expert's guide

As much of a summer fixture as Ascot or Wimbledon — but with grunting tennis players and whinnying horses swapped for more melodious sounds — Britain's country house opera festivals are in full swing. Taking place in and among some of the most beautiful estates and grounds in England, the specifics may change but some things are constant: quality performers, bucolic spots to have a picnic in a dinner interval, and the strong allure of something fizzy to drink, whether it's champagne or sparkling elderflower. • Read more opera reviews, guides and interviews I've been lucky enough to be able to visit most of these festivals. But what are the differences between them — and how do you get the best from your experience? Read my last-minute guide, and do contribute in the comments with your favourite recommendations and tips. Centered on a Tudorbethan pile that has been in the hands of the Christie family since the 1830s, the Glyndebourne Festival is (gently) steered today by the present ruling Christie, Gus, who is the executive chairman. History repeated itself when he married the soprano Danielle de Niese — his grandfather, John, who founded the festival, was also married to a soprano, Audrey Mildmay — and the chatelaine usually headlines an opera production every other year. (Their elder child, Bacchus, has already appeared on stage in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream.) There are three restaurants, a ha-ha and sheep frolicking on nearby fields — it's the motherlode of English summer opera. Perhaps surprisingly, value: the Glyndebourne theatre has a wider range of ticket prices than the other festivals, but you need to be logging on when booking opens in the spring to get a sniff at the cheaper ones. In for a penny … this year the company put on its first production of Parsifal, Wagner's mystical swansong, winning particular acclaim for the conducting of its (increasingly mystical himself) music director Robin Ticciati. Don't expect to be able to get a taxi from Lewes station without booking it — things can get brutal in that queue as black tie-wearing opera buffs slug it out for the few remaining cars. The smart choice is to reserve a seat on Glyndebourne's coach. To Aug 24; • Sathnam Sanghera: Can a trip to Glyndebourne make me like opera? Confusingly, not in Garsington, Oxfordshire, although the festival started there. Since 2011 it has been a few miles down the road, across the Buckinghamshire border, in the Wormsley estate of Mark Getty (yes, of those Gettys). The glass-paned theatre has won awards and rightly so, fitting in snugly into the Chilterns landscape. The festival has scored some great artistic successes in the past year — helped by a fertile relationship co-producing shows with the Santa Fe festival in New Mexico — and recently opened new studios for rehearsal and education work. If you recognise the picturesque cricket ground, it's most likely from scenes filmed for Downton Abbey. Friendliness. More intimate than Glyndebourne but still with huge grounds to explore, it's the sort of place where you can have odd chats with strangers while dodging froglets by the lake, and the artistic director, the conductor Douglas Boyd, makes it his business to be a cheery public ambassador for the company. The Queen of Spades, Tchaikovsky's thriller-cum-ghost story, is hard to stage well, but Jack Furness has done an excellent job, as has Boyd in the pit. Don't leave your sandwiches, or even any small children, unattended for a minute — they will get carried off by the increasingly feral, ever more gigantic and completely unafraid red kites. To Jul 22; • Read more opera reviews, guides and interviews Wasfi Kani's opera festival began life in Hampshire — at the Grange, near Alresford, which now has its own festival, see below — before decamping to the Surrey estate inherited by Bamber Gascoigne from an eccentric reclusive aunt, the Duchess of Roxburghe. Inside the crumbling, mostly Jacobean mansion Kani salvaged treasures that included the liveries of the duchess's servants; in the grounds she raised enough money to build a new theatre from scratch, which happened in less than a year. Visitors can now choose between eating in the restaurant — in some of the less dilapidated rooms of the house — or picnicking in the walled gardens. Big names. Bryn Terfel is a regular visitor; this year it's Simon Keenlyside, playing his namesake Simon Boccanegra in Verdi's dark drama. All respect to Keenlyside, but the hidden gem of the season is Tchaikovsky's timely Mazeppa, rarely performed in the west, and set in a pivotal era of Ukrainian history. The Times awarded it five stars. This might be a bit infra dig, but you can actually slope off to the pub in the dinner interval (if you don't fancy an M&S quiche in a freezing marquee). The very agreeable Duke of Wellington is only a 15-minute walk away. To July 13; This was the home of Grange Park Opera, which pitched its tents by an idyllic Greek revivalist estate that had been saved from destruction by its owners, the Barings, by English Heritage (who now run it on their behalf, an arrangement I'm not sure anyone understands). Then when GPO went north to Surrey, a new regime took over and they have put on a more varied range of entertainment in the bijou theatre, converted from the house's old orangery. Expect to find more dance and jazz than at other opera festivals; this year — clutch your pearls — there's even a night devoted to the music of Queen and Freddie Mercury. The most remote and rural-feeling of the main festivals, this one has some dazzling views, whether of unbroken Hampshire countryside or the neoclassical mansion set against fields and meadows. Imported from France comes a new version of Rameau's Les Indes Galantes, with hip-hop-inspired choreography. Whatever it costs to get one of the elite Ivanhoe-style tents surely must be worth it. Be a princess for the day. To Jul 6; The invention of Martin Graham, who turned his barn into a 500-seat auditorium, this Gloucestershire redoubt has a truly splendid view over the Cotswolds countryside and a theatre topped by statues of Wagner, Verdi and Mozart. Yes, it's the apogee of English eccentricity, but artistic standards have been rising every year and the company's 2024 Ring cycle was a seriously impressive achievement. Normally Wagner, although this year they have swapped the composer's epic dramas for a contemporary work about the Wagner family, Wahnfried. The new production of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas will be expanded with other Purcellian numbers, provided by the virtuosic yet earthy players of Barokksolistene. Inexplicably, some patrons have been seen having their quiches in the car park, even though there's one of the best views in England from the picnic lawn just round the Aug 2; Nevill Holt in Leicestershire no longer puts opera at the forefront of its festival, though it did team up with Opera North for a well received Così fan tutte this summer. Waterperry, near Oxford, has a rising reputation for bringing on young artists, and this year's forthcoming production of Handel's Semele also comes to Holland Park in west London. Dorset Opera Festival sets its stall at Bryanston, usually offering an interesting rarity (though this year it's populist Verdi, Puccini and Mascagni). Finally, Wild Arts has its cake and eats it — the Essex-based company packs its bags and heads from idyllic spot to spot, venues including Elveden Hall in Norfolk and Childerley Hall in Cambridgeshire.

Time Out

7 days ago

• Time Out

A massive pigeon-themed festival took over the High Line this weekend

A woman with pigeon earrings waited in line to get her face painted. At a nearby table, children crafted pigeon piñatas and drew on pigeon postcards. Representatives from NYC Bird Alliance and the Wild Bird Fund handed out informational fliers. A line formed in front of carnival-inspired games like Pin the Tail on the Pigeon and Ring-A-Wing in which players tried to land a plastic ring on a pigeon silhouette. These were just some of the booths and activities at Pigeon Fest, a day-long festival on Sunday, June 15 at the High Line, which drew a packed crowd, despite the rainy day. The crowd of eager avian admirers represent the growing love for the city's most misunderstood bird; some of the most ardent attendees even care for pigeons every day. Overseeing it all was "Dinosaur," a hyper-realistic 16-foot pigeon sculpture perched on the elevated park, which served as the inspiration for the event. Since the sculpture's installation in October 2024, High Line official say they have seen an increase in visitation to the park. "New Yorkers have opinions about everything, but they seem to really be flocking to this particular sculpture," Alan van Capelle, Executive Director of the High Line said. "And we thought, why not have a festival celebrating all things pigeon?" Sharing van Capelle's enthusiasm is Iván Argote, the Colombian artist and film director behind "Dinosaur." As an artist who works in public installation, bringing people together is an important part of Argote's work. "Dinosaur"—and Pigeon Fest specifically—represent how art can create a community for New Yorkers. "I think the sculpture talks a lot to New Yorkers because I think New Yorkers can understand very well this feeling of the funky and the strange," Argote said. New Yorkers can understand very well this feeling of the funky and the strange. Indeed, in addition to sharing information about urban ecology, embracing the funky and strange was a large part of Pigeon Fest's programming. One of the day's most anticipated events was the Pigeon Impersonation Pageant. The pageant included seven impersonators, each judged on their pigeon-ness based on four qualifications: plumage, strut, sound and stage presence. The panel of judges included Argote and a representative of Cornell's Ornithology Lab. Each pigeon brought their personality to the stage. One contestant donned a top hat for their look and laid an egg on-stage, while another wore a white feathery look with ornate gloves. Songs like Frank Sinatra's "Fly Me to the Moon" and Nelly Furtado's "I'm Like a Bird" played in the background while the contestants strutted their stuff. The crowd cheered and applauded as contestants took away pigeon-shaped gold trophies. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Mickey Blank 🗽 (@mickmicknyc) At the end of the pageant, the High Line staff cleared the stage, prepping for a much different but deeply important event: a panel on building bird-friendly cities. Panelists included Qiana Mickie, executive director of the Mayor's Office of Urban Agriculture, and Christian Cooper, a science writer and birding advocate. Attending this panel was Margaret Lee, a resident of New York City who has been a long-time pigeon lover. Every day, Lee walks a mile-long loop around her apartment to feed several flocks of pigeons around Downtown Manhattan. For Lee, hearing from experts like Mickie and Cooper is an important part of Pigeon Fest. "I'm hanging out primarily here for the compassionate leaders that I am hoping for," Lee told Time Out. "It's amazing to see so many people turning out for the pigeons." It's amazing to see so many people turning out for the pigeons. At Pigeon Fest, turning out for the pigeons means many things, whether learning about bird-friendly cities or purchasing a pigeon-themed book. Rosemary Mosco, a cartoonist and science writer who published a book titled A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching: Getting to Know the World's Most Misunderstood Bird also attended the event. "I have had a couple of people come up and tell me that they adopted pigeons because they read my book," Mosco said. "That's all I need to hear in life." Though Pigeon Fest was a one-time only event, the High Line plans to host similar art and events, bringing people together through urban ecology. "One of the things that I think 'Dinosaur' has done is have New Yorkers think about the types of people and things we see every day but never really pay attention to," van Capelle explained. "It's really a metaphor for the different worlds that exist in the city."