ENGLISH Touring Opera’s residency at York Theatre Royal this week is underway.
Last night, ETO artistic director James Conway combined professional soloists and baroque specialists The Old Street Band with singers from York choirs in an inspiring staging of St John Passion that highlighted the sharp storytelling and intense vision of hope in Bach’s oratorio.
Among the choirs taking art was the York Theatre Royal Choir, singing on home turf in the 7.30pm performance.
Tomorrow (8/4/2022), ETO presents La Bohème, Giacomo Puccini’s opera about a poet who falls in love with a consumptive seamstress. In a story of young love that starts on a festive, snowy Christmas Eve night in a Parisian garret, the lovers draw close but poverty forces them apart.
Conway describes this cultural touchstone throughout the world as “a poignant memory in music of love and loss – like a shard of mirror in which one sees one’s youth”.
ETO’s return to York Theatre Royal concludes with a lively new production of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s comic Russian fantasy The Golden Cockerel on Saturday.
This send-up of corruption and sloth in government holds up a mirror to the last days of the Romanovs. “Despite its political edge, which meant it fell foul of the Tsarist censors, the music is daringly sensual and erotic at points,” says Conway of the first Rimsky-Korsakov work to be produced and toured by ETO. “For many, it’s an undiscovered joy of an opera.”
“Fantasy, mischief and musical delight combine in the composer’s final and favourite opera, based on a poem by Alexander Pushkin. The score is bursting with the exotic orchestrations that made Rimsky-Korsakov’s symphonic suite Scheherezade so popular.”
ETO’s new music director, Gerry Cornelius, conducts Conway’s production, starring baritone Grant Doyle (last with ETO for Verdi’s Macbeth in 2019) as the indolent Emperor Dodon and soprano Paula Sides as the seductive Queen of Shemakha.
In the cast too are Edward Hawkins, Amy J Payne, Robert Lewis, Luci Briginshaw and Alys Mererid Roberts in the title role.
Tickets for the 7.30pm performances are on sale on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Martin Dreyer will be reviewing all three performances for CharlesHutchPress.