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REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on Opera North in The Magic Flute, Leeds Grand Theatre, September 28

Opera North in James Brining’s revival of The Magic Flute. Picture: Tristram Kenton

FOR the start of her first full year as general director, Laura Canning is presiding over an autumn of three revivals, of which this production by James Brining is the first.

Doubtless she had no say in the schedule, but it still looks cautious, especially when viewed in the wake of, for example, Buxton Festival’s five new productions this summer.

Brining operates as artistic director of Leeds Playhouse, just a short walk away from the Grand Theatre, and this had been his first full operatic production. It still shows signs of over-calculation.

Before the curtain we are treated to a welcome designed to embrace newcomers. Old-stagers might have regarded it as patronising but, seen alongside a bare-bones outline in the programme of what constitutes opera in the first place, it is arguably a useful introduction to an artform that too many have found intimidating: an attempt to cast the audience net more widely, in other words.

This process must be treated gingerly, however, if the company’s core audience is not to be deterred. The overture is intended as an introduction, presenting themes and building anticipation.

All of that is dissipated when it is overlaid with a dumb show, based on Bergman’s cinematic view of the whole work being a child’s dream/nightmare, that has little or nothing to do with Mozart. So, overture and dumb show are at odds with one another: in our screen-obsessed age, the eyes take over and the overture goes for naught.

As it was, Christoph Koncz, making his Leeds debut, opened the overture very slowly and followed with an extremely rapid allegro, which the orchestra – now under its new leader Katie Stillman – handled with panache. Thereafter Koncz impresses with the transparency of the textures he conjures.

Egor Zhuravskii has graduated from Fenton in Falstaff to Tamino here, and does so smoothly enough. Narrow at the start, his tone opens out over time but remains a little dry, albeit stylish. There is not much genuine feeling between him and Claire Lees’s admirable Pamina, but she entrances with every appearance and sounds ready for greater things.

Leaning heavily on his Welsh lilt, Emyr Wyn Jones makes an affable dunderhead of Papageno, almost taking the pantomime route, while Anna Dennis makes an imposing Queen of Night, edgy, determined and accurate.

Msimelelo Mbali, as Sarastro, lacks the gravitas shown by Andri Björn Robertsson’s Speaker, but his bass grows in authority in Act 2. Colin Judson offers an apt irritant as Monostatos, in place of the repellent figure we had last time.

Pasquale Orchard makes a charming Papagena, although she is introduced to Papageno early and deprived of her ‘old lady’ disguise. Many of the lesser roles are ably assumed by members of the chorus, proving its versatility.

Colin Richmond’s flexible set proves its worth once again, as does Douglas O’Connell’s high-impact video effects.

Brining envisaged Blakean poles of innocence and experience. He might instead have allowed Mozart and Schikaneder – in Jeremy Sams’s colloquial translation – to speak for themselves. The plot is complicated enough as it is.

Review by Martin Dreyer

Performances: Leeds Grand Theatre, February 12, 13, 15 and 22 2025, 7pm. Box office: 0113 243 0808 or leedsheritagetheatres.com. Hull New Theatre, March 27 and 29 2025, 7pm. Box office: hulltheatres.co.uk.

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REVIEW: York Stage, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Grand Opera House, York, to Sat. ****

High-flying success: Ned Sproston’s Caractacus Potts at the wheel of Chitty, with Carly Morton’s Truly Scrumptious in the passenger seat and Logan Willstrop’s Jeremy Potts and Hope Day’s Jemima Potts in York Stage’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. All pictures: Charlie Kirkpatrick

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, York Stage, Grand Opera House, York, 7.30pm nightly to Saturday; 2.30pm matinees, Wednesday and Saturday. Box office: atgtickets.com/york

THIS is James Bond author Ian Flemings’s eyebrow-raising 1964 children’s story, via Ken Hughes’s 1968 family musical fantasy film, adapted for the stage by Jeremy Sams.

It would be easy to put the emphasis on the spectacle, the car that floats and flies, with as many special features as a Q-customised Aston Martin for Bond. Certainly director-producer Nik Briggs pulls out all the stops on that score, but his Chitty show has more wings to it than merely its fine four-fendered friend’s airborne adventures.

The “fantasmagorical” spectacle here extends beyond the repurposed scrap-heap Grand Prix car to Damien Poole’s fabulous, fun and funny choreography; the hair and make-up by Phoebe Kilvington’s team; Charades Theatrical Costume’s flamboyant costume designs and the uncredited hi-tech set design, windmill sails et al.

Pulling a Chu-Chi Face: Alex Papachristou’s Baron Bomburst and Jackie Cox’s Baroness

Out of sight, aside from diligent yet playful musical director Adam Tomlinson, is his lush 12-piece orchestra, properly filling the pit with gorgeous musicality for the Sherman brothers’ score.

Above all, Briggs has improved further on the balance between grand theatricality and human personality in West Yorkshire Playhouse’s 2015 Christmas production. Perhaps it would be truer to say “caricature personality”, but the result is a greater connection with the audience.

In particular, this applies to the baddie double act of Alex Papachristou’s arch, spoilt, teddy bear-carrying Baron Bomburst and his brassy Baroness (Jackie Cox), a hammier, kinkier couple than past interpretations, and far funnier than their outrageous banishment of children from their Vulgarian principality should be.

Bomburst’s spies, Boris and Goran, are always  comedy gold, in pursuit of purloining the car for the baron, but they are better still in the hands of Jack Hooper and James Robert Ball, Vulgarian vultures trying to pass themselves off as Englishmen (and even women too).

Send for the clowning spies: Jack Hooper’s Boris gives a lift to James Robert Ball’s Goran

Papachristou, Cox, Hooper and Ball stretch their Vulgarian accents across Germanic vowels with delight and differing, equally amusing results in a send-up where ’Allo ’Allo! meets Mel Brooks’s The Producers.

Such is their broad playing, their comic interplay, their relish for downright silliness, that all four carry appeal for adults and children alike, evil but never vile. Unlike Richard Barker’s Childcatcher, that towering, spindly, grotesque rotter, whose villainy is more threat than presence, given how few scenes he has.

Meanwhile, several saucy jokes fly above innocent young heads, relished especially by Ball and Papachristou, who also rescues a prop malfunction (a telephone wire becoming detached) with an off-the-cuff one liner.

Ploughing a straighter furrow are Ned Sproston’s thoroughly decent inventor and single dad Caractacus Potts, plucky children Jeremy (Logan Willstrop, sharing the role with Esther de la Pena) and Jemima Potts (Hope Day/Eady Mensah), and Carly Morton’s utterly pucker Truly Scrumptious (whose beautiful singing with the purity of a Julie Andrews peaks with her Doll On A Music Box routine, clockwork dancing so exquisitely).

Peachy performance: Carly Morton’s Truly Scrumptious

Throughout, Mick Liversidge’s potty, old-school, restlessly energetic Grandpa Potts maximises his humorous interjections aplenty.

Briggs uses adult and children’s ensembles to the full, testament to the show’s mantra that teamwork makes the dream work, never more so than when Poole’s choreography is in full flow in Toots Sweets and especially The Bombi Samba.

Boris and Goran’s Act English and Potts and the Morris Men’s Me Ol’ Bamboo, Grandpa and The Inventors’ The Roses Of Success and the Baron and Baroness’s Chu-Chi Face are all bursting with character as much as musical flair.

For all the considerable technical demands of a show with a flying car, Briggs and his company take everything in their stride with panache in a dazzling, dapper and delightful family treat for the Easter break. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, bang on.

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REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on Roderick Williams & Christopher Glynn

Roderick Williams: “Such a perfectionist about diction”

Roderick Williams & Christopher Glynn, Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, January 18

IT used to be said that a successful service in church was one where you came out feeling better about life because the sermon was so good. The feeling is similar when you go to a concert that fulfils every expectation and warms the soul. This was one of those rare occasions.

Christopher Glynn has commissioned new English translations of three of Schumann’s song cycles of 1840 from Jeremy Sams and has given York the honour of hearing their premieres.

Satisfyingly, it was a full house that greeted the first of these, Dichterliebe (A Poet’s Love). That was not all. Three other Schumann lieder prefaced the cycle. A further 16 followed the interval, including a Quilter cycle, all under the umbrella of “Tell Me The Truth About Love”. By any standards it was a feast.

For anyone who knew the Schumann cycle in the original German, the translation initially sounded wrong. No fault of Sams, but the original words kept floating to the surface of one’s memory. Yet in the end there was a gain; there had to be. Roderick Williams is such a perfectionist about diction that he clearly relished using his native tongue. It soon became infectious.

Presumably for copyright reasons, no translation was available. But just to take a single example, ‘Ich Grolle Nicht’. This began ‘I won’t complain, despite my pain’. Williams’s baritone positively dripped with irony, made possible by a translation that captured exactly what Heinrich Heine, the original poet, had in mind. The only disappointment was his decision not to take the optional high note in the penultimate phrase.

Throughout the cycle the flow of the words was hugely satisfying, matching the original syllable for syllable. Just occasionally, Sams failed to find enough syllables and had to resort to melisma (setting a syllable to more than one note). But this was unusual. This translation is a stylish achievement.

Christopher Glynn: “Extraordinary perceptions coming from his piano”

It almost goes without saying that Williams was totally inside the music. But he could not have done it without the equally extraordinary perceptions coming from Glynn’s piano, allied to an uncanny sense of timing. The postlude, larded with exquisite rubato, seemed to encapsulate all the feelings that had gone before, a perfect précis.

The second half was more free ranging. Four more lieder included three 19th century ladies, Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn and most notably Josephine Lang, whose harmonically gorgeous Abschied (Farewell) made a strong impact. All three deserve much more recital exposure.

Before them we heard Quilter’s Seven Elizabethan Lyrics and marvelled anew at his modern twist on old harmonies. ‘The Faithless Shepherdess’ was wonderfully crisp, while the setting of Ben Jonson’s ‘By A Fountainside’ was tenderly evocative. Williams is well suited to this cycle, which brings out the full compass of his baritone.

An Anglo-American group completed the evening, including Sophie Hannah’s witty The Pros And Cons and a nicely declamatory I Said To Love, the title song of Finzi’s Thomas Hardy cycle. William Bolcom’s Toothbrush Time was the natty encore. Williams and Glynn make a first-class pairing.

A ‘pre- recital’ featured four singers, all of whom showed promise, although none really made use of their words. They would do well to emulate Williams.

Review by Martin Dreyer

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REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on Winter’s Journey, Roderick Williams & Joseph Middleton, Howard Assembly Rooms, Leeds, 11/3/2022

Roderick Williams: “Hurled verbal darts at the traveller’s ex-lover”

IF you are a lover of Schubert lieder, you may bridle at hearing them sung in English. If you are an even more dyed-in-the-wool purist, you will want to hear his great song-cycle Winterreise sung in the original keys, in other words by a tenor.

So, if you experienced the cycle in English, sung by a baritone – two removes from the original – you might think it beyond the pale. In which case, you probably hadn’t heard these two musicians perform it.

The Jeremy Sams translation, written at the invitation of accompanist Christopher Glynn (of Ryedale Festival), has no airs and graces. It reflects the relatively simple language of Wilhelm Müller’s original, which is not by any yardstick a masterpiece of German literature.

Instead it sticks to a basic story-line about a jilted lover and paints in simple terms the emotions he feels as he travels through a wintry landscape that reflects his inner world. This man is a loner, an outsider – and angry at the way the world has mistreated him.

Such a reading of Sams/Müller inspired Williams’s response here, and Middleton was hand in glove with his vision. After rueful reflection in the final, major-key stanza of Gute Nacht (Goodnight), we were straight into bitter resentment with Die Wetterfahne (The Weather-vane), Middleton pecking at the keys as Williams hurled verbal darts at the traveller’s ex-lover. In Gefrorne Tränen (Frozen Tears) I part company with Sams, who translates ‘Eis’ into snow, where ‘ice’ is much more biting. Doubtless rhyme demanded it, but still.

We felt the comfort from the linden tree’s rustling leaves and the traveller’s tears “guzzled by the thirsty snow” – a telling metaphor – before Williams suggested that the journey was taking a toll on the lover’s sanity in Rückblick (Turning Back); here his anger had been presaged by the piano’s violent prelude.

Then came a masterpiece of characterisation in Frühlingstraum (Dreaming Of Spring), where the duo conjured three distinct moods, its light-hearted start jolted into reality at cock-crow and thence into bitterness that happiness can never be recaptured.

There were sadly unfulfilled hopes that the post would bring a comforting message, although, again, the English ‘heart’ did not carry quite the bite that the German ‘Herz’ delivers with its final consonant. Flowing triplets well captured the friendly crow’s flight, but the temporary ease was soon dissipated in the baritone’s hint of mental disintegration in Letzte Hoffnung (Last Hope).

Sams imagines a ‘proper witches’ brew’ from Der Stürmische Morgen (Stormy Morning) – not really in the original text – but Williams obliged with some really vicious tone, complementing it immediately in the major/minor anguish of Täuschung (Delusion) and a beautifully pianissimo ending.

The tempo sagged a little in Das Wirtshaus (The Inn – actually a graveyard), although it was given a really bold postlude. That prepared the way nicely for some real swagger in Mut! (Courage!). Self-doubt re-emerged in a cleverly mood-wavering account of Die Nebensonnen (Phantom Suns). For the final song, Der Leiermann, Williams walked to the end of the piano and faced sideways, treating the pianist as the organ-grinder of the title. It was a telling move.

So much of the cycle had these moments that revealed a real depth of engagement on the part of this admirable duo. If Williams was more relaxed and thus more immediate in his colours, Middleton was a touch more deliberate, occasionally trying to inject more into Schubert than the composer really intended to convey. Nevertheless, it was a moving – and memorable – evening.

Review by Martin Dreyer

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REVIEW: Leeds Lieder Festival, Day 1:Wagner and the Wesendoncks /Alice Coote, Leeds Town Hall, 17/6/2021

Alice Coote: “Sustained a near-miraculously quiet intensity throughout”

FOUR days of wall-to-wall song got into full swing in front of live, if socially distanced, audiences. It was only two months later than the usual time for this festival, a minor miracle amongst the pandemic’s disruption.

Apart from the plethora of marvellous masterclasses and talks, the lunchtime and evening recitals were the backbone of the festivities and will form the basis of my reactions here.

The history of German poetry would not likely have been any different without the name of Mathilde Wesendonck. She can thank Wagner that we know about her at all.

Her husband Otto was a wealthy silk merchant who supported Wagner financially. He built a small house adjoining his grandiose villa above Lake Zurich, which he invited Wagner and his wife Minna to occupy. Mathilde became Wagner’s muse and probably much more, eventually causing the Wagners to separate.

While working on Tristan And Isolde, Wagner set five of Mathilde’s poems for female voice and piano, and they became much the best-known of his Lieder. In this programme, entitled The View From the Villa and built around those songs, they were touchingly sung by mezzo-soprano Susan Bickley.

Bass-baritone Matthew Brook sang and played a tolerant Otto, with a mini-clad Victoria Newlyn playing a flighty Minna (who was a successful actress in her own right). Iain Burnside, who had devised the programme, provided the sensitive accompaniments and linking music, all from Wagner. The songs were delivered in new translations by Jeremy Sams.

It was an entertaining insight into an unusual ménage, even if not all the spoken English repartee emerged with complete clarity. It was fascinating to hear the famous Prelude to Act 3 of Tristan in its original setting, along with three other Wagner lieder. Wagner was present through his music alone.

The evening brought a recital by mezzo-soprano Alice Coote, whose star is now fully in the ascendant, accompanied by Christian Blackshaw. Her programme, entitled A Spiritual Solstice, dealt with love, yearning and loneliness, and was centred round Mahler’s five settings of Friedrich Rückert, which date from 1900-02.

Coote felt them deeply and sustained a near-miraculously quiet intensity throughout, from the opening delicately perfumed love-song to the loneliness of Um Mitternacht (At Midnight) and Ich Bin Der Welt (I Am Lost To The World). She clearly felt them with every fibre of her being and sustained a wonderful control of the quietest tones imaginable. She held her audience rapt.

These were the emeralds of the evening. Pearls surrounding them came mainly from songs by Schumann, Strauss and Tchaikovsky. Three songs from Myrthen, the collection he presented to his bride Clara in 1840, were perfectly balanced by another three from Richard Strauss’s Op 27, which he gave to his new wife Pauline in 1894.

The first examples of her curiously intimate mouth-tone came in Schumann’s Meine Rose – a setting by a lovelorn Nikolaus Lenau, and in the self-delusion of Schumann’s Allerseelen (All Souls’ Day).

Coote was capable of reaching romantic heights too, as in the impassioned restraint of Tchaikovsky’s None But The Lonely Heart. Serenity reappeared in Strauss’s Ruhe, Meine Seele and in a beautifully hushed Morgen!

Somewhere in this carefully devised programme there was room for a touch more variety, even perhaps something a little boisterous. But her supreme artistry was undeniable. Blackshaw was neatly restrained when supporting the voice, but was inclined to over-egg the piano when on his own, sometimes disrupting a song’s equilibrium. It was an error on the right side.                                                

Review by Martin Dreyer