Reviews 2004
Reviews 2004
✭✭✭✩✩
by Benjamin Britten, directed by Christopher Newton
Canadian Opera Company, Harbourfront Centre Theatre, Toronto
November 30-December 5, 2004
The youthful Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio presented a lively and generally well sung performance of Benjamin Britten’s comic masterpiece Albert Herring (seen December 2, 2004), but a number of factors prevented the production from reaching the level of excellence audience’s have come to expect from the ensemble. Chief among these, surprisingly, was the stage direction of Christopher Newton, former Artistic Director of the Shaw Festival, who did not sufficiently characterize key roles in a work that demands it. There was more detail in William Schmuck’s handsomely realistic set than in the characters who inhabited it.
It’s true that Albert is said to be “simple”, but Newton made this the sole basis of his interpretation. Thus tenor Luc Robert spent two thirds of the opera affecting a kind of duncelike stupor. This failed both to set up Albert’s situation adequately and turned Albert’s important monologue in Act 2 to one of light piercing mental dimness rather than of Albert’s consciously steeling himself for rebellion. Compounding the problem was fine Robert’s Italianate tenor that would shine in Verdi or Puccini but seemed unsuited in timbre for the role Britten envisioned.
Mezzo Joni Henson, who possesses an impressively powerful voice, was allowed to turn Lady Billows into a caricature and unaccountably sang forte throughout, making what should be a richly comic character rather tiresome. Newton gave Sonya Gosse as Albert’s domineering mother, so little clue to Mrs. Herring’s personality that her excessive mourning for Albert in Act 3 seemed to come out of nowhere.
The finest singing of the evening came from baritone Peter McGillivray as Albert’s friend Sid. He caught the colour and nuance of every word in his lines and delivered them with a round, cultivated tone that perfectly reflected his character’s self-satisfied suavity. Soprano Michèle Bogdanovich as Nancy produced a lovely sound but did not match McGillivray in detail. Megan Latham, however, who showed Florence Pike aping her mistress Lady Billows, displayed a real flair for vocal and dramatic humour.
British conductor David Angus led the orchestra in a precise, sprightly performance that brought out the lustrous beauty of the interludes in Act 1 and 2. His staccato approach to “In the midst of life is death” of Act 3, however, attempted to make the passage comic whereas its serious tone, if allowed to sound, can more usefully throw the deeper issues of the comedy into relief.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Opera News, March 2005..
Photo: Luc Robert. ©2004.
2004-12-03
Albert Herring