by The exclamation mark in the title warns you. No collective strikes, uprisings, revolutions, except outside and over – or when a chorus is needed. Instead, the individual is struggling to survive: boils on the bottom, nooky with the housekeeper, another trip to the brokers. Marx in London!, appearing for the first time in Bonn in 2018, is Jonathan Dove’s 32nd opera, according to the composer’s own uncertain calculations. Skillful libretto by Charles Hart (Bend it Like Beckham, The phantom of the Opera) bursting with internal rhymes, puns, jokes, to recreate one troubled day in the life of one of the great intellectuals of the 19th century: the German Karl Marx, during his period of political exile in London.
Scottish Opera’s new production, its UK premiere, opened at the Theater Royal in Glasgow on Tuesday, directed by David Parry, who also directed the Bonn premiere. To list all the plot twists, funny musical references, the deflationary act of operatic tropes – from the Wagnerian circle to the Falstaffian hide in a stocking. The joy of this mock labor is its triumph. Just when you fear an episode is about to lose focus, it picks up again with a new surprise. Similarly, Dove’s agile score is flickering rapidly between pumping the minimum life to Psyche-faux horror style to full-blown romance. For any orchestral student, it provides a model of what can be done, especially when piano, celeste, sampled harmonium and low brass and woodwind are added to standard forces.
Rossini’s anarchy is stamped in every bar of The Barber of Seville
This Dove-Hart versatility is fully embodied in Stephen Barlow’s stylish performance, designed with magical intelligence by Yannis Thavoris. Bustles, silks and penny farthing set the action in the 1870s. Using the techniques of toy theatre, backgrounds are drawn from maps and prints of Victorian Bloomsbury, the reading room of the British Museum, London seen from Hampstead. In the title role, the baritone Roland Wood – a spitting image of the father of communism thanks to his identikit hair and beard – is excellent. He sympathizes despite the humiliations that this powerful intellectual has to endure.
Orla Boylan leads a vibrant ensemble cast as Marx’s long-suffering wife, Lucy Schaufer as the smart chess housekeeper, and Rebecca Bottone as the teenage daughter with a penchant for stratospheric colors. Engels, Alasdair Elliott’s angel wing, Paul Hopwood’s Melanzane and William Morgan’s Freddy, together with excellent orchestral playing and strong chorus work, all contributed to this company’s achievement. Was it too long? Probably for half an hour well, but the laughter flowed.
Whatever neural pathways that make us laugh – the late Dr Jonathan Miller, a stickler for medical precision, would tell us – were in rare overdrive, operationally speaking, last week with not one but two jokes. at them. Miller’s 1987 production of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville (revival director Peter Relton) is back at the Coliseum for the first time since 2017, in Tanya McCallin’s period designs. It feels dated and not always as crisp as you might expect, but it bursts with humor and spirit.
Rossini’s anarchy, stamped in every bar of the score, arrived thanks to good television, especially in the brilliance of the Irish soprano Anna Devin, making her debut as Rosina in the house and the role. Charles Rice played the manic magician Figaro, with Simon Bailey adding new dimensions to Dr. Bartolo and Innocent Masuku, light-hearted and a thriller as Count Almaviva. Conductor Roderick Cox made a worthy ENO debut, with a natural and commanding pace. The text has lost none of its edge, in Amanda Holden and Anthony Holden’s sharp translation.
As this column went to print, news broke of ENO musicians, who went on strike last week, and reportedly received redundancy notices via email on the last night of the performance. The story of Bangor. No announcement has been made and we have to wait for details. If true, ENO’s bleak recent history is even darker. In the meantime, please support this company if you can.
Two symphonic epics, at the Barbican and the Royal Festival Hall, deserve brief mentions. With the 200th anniversary of Anton Bruckner (1824-96) now taking place, the London Symphony Orchestra he gave two concerts of his music this month, under the direction of Nathalie Stutzmann, a well-known devotee. On the second Sunday last, his unfinished Ninth Symphony – dedicated to God – was followed by Te Deum, without a break, the choral-orchestral work he called “the pride of my life”. The union, praised by Bruckner himself, was fascinating to experience, probably a “curiosity in memory”, with expert singing from the London Symphony Chorus and red-blooded playing from the LSO. For this expert orchestra to sound a fraction below par is a cause for sympathy rather than complaint.
In his Icons Rediscovered series, which combines works by two late romantics – Sergei Rachmaninov and Edward Elgar – the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra showed his mettle. The orchestra’s game has been raised to new levels with the arrival of Vasily Petrenko as music director. In Symphony No. 2 great Rachmaninov, the strings were precise and unanimous. There was a great balance across all parts of the orchestra. Petrenko gave seemingly infinite space to the slow movement (the clarinet poet’s long “song”, eloquently played by Sonia Sielaff), but the rest was tight, detailed and intense. Attentive and quiet throughout, and barely coughing, the audience strained to capacity at the end. The ovum was fixed nois and deserved.
Star ratings (out of five)
Marx in London! ★★★★
The Barber of Seville ★★★★
LSO/Stutzmann ★★★
RPO/Petrenko ★★★★
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Marx in London! at the Theater Royal Glasgow tonight, then transfers to the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, 22 & 24 February
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The Barber of Seville represented at the London Coliseum until 29 February
