by “Sleep!/ What’s this horror/ Care to tell?/ What’s all this shartin’/ Rawpin’ and screamin’?” This is Rossini refracted through Yorkshire dialect by poet and broadcaster Ian McMillan. A skillful adaptation of it The Barber of Seville, written for Bradford as part of a new opera festival, premiered there in the Victorian splendor of a packed St George’s Hall. The audience cheered during the opening as a dozen men in flat caps – the chorus, still silent – squealed softly through the auditorium, hovering over a fake upside-down map of Bradford. We all need to be able to find West Yorkshire home: in 2025 it becomes the UK’s city of culture.
It is difficult to say whether this friendly enterprise was a prelude. Sold as “Eyup! Rossini’s best comic opera buried in Yorkshire proper”, it has the seeds of something interesting, but it was in many ways an enigma. How could a one-time half-stage launch a festival that had no other event involving a few pop-ups in shopping centres? Was it ad hoc professional but not sharp enough? Or pro-am, in which case there were standards to be respected? Even Maria Callas – who was the subject of an evening of documentaries on BBC Four last week to mark her centenary – said that the first night is only the beginning of getting to know a work. this BarberThe first night was also the last night, which is a shame. Callas also said, provocatively, that some operas go on too long and should be cut. The Barber of Seville long and, in the spirit of McMillan’s adaptation, a trim might be a good idea.
McMillan’s verbal prowess was too often lost, except when a clarion rose ‘shurrup nar’ or ‘yer right apeth’ above the orchestra.
The musical was led by Oscar Castellino, who was on his feet and diverting as the treacherous barber Figaro. This Indian baritone was born in a car on a Mumbai street, studied physics, and then switched to opera. He has also sung operatic arias with an Indian tabla, but told Sky News his only experience of the Yorkshire dialect so far was hearing Geoffrey Boycott’s cricket commentary. With constant movement, clear vocals and a high percentage of audible words, he owned the stage: the whirling engine that kept the show on track. Felicity Buckland’s Rosina (a role she played with Surrey Opera) was lively and determined. Bradford-based Ukrainian soprano Milana Saruhanyan made an impact in her cameo role. The rest of the team, most of whom are busy with smaller companies in the UK such as English Touring Opera, Garsington, Grange Park and Longborough, negotiated the Yorkshire text (a feat of memory in itself) and very large technical challenges. Rossini with mostly enjoyable, if uneven, results.
The audience were very fond, and were generally grateful for this gesture of bringing a musical to Bradford. He was not the youngest of the crowd, but he has inspired local interest. The person before me last came to the venue in 1992, aged 15, to see Take That, then a boy band, now a legacy act. Take indeed. On to The Marriage of Figaro, already promised as the next venture. When funds are found, whatever they are spent on, subtitles must be prioritized next time. McMillan’s verbal eloquence was too often lost, except when the clarion of “bugger”, “shurrup nar” or “yer right apeth” rose above the Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Ben Crick. It was definitely unforgettable.
Fifteen miles away in Huddersfield, its annual contemporary music festival (HCMF) was closing in on another concentrated weekend of exploration, rarely seen elsewhere. While other festivals are fighting for survival (see the recent accounts of Dartington and Cheltenham), HCMF continues to be on the edge of experimentation. The festival will lose £75,000 of its annual funding from 2025 when Creative Europe’s four-year Sounds Now project ends. (Post-Brexit, the UK government refused to withdraw from the Creative Europe programme, despite being eligible to continue as a non-EU country.) As Graham McKenzie, chief executive and artistic director of Huddersfield, told me, “scale across hundreds of organizations in the UK. which previously benefited from Creative Europe”, is another significant investment being cut from the UK’s cultural sector.
One of the themes of HMCF this year was Lithuanian music. I Apartment Houseone of the UK’s most free-thinking and uninhibited ensembles, was founded by the British-Lithuanian cellist Anton Lukoszevieze in 1995. Their lunchtime concert in St Paul’s Hall presented four works, for string quartet or along with piano/keyboard, electric guitar and electronics. Shri, by Egidija Medekšaitė (b.1979), softly moving and almost imperceptible sounds, which take inspiration from a raga and a call to morning prayer. Jurga Šarapova (b.1965) uses her own playful, pre-recorded singing voice for a work with haunting echoes of John Lennon’s Imagine. NY without snow 1949, by Ramūnas Motiekaitis, muted strings, in tiny episodes, recalls the Lithuanian diaspora in New York. If you’ve ever thought that music is all about sound, these works rarely rise above the level of disturbing speech, they tell you otherwise.
The final work was also the richest: its world premiere Dusk Blue by Julius Aglinskas (b.1988). At first, it seemed to interfere with the romantic melody, a violin starting a downward pattern of five notes, warm toned and lyrical. Then this figure became more like a mantra, placed freely between three instruments, overlapping, intertwined, reshaped by each fresh harmonic encounter. Dusk Blue will be broadcast in the future on Radio 3. Listen out, listen closely: always the best way.
Star ratings (out of five)
The Barber of Seville ★★★
Apartment House ★★★★
