The exclamation point in the title warns you. No collective strikes, uprisings, revolutions, except out there and over there – or when a choir is needed. Instead, the close-up of the individual struggles: cooking on the bottom, corner with the housekeeper, another trip to the pawnbrokers. Marx in London!, first seen in Bonn in 2018, is, according to the composer’s uncertain calculations, Jonathan Dove’s 32nd opera. An expert libretto by Charles Hart (Bend it like Beckham, ghost of the opera) meanders with internal rhymes, puns and jokes, to recreate one crazy day in the life of one of the towering intellects of the 19th century: the German Karl Marx, during his time in political exile in London.
Scottish Opera’s new British premiere production opened on Tuesday at Glasgow’s Theater Royal, conducted by David Parry, who also conducted the Bonn premiere. To list all the plot twists, witty musical references and the operatic stylings – from Wagnerian incest to Falstaffian cover-up in a trunk – would be an act of deflation. The joy of this farcical work is its buoyancy. Just when you fear an episode is about to lose altitude, it shoots back up with another surprise. Dove’s deft score also flickers quickly between pumping minimalism and Psycho-like mock horror to full-blown romance. For any student of orchestration, he offers a model of what is possible, especially when piano, celeste, sampled harmonium, and low brass and woodwinds are added to the standard forces.
Rossini’s anarchy is stamped into every bar at The Barber of Seville
This extended Dove-Hart mix is fully embraced in Stephen Barlow’s stylish production, designed with magical ingenuity by Yannis Thavoris. Hustle, silk and money determine the action in the 1870s. Using the techniques of toy theater, backgrounds are drawn from maps and prints of Victorian Bloomsbury, the reading room of the British Museum, London as seen from Hampstead. In the title role, baritone Roland Wood excels – thanks to identical hair and beard, he is a spitting image of the father of communism. He arouses sympathy, despite the humiliations this powerful intellectual has to endure.
A lively ensemble cast is led by Orla Boylan as Marx’s long-suffering wife, Lucy Schaufer as the clever, chess-playing housekeeper, and Rebecca Bottone as the teenage daughter with a penchant for stratospheric coloratura. Alasdair Elliott’s English with Angel Wings, Paul Hopwood’s Melanzane and William Morgan’s Freddy, along with excellent orchestral playing and robust choral work, all contributed to this company achievement. Was it too long? Probably a good half hour, but the laughter flowed.
Whatever neural pathways make us chuckle – the late Dr. Jonathan Miller, a proponent of medical precision, would have told us – they were in rare overdrive operationally last week, with not one but two comedies. Miller’s 1987 production of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville (revival director Peter Relton) was back at the Colosseum for the first time since 2017, in Tanya McCallin’s historic designs. It feels dated and isn’t always as clear as you’d hope, but it’s bursting with humor and spirit.
Rossini’s anarchy, stamped in every bar of the score, was reflected through good casting, particularly in the shrewd brilliance of Irish soprano Anna Devin, making her house and role debut as Rosina. Charles Rice played the manic charmer Figaro, while Simon Bailey added new dimensions to Dr. Bartolo and Innocent Masuku, light-hearted and wry as Count Almaviva. Conductor Roderick Cox made an enriching ENO debut, with a natural and impressive sense of tempo. The text, in the sharp translation by Amanda Holden and Anthony Holden, has lost none of its sharpness.
As this column went to press, news broke about ENO musicians, who had called off strike action last week and reportedly received resignation notices via email during the performance on the last night of The Handmaid’s Tale. No announcement has been made yet and we’ll have to wait for details. If this is true, ENO’s already bleak recent history becomes even darker. In the meantime, please support this company if and for as long as you can.
Two symphonic epics, at the Barbican and the Royal Festival Hall, have to make do with brief mentions. Now that the 200th anniversary year of Anton Bruckner (1824-96) is underway, the London Symphony Orchestra gave two concerts this month with his music led by Nathalie Stutzmann, a recognized enthusiast. The second, last Sunday, featured his unfinished Ninth Symphony – dedicated to God – followed without intermission by his Te Deum, the choral-orchestral work he called the ‘pride of my life’. The union, suggested by Bruckner himself, was fascinating to experience and probably best described as ‘memorable curiosity’, with expert singing from the London Symphony Chorus and red-blooded playing from the LSO. If this expert, hard-working orchestra sounded a fraction below par, that is a reason for empathy and not for complaint.
In the series Icons Rediscovered, in which works by two late romantics – Sergei Rachmaninov and Edward Elgar – are connected Royal Philharmonic Orchestra showed his courage. The orchestra’s playing has been taken to a new level with the arrival of Vasily Petrenko as music director. In Rachmaninov’s mighty Second Symphony the strings were precise and unanimous. The balance across each section of the orchestra was ideal. Petrenko gave seemingly infinite space to the slow movement (the long, poetic ‘song’ of the clarinet, played eloquently by Sonia Sielaff), but the rest was tight, detailed and rigorous. Attentive and silent, with barely a cough, the capacity audience erupted at the end. The standing ovation was loud 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! is at the Theater Royal Glasgow tonight and then goes to the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, February 22 and 24
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The Barber of Seville is at the London Coliseum until February 29