Donizetti: Rita; Tchaikovsky: Iolanta ****
Guildhall School of Music and Drama, 9th June 2011
This was an evening which started well and just kept on getting better. A sharp-tongued, tyrannical wife and an innocent, blind princess made for an imaginative contrasting pair of leading ladies in Guildhall School’s summer operatic offering. Donizetti’s Rita is your everyday slapstick farce about domestic violence and bigamy(!), while the saccharine confection Iolanta was Tchaikovsky’s final opera, whose original double bill partner was the equally sweet-toothed ballet The Nutcracker, which would have made for an extremely long, high-calorific evening, even for this sweet-toothed correspondent. In the event, the combination of opéra comique and lyric opera complemented each other well; the Donizetti drawing roars of laughter from an enthusiastic audience, while Iolanta was deeply moving – I witnessed grown men wiping away tears.
Natalya Romaniw (Iolanta)
© Clive Barda/ ArenaPAL
Rita is late Donizetti, written for Paris in 1841 although it wasn’t performed until 1860. Here, the action in Martin Lloyd-Evans’ production is updated to the 1960s. It’s a tightly-composed piece for just three singers (as written): Rita, who runs an inn (or sandwich bar in this case) is married to the hen-pecked Beppe, who thinks his luck has finally changed when Rita’s first husband, Gasparo – presumed dead, drowned – returns and chaos ensues. Gasparo, believing Rita died in a house fire, has returned to claim her death certificate so he can marry again! Neither man wishes to remain married to Rita and they play a game of Chance – winner takes the girl – which both desperately try to lose. Gasparo ‘wins’ Rita back, but contrives to wheedle his way out of the deal, leaving Beppe in situ, but not without some advice on how to handle a woman, including the occasional beating (as long as it doesn’t go too far). Social Services would not approve of Gasparo’s marriage guidance counselling.
The white-tiled set for the greasy spoon café was perfect, well-appointed with props and a number of extras – customers, including a tramp who is clearly a regular and a dab-hand at helping himself to whatever he fancies. Anna Patalong sang Rita with relish, her crisp, light soprano hitting the high notes with pin-point accuracy; all she lacks, at this stage, is a decent trill, but this was a most promising performance. I see she’s singing Lauretta at Holland Park next year, which should suit her down to the ground. Her second husband, Beppe, was sung by audience favourite Alberto Sousa in a comedic tour-de-force which brought the house down. More than once his demeanour as hapless husband and even more hapless waiter brought Manuel from Fawlty Towers to mind, but he was notable for his musical contribution too – it has a terrific ‘ping’ to it which clearly marks him out as someone with bel canto potential. Some high notes didn’t quite ‘speak’ on opening night in his aria ‘Allegro io son’, but his engagement with the audience was remarkable. Victor Sicard, singing the role of Gasparo, was somewhat in Sousa’s shadow in terms of comic acting, but his pleasant baritone was immediately apparent in his opening cantilena ‘La mia casa per modello’. Duets were well sung and the highlight was a delightful trio during the stretta of which an hilarious slow-motion fight was staged.
If Rita is regarded as an operatic irrelevance, a slight piece of froth, Iolanta is often dismissed as sentimental tosh. The tale concerns a princess who lives her untroubled life in Provence, protected from the knowledge that she is blind, while King René, her father, seeks a cure, bringing an eastern doctor to heal her before she can be introduced to Robert, Duke of Burgundy, destined since childhood to be her husband. Robert, however, is in love with another and it’s his friend, and fellow soldier, Vaudémont who falls in love with her, but not before revealing to her the truth about her blindness. The doctor reveals that Iolanta can only be healed if she really wants to be cured – and her love for Vaudémont is the key to making this happen. Lo and behold, by the end of the opera Iolanta emerges able to see for the first time, to general rejoicing. Yes, that synopsis does equate to sentimental tosh which, allied to the gorgeous, syrupy music, should be too much for operatic audiences to bear. And yet, if you are willing to submit to the piece rather than fight against it, to refuse to apologise for its tuneful music, it yields great rewards – not on the scale of a Traviata or Butterfly, but can be deeply affecting, right from the opening Andante for solo strings and harp, which can set me off before a note is sung!
I initially wondered why the opera was set in a giant, disused swimming pool, essentially using the same set from the white-tiled café from Rita, but what Lloyd-Evans has very cleverly done is to focus on the way René cocoons his daughter from all mention of vision and light, keeping her in an artificial environment. Yannis Thavoris, the designer, has a ladder down to the pool which is removable, so René is effectively trapping his daughter down there, where she is tended by nurses who play gramophone records (Iolanta thinking they’re real musicians and thanking them), move pots of roses around for her to pick and lay Astroturf strips for her to walk on.
In the title role, Natalya Romaniw was simply outstanding. Portraying Iolanta as a sometimes petulant, moody teenager, she effectively suggested her frustrations that something was missing, something was not quite right, but she knew not what. Romaniw already has an impressively big voice – in truth, too huge on one or two occasions for the small theatre – and, even considering the wonderful singing on offer throughout the double bill, she stood out head and shoulders above the rest. You can clearly hear why she won the Guildhall Gold Medal recently. Having already represented Wales in the 2009 Cardiff Singer, she’s destined for great things. Her opening arioso ‘Atchevo eta prezhde ne znala’ as she wonders at her idyllic existence and why she has never shed tears until now, was beautifully controlled, big lyric phrases floated with consummate ease. In duet, there were one or two moments of hardened tone, where she could didn’t need to push the voice so much. Her Russian diction was excellent, and her acting was finely thought through, portraying her blindness effectively, especially difficult when the swimming pool had been breached by a huge tree root, trailing across the floor to encumber her movements. She also coped with the final scene well, her reaction to the blinding light (and the whole show was tremendously lit by Colin Grenfall) convincing.
The opera’s best-known number, however, is for Robert; a hymn of praise for his beloved Mathilde; Koji Terada’s thrilling baritone brought virility to the role and he sang ‘Kto mozhet sravnitsa s Matil’daj majej’ with a glorious outpouring of burnished colour. Robert’s comrade Vaudémont was sung by Paul Curievici and his plangent high tenor is well suited to this sort of Russian tenor repertoire. His little Romanza was endearingly sung, endearingly gawky, and the passionate duet with Romaniw was a highlight of the evening, drawing great applause. There are moments in Tchaikovsky’s score where little references to other works are noticeable, particularly the middle section of the Nocturne from Borodin’s String Quartet No.2 when Vaudémont asks Iolanta to pick him a red rose and she, unknowingly, picks a white one instead, leading to the revelation about her blindness.
I was less convinced about Matthew Stiff’s René; it’s a role which seemed uncomfortably low and his fast vibrato meant that his brief arioso was occasionally hard-going. Ashley Riches was an excellent Ibn-Hakia, the eastern doctor, with a pleasing depth of velvety tone. Tall and in full eastern garb, I feared for him on his descent down the ladder into the swimming pool. Ciprian Droma and Sioned Gwen Davies were effective in the husband and wife roles of Bertran and Marta, gatekeeper and Iolanta’s nursemaid respectively. Clive Timms conducted the orchestra well in performances which effectively switched between the bright and breezy world of Donizetti to the lush orchestration of the Tchaikovsky.
Suitably balanced double bills of opera are all too rare, but this was an expert pairing by Guildhall in an evening which simply had everything. Further performances follow, with alternating casts, on 11th, 13th and 15th June.
This review originally appeared on Opera Britannia