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Longborough Festival Opera 2010 –Wagner, Die Walküre  : (New production) Soloists, Longborough Festival Opera Orchestra, conducted by Anthony Negus, 27.7.2010 (JPr)

The Valkyries - Picture © Clive Barda

It is always a pleasure to return to see opera at Longborough and to witness the advances that have been made there since it opened its barn doors 20 years ago. Since 1998 it has been involved in a Wagner project which began with Jonathan Dove’s musically-edited version of the Ring and their ambition has now evolved into the - almost mind-blowing - wish to celebrate the two hundredth birthday of the composer with a full Ring cycle in 2013. As a glass half-full person myself - and noting that their ‘Pot of Gold’ fund is only at £14,000 - I’ll believe it when I see it but I wish them well. This amount is not a great deal more than I used recently to put on a single Mahler concert and their fund-raising is supposed to underwrite four operas. Longborough Festival Opera gets no public subsidy and Martin and Lizzie Graham, the organisers, are digging, it seems, deep into their own pockets and twisting the arms of as many philanthropic friends of theirs that they can.

The desire is to create a version of Bayreuth in the heart of the Cotswolds. Surrounding villages are typically quaint and are pastoral idylls of such typical Englishness that all you expect is village cricket, warm beer, Miss Marple or Morris Dancers … but certainly not Wagner. Yet beside the Grahams’ impressive country house in the surrounding rolling fields, there is now a genuine opera house where the farm building with its corrugated roof that sheltered chickens once was. The auditorium remains small and accommodates only 480 people which limits income of course, but both the depth of the stage and the orchestra pit below have been expanded in recent years to match Wagnerian ambitions. Since I was last there in 2007 I think, a new elegant wooden balcony houses the boxes but firmly still in place are the red velvet seats rescued from the Royal Opera House refurbishment. The rather garish colour of the theatre’s mock Palladian façade is still an acquired taste however and the three composer statues on top of it (Verdi, Mozart and Wagner) remain genuine kitsch.

I have been at Longborough for all of their Wagner since 1998 and what they can now achieve must stand comparison with similar country house opera and with Britain’s regional companies. The orchestra of apparently 67 did Wagner as much justice as forces of the Welsh National Opera did for their recent Die Meistersinger performances, although the strings and brass did lack a little refinement and I missed some orchestral heft to balance the volume of the singers. In the early years I have spoken from the stage at Longborough and know there was not much problem with the acoustics even under the original roof. Since then the roof has been replaced in recent years with a new higher one which has enabled the theatre to accommodate a larger volume of sound than previously. So there is no reason at all now for the singers to bellow out their roles as they did in this performance. To the detriment of Wagner and the singers’ stamina they oversang seemingly at a relentless forte the whole evening. Admittedly they had to overcome the sound of rain battering the new roof in Act I – which no form of insulation could prevent from intruding on the events below. But from where I was sitting the singers sounded so loud that at times it was difficult to hear the orchestra. I can only assume that this is what conductor Anthony Negus and Gerhard Gall, the experienced language coach, wanted. Wagner can, and indeed should be conversational at times however and innumerable moments throughout the performance lacked subtlety of vocal expression. Even Die Walküre’s intimate final scene beginning with Brünnhilde’s ‘War es so schmählich’ still found her and Wotan almost shouting at each other.

Nevertheless the level of singers that Longborough appears to attract is much higher than in earlier years and the production values have also improved significantly. Alan Privett has been directing the Wagner at Longborough ever since 1998 and here he employs just a single square platform and what looked like a climbing frame from a school gym which is occasionally raised or lowered. Three Norn-like actors unravel a rope from a large capstan and interact with the other characters by handing them swords or a Perspex spear … but nothing much more than that happens. Kjell Torriset’s ‘sets’ and slightly futuristic costumes are often difficult to discern in the intense gloom of Guy Hoare’s ‘lighting’ – so dim that it felt as though Longborough didn’t have enough money left over for electricity. Nevertheless there were some thrilling storm effects used (inside the theatre as well as out) and some interesting uses of projections and lighting, particularly in Act II. Having said this, Privett and his team seemed to have run out of ideas by Act III, apart from some cavorting choreography for the Valkyries by Suzanne Firth, and the flickering rods of orange-red light that finally enclose the sleeping Brünnhilde.

Overall the female singers bested their male counterparts. Lee Bissett, Alwyn Mellor and Alison Kettlewell are excellent prospects as Sieglinde, Brünnhilde and Fricka, though none of them is quite ‘the finished article’. Mellor will sing the role in cycles in Seattle in 2013 and I am sure the work she will do in the interim will allow her to give credible performances. Unfortunately, the remaining Valkyries were a typically mixed, and occasionally squally, bunch. Mark Richardson made little impact as Hunding while Andrew Rees pushed a much lighter tenor voice than Siegmund needs to its extremes and suffered a small vocal crisis later in Act I. To his credit, he overcame the problem to complete his role quite strongly in Act II without ever convincing me this is a good role for him. Likewise Jason Howard, as a bare-chested Wotan, had the stage presence and physique for the role but the lighter baritonal voice of a Gunther.

Anthony Negus is forever to be labelled as the acolyte of the late Sir Reginald Goodall, doyen of British Wagner conductors. Goodall is remembered as being notoriously slow with his Wagner until some late performances in 1984 when I heard him conduct a surprisingly quicker production of Die Walküre in Cardiff with a drive and energy that belied his fragility and 83 years. Negus’s reading was very much at one with that and had a compelling forward momentum which drew from the score all the orchestral climaxes to maximum effect while never neglecting the moments of repose that are also there. Unfortunately, some of these quieter and tender moments in the music were not adequately matched by the singing on stage, something which must be addressed if this Ring cycle is to continue and which, of course will not be possible at all without a vocally credible Siegfried. There are not many of those around.

For those of an older vintage and any who do not know Martin Graham, think Nigel Bruce as Dr Watson in the vintage Sherlock Holmes films dating from the 1940s. He came on stage to give a rambling introduction to the proceedings and totally failed to mention – to someone like me who was otherwise unaware – that the first interval had been shortened from one hour to 20 minutes, probably due to the prevailing poor weather conditions. I had just about managed one mouthful of food before I had to get back to my seat. There was also something about T E Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom which ended with Martin Graham describing Die Walküre as ‘fragrant’. I doubt whether this – of all operas – can be described that way since it contains, among several other deadly sins, incest, filicide and child abuse! But Martin and Lizzie Graham’s plans deserve to succeed of course, because of their ‘Let’s put on a show in the Barn’ qualities as much as anything, and I hope to be there if their wishes come true in 2013.

Jim Pritchard

For more information about Longborough Festival Opera if you want to be there next year and/or donate money go to http://www.lfo.org.uk/.

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