Intermezzo

Riccardo Primo at the London Handel Festival

Riccardo Primo - Britten Theatre, 26 March 2012 (London Handel Festival)

The London Handel Festival dug deep into the leftovers bin for their annual staged opera this year. 

It's fair to say Riccardo Primo isn't an inexplicably overlooked masterpiece, but it's better than its obscurity might suggest - and like any Handel rarity, worth hearing at least once.

Unfortunately it wasn't done any favours by a production which exposed and often exacerbated the dramatic weaknesses that bar its wider currency. In compensation, musical justice was done to the lively, imaginative score by Laurence Cummings and the London Handel Orchestra, together with some talented advanced-level singing students from the Royal College of Music.

London Handel Festival 2012 prepares for take-off

Online booking opens on 25 January for this year's London Handel Festival, which runs from 15 March to 24 April.

Handel-y highlights include the final of the annual Handel Singing Competition (15 March), a fully staged version of Riccardo primo, re d’Inghilterra (26 to 29 March), and a concert version of Il pastor fido (13 April) featuring Lucy Crowe. The Festival ends with the 1742 Dublin version of Messiah, featuring Christine Rice and Sophie Bevan.

But it's not just Handel da capo ad infinitum. On 21 March the Croatian choir Collegium floridum perform early sacred music by Croatian composers and Croatian songs. Hasse's Cajo Fabricio is given its modern premiere on 20 April, and there's a Good Friday (6 April) outing at St George's Hanover Square (Handel's own parish church) for Bach's St Matthew Passion. This will be performed as originally intended as part of Vespers, including the congregational hymns and the Jacob Handl Gallus motet that Bach himself chose for the Good Friday service.

A number of reasonably-priced concerts throughout the Festival highlight the skillz of past Singing Competition finalists, touching on some rarely-heard repertoire.

Vivienne Westwood remodels Handel

Panniered silks mushroom from tiny waists and scarlet feathers sprout from ratted topknots - Dame Vivienne Westwood's fabulously nutty baroque designs have found a natural home in Hannover, where director Ludger Engels and dramaturge Andri Hardmeier have adapted Handel’s Semele for KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen.

The Herrenhausen gallery has been turned into a catwalk/stage where for 70 minutes singers and models play out a radically reworked version of the opera.

Ariodante at the Barbican - it's Joyce DiDonato's night

Ariodante - Barbican, 25 May 2011

Nice singers, shame about the band. Anyone who came to hear Joyce DiDonato won't have been disappointed. Costumed as Ronnie O'Sullivan for her cross-dressing title role in this concert performance, she outclassed everyone else on stage with her clean line and crisp coloratura.

Was Handel British?

Of course he was!

After mentioning his nationality a few days ago, I've received a couple of doubting emails. So here are the facts.

Cecilia Bartoli proves Handel has no rivals

Cecilia Bartoli - Barbican, 9 December 2010

On a cold, damp winter's night with the Barbican totally bereft of sandwiches (again), half its ladies loos out of action (still) and bar staff who chuck ice into into your essential V&T without even asking - that's when you need Cecilia Bartoli, reliable bearer of warmth and sunshine and seasonal cheer.

Alcina at the Barbican

Alcina - Barbican, 4 December 2010

This was billed as a concert performance of Handel's Alcina, but it wasn't one of those nose-in-book affairs. With the musicians and most of the cast fresh from a fully-staged version at Vienna's Staatsoper (the first baroque opera there in 40 years!), the awkwardly wide Barbican stage was put to good use for once. Singers sang to each other not their scores, toyed with improbable props (a sheet of paper for an urn....please), and faux 18th century settees were distributed on either side of an orchestra twice the size of Handel's. But then Marc Minkowski's approach to period performance has never been the emaciated doctrinaire type. Vibrato was flaunted, instrumental soloists stepped up front to do their bit.

une Semele francaise au Barbican

Semele - Les Talens Lyriques / Christophe Rousset - Barbican, 8 July 2010

Semele is a long piece uncut; a delayed start and extended intervals made it seem even more so. But crack harpsichordist Christophe Rousset's bouncy reading kept things moving along nicely, and the four hours passed without the expected yawns. We got a 'semi-staged' version (for which read face-pulling and no scores) clearly honed from a brief, staged run in Paris the previous week.

Twinkling nearly as much as her weighty diamond parure, the Babs Windsor of baroque opera Danielle de Niese was the nominal star. True to form, her p0rny pouting and braless jiggling were more memorable than her short-breathed, scratchy soprano. Some laboured posturing with a mirror in Myself I shall adore threatened to turn a walk-on, walk-off concert performance into grotesque caricature. Perhaps it was meant to be ironic. But true glamour is in short supply in the world of opera, and she has it in spades, so most of the audience lapped it up anyway.

The serious, top-drawer Handel performances came from the rest of the cast, which included Jaël Azzaretti, Richard Croft, Peter Rose, Claire Debono and, most impressively, Vivica Genaux as the disappointed Ino and the vengeful Juno. She may look like a goldfish at feeding time in the faster passages, but those unconventionally rapid jaw movements sculpt her coloratura with extraordinary precision.  There was the odd whiff of a French accent from the Théâtre des Champs Élysées choir, but the clarity of their English diction would put most native speakers to shame. 

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Rolando Villazon fails to handle his Handel

Rolando Villazon / Lucy Crowe / Gabrieli Consort / Paul McCreesh - Royal Festival Hall, 3 May 2010

Arrival of the Queen of Sheba (Solomon)   Fatto inferno (Rodelinda)   Pastorello d'un povero armento (Rodelinda)   Concerto grosso in B flat, Op.3 No.2   Più che penso alle fiamme del core (Serse)   Se pietà di me non senti (Giulio Cesare)   Crude furie degl' orridi (Serse)   Scherza infida (Ariodante)   Oboe Concerto No.3 in G minor   Ciel e terra (Tamerlano)   Da tempeste (Giulio Cesare)   Bajazet death scene, Oh, perme lieto - Fremi, minaccia, Figlia mia, Tu, spietato (Tamerlano) Encores: Ombra mai fu, Doppo notte

It's hard to know what to think, let alone to say, about this bizarre evening. And as a longtime admirer of Rolando Villazon, it gives me no pleasure to write what I'm about to. And no, I'm not just talking about the village-idiot haircut.

Bath time for Handel and Chopin

Tickets for the 2010 Bath International Music Festival went on sale today.

Artistic Director Joanna McGregor has once again put together a hugely varied programme embracing all sorts of music and performance beyond the purely classical.

One of the most popular shows is likely to be a dramatised performance of Handel's Israel in Egypt in the unusual setting of the 2000 year old Roman Baths. It runs for four nights in June.

Chopin's 200th birthday is celebrated in a series of concerts which includes Stephen Hough with the B minor Sonata and a three hour Mazurkathon from Joanna McGregor herself.

A Kathleen Ferrier minifest includes a free exhibition of memorabilia  and a special concert where contralto Hilary Summers portrays Ferrier's life in song.

And for those who fancy making their own music, ten pianos will be placed in 'secret locations' around Bath for anyone to have a go.

Unto ENO a turkey is born and its name is Messiah

Messiah - English National Opera, 27 November 2009

There are more Messiahs than brussels sprouts around at this time of year, so quite why ENO felt the need to offer us yet another one is beyond me. For a company struggling with the recession it doesn't make financial sense either. Who, aficionados aside, wants more than one Messiah per annum? And who wants to fork out up to £90 at the Coliseum when you can pay under half that elsewhere? Unlike its competitors this one is of course staged. But as Handel neither intended the magic of theatre to illuminate his artistry, nor wrote his music to accommodate such impertinence, it's an uphill struggle for Deborah Warner to make any sense of it.

Of course she fails dismally. The singers, in some artful version of their own clothes (Moritz Junge is credited as costume designer) play ordinary people doing ordinary stuff like sleeping, ironing, watching telly and loafing about. Presumably by such humble devices we are supposed to see the humanity and universality of the biblical messages. Tourists may well be intrigued by this glimpse into the everyday life of their host city, but personally I felt patronised and bored. And littering the stage with cute tots might work for the older section of the audience, but perhaps Warner doesn't realise many visit the theatre precisely to escape from that sort of thing. Some excruciatingly obvious acting-out of the birth, nativity and scourging added precisely nothing to the music.

Worse still were the attempts at narrative overlay. What makes Messiah so impossible to stage is the illustrative, discontinuous nature of the texts. Slapping on a story line where it doesn't fit just emphasises the problem. The worst culprit was a Thou shall break them made silly and ironic in order to accommodate the vicar's picnic Hallelujah Chorus which followed. One of the greatest moments in the whole work, vandalised.

The great shame was the amount of time and skill invested in this flawed conception. Elegant, minimal sets, atmospheric lighting and stunning back-projected paintings and cityscapes were only part of it. There was some fine if generally underprojected singing from the soloists Sophie Bevan, Catherine Wyn Rogers, John Mark Ainsley and Brindley Sherratt. Laurence Cummings chose stately tempos which didn't flatter the orchestra's contribution, but a fine balance was struck between period style and the need to fill the vast Coliseum. The chorus, amazingly, made every single word clear, though their sound was top-heavy and lacking in enthusiasm. I wonder why.

Still, Deborah Warner has succeeded in bringing a little festive cheer to the terminally grumpy, which must be some kind of achievement.

one director and one smart kid:

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Handel to the rescue

When the emergency bell failed to work, an 80 year old pensioner stuck in a hospital toilet knew just how to attract the staff's attention.

"I thought, oh well, it's coming up to Christmas, so I gave them the opening verse of the Hallelujah Chorus. The doors opened very quickly."

ENO's Messiah brings tidings of great joy - £10 tickets

The discounting really has started early for ENO's new staging of Handel's Messiah.

It doesn't even open until Friday 27 November, and already tickets are reduced to £10 courtesy of the Evening Standard.

Go here to book.

And get your LOLs here now while stocks last - I fancy you'll find precious few in Deborah 'srsly' Warner's new production.

 

Handelfest begins! English Touring Opera's Flavio

Flavio - English Touring Opera - RCM Britten Theatre, 15 November 2009

English Touring Opera's five-opera Handelfest, celebrating - guess who - kicked off on Thursday with the inexplicably underexposed Flavio. The characters are crafted clearly and reasonably credibly, and it's never less than lively. The weaknesses if any are a shortage of tunes you can hum and a neatly-knitted happy ending that strains credulity more than a little.

Even though very little was trimmed from its two and a half hour length, it moved along with tremendous pace, the momentum never flagging. That's partly down to the writing - a busy plot which intertwines a comic and a more serious story line, with plenty of short arias.  But the staging too was very effective. With ETO's usual ingenuity in turning budgetary constraints to creative advantage, a plain blue wall, cleverly lit, formed a simple backdrop for a production focused on character and plot. Lest anyone might feel fobbed off by minimalism, lavish costuming provided a reassuringly traditional touch.

The 400 seater Britten Theatre - an opera house in miniature - was tailor-scaled for the small baroque band, including a harpsichord, two theorbos and a pair of reassuringly unshiny bassoons. Jonathan Peter Kenny conducted like a singer - well, he is one (appearing in Ariodante later in the week) - always with great consideration for balance and pacing.

Casting was strong, and the action seemed assured and well-rehearsed. I was particularly impressed by Paula Sides, the soprano in the 'straight' role of dutiful daughter Emilia. Andrew Slater and Joseph Cornwell were well-cast as the aging courtiers Lotario and Ugone whose rivalry (over the governorship of Britain, of all the things to fight about) turns from comic to fatal. An auspicious start to the season that indicates there will be plenty to look forward to from the remaining operas over the coming week.

do all Handel operas sound the same?

Your chance to find out this month with the opportunity to catch six Handel operas in less than two weeks.

Five of these come from English Touring Opera. Their Handelfest tour kicks off on 15 October with a new production of Flavio in the the Royal College of Music's mini-opera house, the Britten Theatre. Teseo, Tolomeo, Alcina and Ariodante follow, demonstrating the developments in Handel's style during his most fertile creative period. As usual with ETO, all are very reasonably priced for full productions.

An accompanying brochure (which can be downloaded from the website) sets out a complementary programme of recitals and free talks, together with accommodation and restaurant suggestions (now there's a useful idea).

And if that's not enough, William Christie and Les Arts Florissants bring a concert performance of Susanna to the Barbican on 25 October.

David Daniels mixes it up

David Daniels / Academy of St Martin in the Fields - Barbican, 19 September 2009

Handel Arrival of the Queen of Sheba (from Solomon)   Nico Muhly Vocalise on Al lampo dell’ armi    John Tavener Little Reliquary for G.F.H .    Handel Overture to Serse   Michael Nyman Ombra mai fu   Handel Perfido, di a quell'empio tiranno (from Radamisto)   Handel Sinfonia (Largo) Pompe vane di morte! (from Rodelinda)   Craig Armstrong Themes and Variations on Adagio e Staccato from Water Music    Handel Overture to Saul   Nico Muhly Oh Lord whose mercies numberless   Jocelyn Pook Sing Sing music was given   Handel Aria - Vivi tiranno (from Rodelinda)

Everyone's favourite hairy beary countertenor David Daniels and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields proved tonight that not all Handel arias sound the same. Especially after they've been jiggled around by a bunch of contemporary composers (with a few originals thrown in for comparison) in the Handel Remixed project, part of the 250th anniversary celebrations. 

Dodgy black tie/black shirt combo aside, David Daniels looked remarkably trim and refreshed - has he been supping from the same fountain of youth as Renee Fleming? Can't be the English weather.

Anyway, first remix up was Nico Muhly's wordless Vocalise on Al lampo dell’ armi. Much as it seems a waste to ignore David Daniels' extraordinary gift for expressing text, its stripped down textures, alternately reminiscent of Philip Glass and a jar of wasps, made one of the more interesting pieces of the evening. In Muhly's second contribution, Oh Lord whose mercies numberless, layered instruments repeated a simple figure at varying slow speeds in a lush, washy fugue.

John Tavener provided a hymn-like setting for a few lines from Solomon, and Michael Nyman orchestrated Ombra mai fu to a new tune in his trademark pared-down style, parts moving mainly in unison on the same note (the original cropped up for comparison as an encore). Craig Armstrong took his musical inspiration from Water Music and dabbed on some words from Don't Leave Me This Way (yes that one). I wondered whether the composers had been told who would be singing - a lot was written in a range too low to flatter any countertenor.

The only composer to give David Daniels time off was Jocelyn Pook. Her instrumental was the contribution most loosely sourced on its original (Oh Lord whose mercies numberless again) but its neatly intertwined melodies made it perhaps the most Handelian in spirit - so pretty in fact I'm not sure if it was intended to be ironic.

However gamely David Daniels tackled the new stuff, there's no question he was more at home with the three Handel originals. Despite the inflexibility of Harry Christophers' accompaniment, Bertarido's arias from Rodelinda had a spirit and emotional range that Handel's mixers just couldn't match.

Arianna in Creta in London

Arianna in Creta - Academy of Ancient Music / Hogwood - Barbican, 17 May 2009

Two three hour Handel operas in London in one day. Arianna in Creta at the Barbican began just an hour after Zurich Opera's excellent Agrippina ended at the Royal Festival Hall. Neither was anything like full. Why can't venues check each other's diaries?  I'm sure plenty of people picked just one because they didn't have the iron constitution for both. Despite my best intentions, I was wilting before this one even started.

Christopher Hogwood is a more fastidious observer of the exactitudes of historical performance than Monsieur Minkowski. My heart sank at the sight of his natural horns. And it was to prove an astringent reading, probably better appreciated by fresher ears than mine. The splayed notes of the horns aside, it was hard to fault the playing. But Mr Handel was sparing with his tunes in this one and Mr Hogwood is not the sort to pop in a dab of Chopin to jolly things up. Despite the latent dramatic potential of the Theseus and the Minotaur storyline, many stretches proved less than engrossing. It was wonderful to have the rare opportunity to experience a live performance, but I wasn't too surprised to find this was its first UK airing for many years.

The singing though was of almost uniformly high quality, even if with most noses buried in scores it wasn't always as communicative as it might have been.

Filling in for the sick Angelika Kirchschlager as Teseo was Kristina Hammarström, who leapt from note to note with tremendous agility, but remained a little laid back for a monster-slaying hero. The silvery bloom of Miah Persson's soprano enchanted in the title role. Lisa Milne made a bold and assertive Alceste, confidently delivered, and Sonia Prina showcased the most energetic coloratura of the evening in her feisty Carilda. A few wobbly moments from the lone bass were the only intrusion.

If only I'd had a less Handel-packed day, I'm sure I would have appreciated it all more.

 

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Zurich Opera's Roman remains

Agrippina - Zurich Opera / Orchestra La Scintilla / Marc Minkowski - Royal Festival Hall, 17 May 2009

I don't know if many opera houses would dare copy what Zurich Opera did at the Royal Festival Hall on Sunday afternoon. That's bring a whole new opera production - minus sets and costumes but including full cast and orchestra - all the way to London halfway through its first ever run (10 to 26 May). Crazy! But it meant we got to see a superbly rehearsed orchestra, a top flight international cast (the best that deep Swiss pockets could purchase) and a semi-staging alive with the wit and vitality of David Pountney's production.

Pountney sees Handel's tale of scheming Romans as a comic satire. Marc Minkowski agrees. Hairshirt historical purists would have been horrified by his arching phrases, vibrato, and - worst of all - a teeny quote from Chopin's Marche funèbre tucked behind the premature announcement of Emperor Claudio's death. On a plug-in organ no less. How 'correct' it all is remains debatable, but it certainly sounded 'right'.

In front of the orchestra on the unadorned Royal Festival Hall stage and stripped of her Zurich appurtenances of leopardskin coat and hanging carcases, Vesselina Kasarova's Bette Davis style mugging in the title role was as bizarre as her mannered singing with its pronounced register break between velvety chest and gleaming top. But her coloratura was precise, her pianissimi secure, and her every appearance on stage was undeniably captivating.

None of the remaining cast could match her on the scenery-chewing front, but they all threw themselves whole-heartedly into convincing physical portrayals, with some enterprising use of the limited space around the podium and behind the orchestra. There was some impressive singing from the other two mezzos, Marijana Mijanović as the trusting Ottone and Anna Bonitatibus as Agrippina's dim son Nerone. Eva Liebau's sweet Poppea didn't seem much of a schemer compared with Kasarova, but her lovelorn arias were more convincing.

It was a pleasure to hear László Polgár's inimitably sonorous bass as Claudio - and how deftly his heavy instrument handled the ornamentation. Baritone Ruben Drole and countertenor José Lemos as the easily-duped Pallante and Narciso provided some purely comic relief. Even the small parts of Giunone and Lesbo were handled with style by Wiebke Lehmkuhl and Gabriel Bermudez.

In all, it was a demonstration of how much a well-directed staging, however limited by space and equipment, can add to to a concert performance. Not to mention how much more clearly Handel's music is revealed when interpreted with instinct as well as intellect.

Photos from the Zurich production here.

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What's on in London in May

There's always plenty on in London musically speaking, but May looks particularly busy.

For starters, at the Royal Opera House, Diana Damrau and Giuseppe Filianoti take a roll in the hay for the first revival of Laurent Pelly's L'elisir d'amore. Il trovatore and Lohengrin are still around too.

At the ENO, David Alden's hotly-anticipated new Peter Grimes opens. Stuart Skelton, Amanda Roocroft, Gerald Finley and Felicity Palmer sing, Edward Gardner conducts. The second new production of the month is film director Abbas Kiarostami's first venture into opera, Così fan tutte.

Purcell's King Arthur is performed in concert at the Barbican on 6 May by Le Concert Spirituel. There are limited *free* tickets for under-26's for this one (check out the freeB link on the Barbican site).

17 May is Handel-fest day. Christopher Hogwood's Academy of Ancient Music bring Arianna in Creta to the Barbican. Miah Persson, Lisa Milne and Sonia Prina appear as originally scheduled, but Kristina Hammarström replaces the previously-announced Angelika Kirchschlager.

The performance starts at 6.30pm, so there should be (just) enough time to get there from Zurich Opera's Agrippina, which begins at 2pm in the Royal Festival Hall. The impressive cast joining Marc Minkowski and Zurich Opera's specialist period ensemble, Orchestra La Scintilla, includes Vesselina Kasarova, Eva Liebau, Marijana Mijanovic and Anna Bonitatibus.

The other operatic event worth mentioning is not in London at all, but in Manchester.  Over two nights, 9 and 10 May, Mark Elder and the Hallé Orchestra perform Götterdämmerung in concert at the Bridgewater Hall, with Katarina Dalayman as Brünnhilde. If this was in London, tickets would go in a flash, but there are still plenty of seats available.  Manchester is clearly a harder sell. It rather underlines the folly of the Royal Opera House's plans to create a Mancunian outpost. Northern opera lovers may be dedicated - there just aren't a lot of them.

On 31 May, Rene Pape joins Vladimir Jurowski and the LPO at the Royal Festival Hall for the UK premiere of Torsten Rasch's 2003 song cycle Mein Herz brennt. This is (loosely) based on the music of headbanging German industrial metallers Rammstein - a fact the Southbank promo guff intriguingly fails to mention. Not as scary as it sounds though, as the source material is engulfed by Jurowski's favoured big-boned retro-nouveau Eastern bloc neo-romanticism (or Vladcore for short).

On a smaller scale, there are lots of recitals this month, including the big one, Anna Netrebko and Dmitri Hvorostovsky at the Royal Festival Hall on 19 May.

At Wigmore Hall Kate Royal sings Schumann and Brahms on 7 May, and there's a solo recital from the great Jordi Savall the day after. On 19 May (the same date as Netrebko/Hvorostovsky unfortunately) Mojca Erdmann, Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber tackle Wolf's Italienisches Liederbuch. The Wigmore's busy Haydn weekend begins on 29 May with an András Schiff lecture recital at 2pm.

And there are a few more Wigmore day time events worth mentioning. On 12 May at 2pm there's a *free* recital of Kurtag and Schubert by Jonathan Biss, which will be recorded for the Wigmore's own label. On 18 May at 1pm Anne Schwanewilms sings Debussy, Strauss and Wolf, and on 25 May at 1pm Ingrid Fliter plays Chopin and Schumann.

Philip Glass makes a rare appearance at the Barbican on 26 May for an evening of chamber music.

The fabulous Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain plink and twang at the Cadogan Hall on 5 May.

One of the most intriguing events of the month is a Barbican concert on 30 May. Various artists including the Britten Sinfonia perform the Music of Moondog , and there are companion pre, post and interval events, including an 11.30pm concert at St Giles Cripplegate, Moondog Around Midnight .

Dido and Aeneas and Acis and Galatea and Wayne ----- now UPDATED with photos

Dido and Aeneas / Acis and Galatea - Royal Opera House, 31 March 2009

It was uncharacteristically brave of the Royal Opera House to unleash a choreographer (Wayne McGregor) and the forces of the Royal Ballet on a pair of operas, but it turned out to be a surprisingly successful experiment.

Perhaps not so brave, actually - his Dido and Aeneas had already aired at La Scala. It was the less bold of the two, conventionally staged against a minimal, monumental set, with precisely-drilled dancers doing little more than filling in the gaps between the singing. That it never really got up any steam dramatically is a problem lying partly with Purcell's now fragmentary score, much of which has been lost over the centuries. But the dancing, which could have been used to paste the scraps together, instead seemed to emphasise the disjunctions.

But there was some fine singing, especially from Sarah Connolly as the tragic Queen Dido and Lucy Crowe as her spirited maid Belinda. Iestyn Davies made an impressive Covent Garden debut too, singing sweetly from above through the hole in the roof. Eri Nakamura and Pumeza Matshikiza made a striking pair of conjoined-twin witches - a coup de théâtre that unfortunatly served mostly to emphasise the dry formalism of all around it.

The way Christopher Hogwood and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment fleshed out the score emphasised the sheer originality in Purcell's writing.

Tunes were more to the fore in Acis and Galatea - which includes some of his best ones, like Love in her eyes sits playing, Love sounds th’alarm and the charmingly silly Happy we!

The simple pastoral nymph-meets-shepherd tale was garnished with stuffed sheep and tangled branches, and some all-too-rustic singing as well. The title roles grated under the foghorn tenor of Charles Workman and Danielle de Niese's unwieldy vibrato. Matthew Rose as Polyphemus and Paul Agnew as Damon coped with Handel's demands far more gracefully.

But why couldn't the ROH use British singers for the principal roles too?  - it's not as if they're thin on the ground. Kate Royal not only sings ten times better than de Niese, she's an accomplished dancer too - and the list of great English tenors, starting with John Mark Ainsley and Mark Padmore, just goes on and on.

Perhaps it was just as well that the dance element was more prominent in this half of the evening. Each singing role, including the chorus, had a dancing double, a soul perhaps, expressing the feeling behind the words. Dancing Acis and Galatea (Ed Watson and Lauren Cuthbertson) entwined in sinuous and utterly entrancing pas-de-deux. Behind the lumbering Polypheme was his exquisitely graceful alter-ego Eric Underwood. The dancers' nudey body stockings - part alien, part newborn - emphasised both their vulnerability and their other-worldliness.

It was all too easy to forget this was an opera and concentrate on the movement - more fluid and literally expressive than McGregor's other work, but stamped with his trademark quirky articulations. It was certainly more compelling than the curiously static singers and their fugly costumes (drag-queen Heidi for de Niese, shaggy tramp for Workman). De Niese did at least redeem herself in a beautifully-executed closing dance with Ed Watson, an emphatic reminder that this production is at heart a dance piece with singing tacked on.

 

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