Russell Hepplewhite - Laika the Spacedog
English Touring Opera - 2013
Russell Hepplewhite, Tim Yealland, Sarah Laulan, Nicolas Rigas, Abigail Kelly, Edward Lee, Maciek O’Shea
Armel Opera Festival, Szeged - ARTE Live Web - 14th October 2013
An opera aimed at 7-11 year olds isn't the traditional kind of work that you would think best suited for judging singers in a competition like the Armel Opera Festival, but the English Touring Opera's production of Russell Hepplewhite's Laika the Spacedog proves to be one of the richest offerings in the programme. As well as providing its competition singers with some interesting challenges, it deservedly took away two awards for the production.
As an opera, Laika the Spacedog is deceptive in the apparent simplification of its appealing doggie-does-good story when in reality it works well on a number of levels. The story of the Russian space-programme's race to follow its successful Sputnik I launch by putting the first living creature out into space in 1957 introduces a younger audience to modern history, politics and science, but also emotionally engages them to these concepts through an appreciation of opera, theatre and music that makes effective use of comedy and an inventive staging. And yes, it has a loveable dog.
Musically, it's also a wonderfully composed work that is likewise deceptively simple in its chamber construction but in reality vibrant, playful and complex in its interweaving of instruments and themes. There's a deep rhythmic pulse provided by cello and bassoon, with a clarinet weaving in and out of it and clever use of vibraphone and in even electronic instruments like a Theremin to give a playful lightness and suggest space and science concepts with a little bit of a "period" feel to them.
Most importantly, it involves young people by making them part of the on-stage chorus and audience. Here at Szeged, you can see how successfully the work inspires the imagination of the children and holds them rapt by how thoroughly the young members of the Laika Choir of the Tisza-parti Elementary School become engaged in every aspect of the performance. A young audience would be no less delighted by the work and the performance and the cast likewise try to engage the audience in the exploration of the science concepts behind the work.
That's where the challenge comes in for the performers. For the competition singers, Sarah Laulan, Nicolas Rigas - both French - there's challenge enough in making the English diction clear and the singing melodic when exposed with only a chamber arrangement. The performances however have to be vital, spirited, intense and playful, requiring some degree of charm and comic timing to interact with the other singers and reach out through audience participation. Bass-baritone Nicolas Rigas perhaps fared better in terms of finding the right tone and character for the work, bringing a more musical and melodic touch to the performance, coping well with the English diction. Mezzo-soprano Sarah Laulan on the other hand might not have found this type of work best suited to her talents, but sang well and within the spirit of the piece.
Both fitted in well in this respect with the rest of the production as a whole, which is just an important a consideration. Jude Munden's sets were inventive and dynamic, making use of projections and animation to cover everything from travelling on the Moscow metro, recreating a laboratory, showing the solar system and displaying a rocket launch. Maciek O’Shea's handling of the puppet Laika was of course vital in making this all work so successfully. Supported by the fine playing of the orchestra conducted by Russell Hepplewhite himself and with the experienced supporting cast of Abigail Kelly and Edward Lee (although all the roles bear equal weight here), this was at least a worthy winner of two production awards.
The Armel Opera Festival performance of Laika the Spacedog can be viewed for free for six months after the performance on the ARTE Live Web streaming service. The opera is sung in English with French subtitles only.
Benjamin Britten - The Turn of the Screw
Istanbul State Opera and Ballet - 2013
Leonhard Garms, Aytaç Manizade, Stéphanie Varnerin, Sébastien Obrecht, Gülbin Günay, Lynn T. Çağlar, İlyas Seçkin, Sevim Zerenaoğlu
Armel Opera Festival, Szeged - ARTE Live Web - 12th October 2013
With a small chamber orchestra arrangement, Britten's The Turn of the Screw isn't a work that needs a lot of theatrical or dramatic elaboration. Each instrument contributes meaningfully to the impact of each scene, creating the exact and necessary mood, but it also leaves room for suggestion and supposition, which is just as vital and important. There's plenty of mood in the Istanbul State Opera production of Britten's version of Henry James's ghostly tale, but perhaps not quite so much consideration given to the more ambiguous elements contained within the characters as suggested by the music itself.
Staged at the Szeged National Opera theatre in Hungary for the Armel Opera Festival, the Istanbul State Opera production created acres of ghostly gothic mood and ambience with the minimum of props and the simples of backdrops. Efter Tunç's props were limited to basic beds, writing tables, rocking horses but were at least period and evocative enough - with dead leaves scattered around for effect - to create the right environment for the sinister behaviour of the children and for the appearance of the opera's ghosts, Peter Quint and Miss Jessel. Cem Yilmazer's lighting and colour coding - violent red for Quint, jealous green for Jessel - combined with the costumes also served to create an dark, gothic environment.
Individual scenes then worked to tremendously spooky effect, the lighting enhancing Quint's appearance at the French windows, the appearance of Miss Jessel by the "Dead Sea" seeing Flora's doll slide creepily across the stage, with plenty of blood-curdling behaviour during the chilling scene where the ghosts interact directly with the children. They might have occasionally gone overboard with the dry ice, but it was a highly effective staging, one of the strongest and most consistent of the whole Festival. Tim Burton would have been proud of it.
Unfortunately, Aytaç Manizade's direction never escaped beyond the confines of the gothic horror to explore the rather more psychological and suggestive content in Turn of the Screw. The two ghosts seem to be nothing more than indeed ghosts. The repression of the Governess is usually seen as the key motivator behind the sightings, but her dealings with the children's guardian isn't really established as a factor here. If anything there's the possibility of reading Quint as a projection of Miles' dark side, and they are effectively linked by the image of the horse. There is further suggestion that Miles' behaviour may be related to having witnessed a liaison between Quint and Jessel, but there's nothing more than mild canoodling seen, and not anything that would drive the boy to bad and dangerous behaviour.
It's unfortunate that the director wasn't able to do more with enhancing the motivations of the Governess, as Stéphanie Varnerin was more than capable of expressing the edgier tone that creeps into her character's disturbed temperament as well as having a lovely timbre that captures her outward appearance of caring sweetness and gentility. Sébastien Obrecht made the most of a juicy role and took away the Armel Opera Festival's Best Male Performer award. The cast supporting the competition performers were superb, contributing to this being one of the all-round strongest productions of the Festival.
The Armel Opera Festival performance of The Turn of the Screw can be viewed for free for six months after the performance on the ARTE Live Web streaming service. Subtitles are French only.
Giuseppe Verdi - Simon Boccanegra
Szeged National Theatre, Hungary - 2013
Tamás Pál, Zsuzsa Molnár, Vasile Chisiu, Stefano Olcese, Adrienn Miksch, Attila Réti, András Kiss, Bálint Börcsök, Szilvia Dobrotka, József Varga
Armel Opera Festival, Szeged - ARTE Live Web - 10th October 2013
Simon Boccanegra is by no means a typical work by Verdi. The composer had by this stage moved beyond the bluster of the works of his "galley years" - beautifully melodic, dramatically driven and often musically inspired though many of them are - towards a maturity of style in his middle-period that didn't rely quite so much on the standard number format of the classic Italian opera tradition. The melodrama is still there in mid-period Verdi, and the composer had yet to have the full involvement of a librettist like Arrigo Boito who would provide him with material truly worthy of his talents (though Boito did later add the Act II Council Chamber scene for the revised version of Simon Boccanegra), but there is nonetheless a greater subtlety and attention to characterisation in the fascinating works from this period.
Not that you would notice this from the 2013 Szeged National Theatre production of Simon Boccanegra presented at the Armel Opera Festival. It's not a bad production by any means, and it's always intriguing to see a work based on the original staging as described in documents from the time, but it's inevitably going to look rather old-fashioned with singers mostly standing facing the audience rather than interacting with one another and belting out the numbers in the classic 'park-and-bark' or 'stand-and-deliver' manner. For a lot of Verdi, if you've got good singers - and the Szeged are strong-voiced and more than capable of meeting the demands - you can get away with this. For early Verdi anyway. For a work like Simon Boccanegra, which relies on moments of tender expression and charged emotions more than dramatic developments to get its full impact across, you need a little more sensitivity than you get here.
Although the production doesn't really help them then, the two competition singers Vasile Chisiu and Stefano Olcese cope well nonetheless with the challenges that are to be found in the roles of Jacopo and Boccanegra. Much like Verdi's La Forza del Destino, there's a Prologue that sits widely apart from the main events of the opera, and it's important that there is a noticeable change in the personalities of the two characters who find themselves in opposition to one another, partly through maturity but also through them having to carry the weight of the tragic and tumultuous events that have divided them. I think that is clearly drawn in the production, at least in as far as it is important for the two main characters, and both performers do well in their attempts to show the necessary gravitas and rich characterisation that would have defined them in the in-between years.
Neither however are entirely strong enough singers with the kind of experience necessary to really bring roles like this to life. A Boccanegra really needs a mature Verdian baritone of experience, a Leo Nucci, a Thomas Hampson or - at a stretch - Placido Domingo, who has proved that he can inhabit the baritone role fairly successfully. It's a considerable challenge however for Vasile Chisiu, and if he doesn't have the ideal power, range or experience to step convincingly into a role like this with the kind of personality it requires, it's a good performance nonetheless and sung well. The unimaginative stage directions probably don't help, and certainly don't do Stefano Olcese any favours as Jacopo Firese, but he often seems disengaged from the drama, singing out to the audience rather than in response to what is happening on stage. Again, there's a nice bass-baritone voice there but it lacks the depth of characterisation required to make the melodrama in the story work convincingly.
Conductor and director Tamás Pál and the Szeged Symphony Orchestra gives a good account of the work, but the subtleties and melancholic undercurrents of the score seem to founder on the failure of the staging to match the necessary tension and drama to the work. The original set designs are well realised by the production team and it's certainly of interest to see the work close to how it might originally have been staged, but for a Verdi work like Simon Boccanegra to fully come alive to a modern audience it would require better direction and singers of considerably greater stature and ability than we have here.
The Armel Opera Festival performance of Simon Boccanegra can be viewed for free for six months after the performance on the ARTE Live Web streaming service. Subtitles are French only.
Zoran Juranić - The Last Flower of Summer
Serbian National Theatre, Novi Sad, Serbia - 2013
Zoran Juranić, Christophe Poncet, Jelena Končar, Miodrag Petrović, Miljenko Đuran, Violeta Srećković, Goran Krneta, Vasa Stajkić, Igor Ksionžik, Ivan Dajić, Darija Olajoš Čizmič
Armel Opera Festival - Szeged - ARTE Live Web - 7th October 2013
The question of musical precedents and references must undoubtedly come up in any modern opera that draws from the historical operatic tradition. The principal influences on the musical language of any modern work that operates in a form that is largely tonal and is not of the minimalist school can often be found in the impressionistic touches of Debussy, with something of the freer form and dissonance of Alban Berg. You might find some musical influence of those composers in Croatian composer Zoran Juranić's The Last Flower of Summer, but the influence and their significance perhaps extends beyond the musical to the actual drama itself.
Pelléas et Mélisande inevitably comes to mind for example at the start of The Last Flower of the Summer when a man, Mr Bert, on his way home one night discovers a mystery woman lying on the street, with no name and uncertain where she has come from. It seems clear however that she has been abducted and has escaped from the clutches of two shadowy figures seen in the background. It's not the only thing shadowy about the story, the characters or the world they live in. From the watchful policeman, to the inquisitive lady walking the street and the interfering landlady of his apartment block, Mr Bert has some difficulty in bring the mystery woman back to his room in order to offer her some help.
Or is there a deeper attraction and motive at work here, perhaps without Mr Bert even realising it? Certainly he doesn't resist when Miss No-Name strips down and seduces him using her obvious charms, but Bert is also undoubtedly attracted by the romantic allure of the exotic and mysterious background she relates to him, particularly the line of poetry that she claims to have improvised at the moment - "If I fall at your feet, pick me up like the last flower of Summer". It soon transpires however that the poem was not improvised and that there are further lines, just as there are many other mysterious figures and men in the troubled journey that has taken her to Mr Bert.
With a crazed and distraught armed Russian soldier called Vladimir on the streets looking for a missing woman, and a story that has taken NN from Monte Carlo to Venice and beyond, first with a wealthy industrialist Carlo and then with Lorenzo, a knife thrower, it seems that we could be dealing with a Lulu here rather than a Mélisande. There are even discussions between Mr Bert and the woman about opera and the elaborate love stories that they construct, suggesting further that there is some self-referentiality about all this. When it is revealed that NN's story is itself largely fictional and that even the poem is derived from a woman's magazine, this does suggest that the opera works on a meta-level that acknowledges outside influences. On the other hand, the opera can be seen as dealing with the nature of love itself, of meeting a stranger, getting to know them and falling in love, then finding out that you can never know the whole person or the whole story as it falls apart and one's certainties start to unravel.
The Last Flower of Summer was premiered in March 2013 at the Serbian National Theatre of Novi Sad, and the production - directed and conducted by the composer Zoran Juranić himself - is presented here at the 2013 Armel Opera Festival. The staging is necessarily basic, needing to be all-purpose and simplified to not require any major scene changes for the purposes of the opera festival. The entire work is presented in the form of a related story that takes place behind a mesh screen, narrated by an older Mr Bert (in a non-singing role) sitting reflecting on the events in the past at a table with a typewriter. Other than a bed and some portable open-doors, there's not much in the way of set decoration, but Juranić's set employs a see-saw platform at the back of the stage that fulfils most additional dramatic requirements.
The main purpose of the staging here at the Armel Opera Festival is to provide an opportunity to judge the performances of two of the competition singers. Having previously performed in Latin in Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex, the French tenor Christophe Poncet demonstrates his versatility here by singing in Croatian, and he seems to manage it exceptionally well. Serbian soprano Jelena Končar's role as NN is however rather more challenging vocally, dramatically and for the fact that she's singing constantly for a large part of the 90 minutes of the opera. If there was a prize for most daring performance Končar would walk away with it, stripping down and singing before a passionate love scene, baking a lasagne, and even working as an assistant for a knife-thrower (it looked like it was done for real), but her singing ability is impressive on its own and she really took command of the role. Her performance deservedly won her the Best Female Performer at the Festival.
The Armel Opera Festival performance of The Last Flower of Summer can be viewed for free for six months after the performance on the ARTE Live Web streaming service. Subtitles are French only.
Igor Stravinsky - Oedipus Rex
Poznan Opera House, Poland - 2013
Jacek Przybylowicz, Grzegorz Weirus, Christophe Poncet, Joëlle Charlier, Jerzy Mechlinski, Andrzej Ogorkiewicz, Piotr Friebe, Jaromir Trafankowski, Aleksander Machlaica
Armel Opera Festival, Szeged - ARTE Live Web - 5th October 2013
Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex, "an opera-oratorio after Sophocles", is one of the most fascinating works of the composer's neoclassical period. One of the more interesting elements of the Stravinsky's approach here, for example, is the use of older traditional styles that isn't so much a homage as an exploration of different musical archetypes, aligning them appropriately (or inappropriately for effect according to some commentators) to specific characters. Stravinsky's measure of the subject, the dramatic content and its mythological subject is moreover just about perfect. In its formal construction and declarative nature - with a libretto written by Jean Cocteau - it's hard to imagine the work being anything but an oratorio, but there are inevitably grand and tragic elements that are drawn out, and this Poznan Opera House production captures them well.
In as far as the opera-oratorio's relating of the events of Sophocles' Greek tragedy go, the work is divided into two parts. The sequence of events is related by a narrator (in the original language of the audience, which for the purposes of this production is Polish), while the drama is conducted in Latin. Act I concerns the fate of Thebes, which the narrator tells us has already been rescued from the terror of the Sphinx and now faces devastation from the Plague. The chorus beg Oedipus to once again come to their rescue, but the oracle at Delphi has told Creon that the curse can only be lifted when it is discovered who is the murderer of King Laius. Act II presents the unravelling of Oedipus as he comes to the realisation that he is the son of Laius and Jocasta, and that the old man he once killed at a crossroads was therefore his own father and the woman he is married to is his mother.
Staged for the 2013 Armel Opera Festival, the oratorio nature of the work does pose some challenges with staging, but director and choreographer Jacek Przybylowicz finds a way of retaining and supporting the relative simplicity of the related events by having dancers perform the expanded role of the chorus. There's nothing too experimental attempted, the dancers meaningfully integrating with the content of the work while keeping the stage active and the giving the audience something to focus on. The stage itself is otherwise rather minimally decorated, with a gallery at the back for the chorus and the use of blocky thrones to indicate the regal positions of Oedipus and Jocasta. There is some opening out of the story, with a child used during the relating of how Oedipus is discovered by a shepherd, while the dramatic conclusion of Jocasta's death and Oedipus's blinding is effectively staged with the wrapping of Oedipus in a scarf.
Presented for the Armel Opera Festival, this rare production of Oedipus Rex is staged as an opportunity to judge the performances of two competition singers in the main roles. Tenor Christophe Poncet, possessing a lively high timbre that would suit a bel canto or a Verdi role, sang Oedpius with exactly the right kind of Italian character that Stravinsky created for the role. He is a little shaky in places, but gets a good balance between the declarative projecting of the role and making it dramatically meaningful, which is by no means easy to achieve. Joëlle Charlier's Jocasta commands attention and sings the role well, but doesn't have the strong lower end that the dramatic side of the mezzo-soprano role requires. The supporting roles are well sung and the production also benefits from a powerful musical account of the work with Grzegorz Weirus conducting the Szeged Symphony Orchestra.
The Armel Opera Festival performance of Oedipus Rex can be viewed for free for six months after the performance on the ARTE Live Web streaming service. Subtitles are French only.
Gioachino Rossini - Il Viaggio a Reims
Théâtre Musical de Paris, Châtelet, Paris - 2006
Valery Gergiev, Alain Maratrat, Larissa Youdina, Danil Shtoda, Anastasia Belyaeva, Irma Guigolachvili, Edouard Tsango, Anna Kiknadze, Dmitri Voropaev, Alexei Safiouline, Vladislav Ouspenski, Nikolai Kamenski, Andrei Iliouchnikov, Elena Sommer, Olga Kitchenko, Pavel Chmoulevitch, Alexei Tannovistski
SkyArts 2 HD
Composing for some of the best singers of his time, Rossini never really did opera houses of the future any favours when it comes to casting for some of the most demanding roles in the repertoire. He certainly wasn't thinking that far ahead when it came to writing Il Viaggio a Reims, his final Italian opera before his move to Paris. Composed for the Coronation of Charles X in 1825, the work was indeed written specifically for the occasion, Rossini afterwards reusing much of the music for Le Comte Ory. Il Viaggio a Reims is therefore a considerable challenge for any opera company since it not only requires no less than 14 soloists of exceptional quality, but its throwaway subject also makes it difficult to stage dramatically. Both those considerable challenges are undertaken with some measure of success by the Théâtre Musical de Paris at the Châtelet in Paris in conjunction with the Academy of Young Singers of the Mariinsky Theatre of St Petersburg.
The Golden Lily spa hotel at Plombière-les-Bains is a fairly swanky one in the Châtelet's 2006 production. Not only is it tastefully lit and brightly decorated, not only are the employees smartly attired, but they have their very own orchestra playing in the background, conducted by Valery Gergiev no less, who cuts quite a dashing figure himself as he skips lightly around on the podium in his homburg hat. With the orchestra and the conductor up on the stage there's no orchestra pit then, leaving room for platforms to extend out into the Théâtre du Châtelet and for the singers to interact directly with the audience. Bright, colourful, stylish and engaging, that's the main attraction of this production, and it matches perfectly the orchestration that does indeed skip nimbly through some of Rossini's most inventive and delightful arrangements.
Staging Il Viaggio a Reims is undoubtedly a bit of a challenge, as indeed is staging any Rossini comedy where the plots can more often than not be a little ridiculous. Il Viaggio a Reims in particular is rather thin on dramatic developments. It revolves around the various wardrobe mishaps, romantic misadventures and cultural misunderstandings that take place between the assembled international array of guests staying at the spa hotel for the Coronation of Charles X. Writing for 14 soloists however, Rossini is less concerned with plot than in the richness of musical opportunity that the structure presents. The composer seems to relish the opportunity to break from the traditional structure and playfully puts his considerable skills to great use in duets, ensembles, a cappella arrangements, and delightful solo flute and harp sections.
Arias are in abundance also and the international character of the work is played upon in several pieces. Don Profundo considers the luggage requirements and packing habits of various nationalities in one aria, but each of the characters are given their own solo or (in the case of couples) duet opportunities to represent their countries for the entertainment and enlightenment of the other guests. With Rossini's sense of melody at its best there's nothing too taxing on the audience here, but it presents considerable challenges for the singers. Individually, the voices of the Mariinsky's Academy of Young Singers are outstanding, bringing the necessary freshness and verve that is required, but they also deal with the technical demands of the arias and bring considerable colour to a masterful sextet that is as close as Rossini comes to the brilliance of his inspiration in Mozart. The closing ensemble for fourteen voices and chorus is also suitably invigorating and dazzling, emphasising that this is a true ensemble work.
That's fully recognised in the production as it is directed by Alain Maratrat and conducted by Valery Gergiev. It's not The Marriage of Figaro perhaps, but it wasn't meant to be either. The plot is pointless and throwaway, but Rossini's music is gorgeous, and the staging allows its qualities to thrive without ever having to resort to caricature, which would be all too easy in this work. With little of real dramatic substance to work with, the cast wander around on the platforms off the stage and take the work right out into the theatre with no greater purpose than to entertain the French audience with the work's patriotic sentiments of national diversity and cries of Viva la Francia! The reactions of the audience - well documented on camera - attest to just how well that is achieved.
Hector Berlioz - Béatrice et Bénédict
L'Opéra Comique, Paris, 2010
Emmanuel Krivine, Dan Jemmett, Christine Rice, Allan Clayton, Ailish Tynan, Élodie Méchain, Edwin Crossley-Mercer, Jérôme Varnier, Michel Trempont, Giovanni Calò, David Lefort, Bob Goody
France TV, Culturebox - Internet streaming
The Opéra Comique's 2010 production of Béatrice et Bénédict takes a somewhat distanced theatrical approach to Berlioz's version of Shakespeare's comedy 'Much Ado About Nothing', setting it as a puppet show come to life. The distancing technique is a method that Shakespeare would himself use on occasions through an Induction opening that indicates that the work in question is a play-within-a-play (in 'The Taming of the Shrew' for example), using it as a means perhaps to have a little more freedom that takes it away from naturalistic drama. There isn't such a device used in 'Much Ado About Nothing', even though some of the narrative twists and comic drama do require some suspension of disbelief, so the puppet show does at least provide a certain justification for this.
Since Berlioz's opera jettisons much of the rather more wild twists of Shakespeare's play in favour of the romantic comedy between Beatrice and Benedick (and it must be said, much of the comedy goes too), the device has other uses and benefits here. On a simple formal level, the production looks good with a strong visual hook and two huge puppet heads looming over the stage. Since puppet productions have a fairly specific period character, this allows the work to be put on in a more traditional setting. You could also consider that the two principal characters of the opera are indeed treated somewhat like puppets by the manoeuvring of their friends in their efforts to get this unlikely couple to somewhat improbably put their hatred for each other aside and recognise that they are actually in love with each other.
The best thing about the Opéra Comique's production however is the introduction of a "puppet master" who recites lines from the original play in English and thereby brings a little bit of the magical poetry of Shakespeare back into a drama that loses much of its character in French translation and more in its adaptation to opera. This also serves to bring some human feeling back into the actual production, since unfortunately, as you might expect, having the characters walk around and make jerky movements as if they are on strings, does tend to restrict the dramatic action and leave it rather static and... well, wooden. Dan Jemmet also however finds some good ways to use the added character of choir master Somarone to bring back some of the Shakespearean humour that is lacking in Berlioz's adaptation, and takes the humour out to the audience in a way that is typical of the Opéra Comique, as well as fully in the spirit of the work.
The spirit of the work is however undoubtedly more that of Berlioz than Shakespeare. The composer makes great use of the chorus, he even manages to get a ballet in there at the start to celebrate Don Pedro's victory, the drama fairly zipping along with some fine melodies and, in the case of Beatrice and Ursula's duet 'Nuit paisable et sereine', at least one truly great piece. As an opera, Béatrice et Bénédict lacks the tragicomic elements of Hero's betrayal and her 'death' of heartbreak at the accusations of her fiancé Claudio, and the all-out comic hilarity of Dogberry and his constables' investigation is missed, but Berlioz has a good feel for the sensibilities of the romantic-comedy storyline and rightly focuses on that alone. Those characteristics are brought out marvellously here in a fine account of the work as conducted by Emmanuel Krivine.
The singing is also excellent throughout. It's surprising in a work that has quite a few passages of spoken French dialogue that three of the four principal roles are assigned to native English-speaking performers. Perhaps the intention was to give more value to the English character of the Shakespeare work (even though it is actually set in Messina) than to the French, but generally the diction in the spoken sections was reasonably good. In terms of singing, it could hardly be faulted. Both Christine Rice and Allan Clayton as Béatrice and Bénédict are simply perfect in this register, Rice in particular richly toned and lyrical, but both brought the necessary character to the work. Ailish Tynan's Héro and Élodie Méchain's Ursule were also fine, although they both seemed to find the puppet concept somewhat restricting.
