![Lennox Berkeley [Photo © Colin Busby courtesy of G. Schirmer]](http://www.operatoday.com/Lennox_Berkeley.gif)
22 Apr 2011
A Dinner Engagement
Trust Winnipeg’s resourceful Little Opera Company to come up with a little known, yet charmingly entertaining spring production.
Recently in Performances
Brahms Third in San Francisco
Nicola Luisotti and the San Francisco Opera Orchestra climbed out of the War Memorial pit, braved the wind whipped bay and held spellbound an audience at Cal Performances’ Zellerbach Auditorium at UC Berkeley.
Glyndebourne: Ariadne auf Naxos
Utterly mad but absolutely right — Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos started the Glyndebourne 2013 season with an explosion. Strauss could hardly have made his intentions more clear. Ariadne auf Naxos is not “about” Greek myth so much as a satire on art and the way art is made.
Wozzeck at ENO
“Man is an abyss. It makes one dizzy to look into it.” So utters Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck, repeating what was also a recurring motif in the playwright’s own letters.
Mulhouse: Rare Britten Well Done
National Opera Company of the Rhine has marked this year’s Benjamin Britten celebration with a remarkably compelling, often gripping new production of the seldom-seen Owen Wingrave.
Frankfurt's Intriguing Idomeneo
Once upon a time, Frankfurt Opera had the baddest ass reputation in Germany as “the” cutting edge producer of must-see opera.
Rigoletto at Lyric Opera of Chicago
Productions of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto can serve as a vehicle for individual singers to make a strong impression and become afterward associated with specific roles in the opera.
Britten Sinfonia with Ian Bostridge
Just in case we were not aware that the evening’s programme was ‘themed’, the Britten Sinfonia designed a visual accompaniment to their musical exploration of night, sleep and dreams.
Aida, Manitoba Opera
Poor Aida! She never seems to have anything go her way.
Superlative singing: Don Carlo, Royal Opera House
Is it possible to upstage Jonas Kaufmann? Kaufmann was brilliant in this Verdi Don Carlo at the Royal Opera House, London, but the rest of the cast was so good that he was but first among equals. Don Carlo is a vehicle for stars, but this time the stars were everyone on stage and in the pit. Even the solo arias, glorious as they are, grow organically out of perfect ensemble. This was a performance that brought out the true beauty of Verdi's music.
Sarah Connolly: French Song at Wigmore Hall
The big names were absent: Duparc, D’Indy, Debussy, Ravel … and while Fauré, Chausson, Roussel and several members of Les Six put in an appearance, in less than familiar guises, this survey of French song of the early 20th century and interwar years deliberately took us on a journey through infrequently travelled terrain.
Rare restoration: Handel’s Esther 1720
Composed between 1718 and 1720, Handel’s Esther is sometimes described as the ‘first English Oratorio’, but is in fact a hybrid form, mixing elements of oratorio, masque, pastoral and opera.
The Damnation of Faust, London
Hector Berlioz's légende dramatique, La Damnation de Faust, exists somewhere between cantata and opera. Berlioz's flexible attitude to dramatic form made the piece unworkable on the stages of early 19th century Paris and his music is so vivid that you wonder whether the piece needs staging at all.
Elizabeth Connell Memorial Concert, St John's Smith Square
St. John’s Smith Square was the site of Elizabeth Connell’s final London concert, intended as a farewell to London on her moving to Australia. It was rendered ultimately final by her unexpected death.
Aida with all the Trimmings, Even a Blue Silk Elephant!
With the building of the Suez Canal, Egypt became more interesting to Western Europeans. Khedive Ismail Pasha wanted a hymn by Verdi for the opening of a new opera house in Cairo, but the composer said he did not write occasional pieces.
Die Zauberflöte, Royal Opera
Back for its fourth revival, David McVicar’s 2003 production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte has much charm, beauty and artistry.
The Marriage of Figaro Ends Season at Arizona Opera
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro has a libretto by Lorenzo daPonte based on the French play La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro (The Crazy Day or the Marriage of Figaro) by Pierre Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799).
Baden’s Flute Goes Barefoot in the Park
For its world class Easter Festival, Baden-Baden mounted a Die Zauberflöte that owed more to the grey penitential doldrums of Lent than to the unbridled jubilance of re-birth.
Bonjour M. Gauguin in Berkeley
Once Berkeley Opera, renamed West Edge Opera, this enterprising company offers the Bay Area’s only serious alternative to corporate opera, to wit Bonjour M. Gauguin.
Mahler Lieder, Wigmore Hall
In the first of pianist Julius Drake’s three-part series, ‘Perspectives’, our gaze was directed at Gustav Mahler’s eclectic musical responses to human experiences: from the trauma and distress of anguished love to the sweet contentment of true friendship, from the agonised introspection of the artist to the diverse dramas of human interaction.
Cinderella Goes to the Opera
The Los Angeles opera company marketed its spring production of Rossini's La Cenerentola as Cinderella though there is no opera by that name. The libretto of La Cenerentola is not the Cinderella story we know.
OPERA TODAY ARCHIVES »
Performances
The sixteen-year-old company that exclusively showcases local talent staged British 20th century composer Lennox Berkeley’s one act comic opera A Dinner Engagement to the delight of an appreciative audience.
The story centres around an English family, Lord and Lady Dunmow, played by baritone Michael Dunbar and soprano Margot Harding, who have fallen on hard financial times in the 1920s. They have their sights set on marrying off their daughter Susan (wonderful young soprano Deanna Smith) to HRH Prince Phillipe (tenor Michael Au) who is coming to dinner with his mother, the Grand Duchess of Monteblanco, portrayed by mezzo soprano Elizabeth Rotoff.
We first meet Lord Dunmow in the kitchen, an authentically detailed set with everything from a cast iron stove to jars of preserved fruit. The bumbling Dunmow endeavours to follow a recipe in preparation for his dinner guests. Reminiscing about better times, his full-bodied baritone voice is wistfully expressive in the bittersweet “In the Summer of my Time.” On a few occasions, however, his voice seemed to fail him, due to support issues. And despite his culinary ineptness, one still wishes he would pronounce the herb ‘rosemary,’ instead of ‘Rose Marie,’ like the 60s comedienne.
Harding, as his wife, has the ability to light up a stage whenever she appears. Commanding and stylish, she has a reliable and powerful voice, with a fresh, rich tone. And with her impressive acting ability, Harding is the full package.
Veteran mezzo Linda de Pauw played Mrs. Kneebone, the kitchen help, with true comic flair. Her diction was clear and precise, although the Cockney accent drifted in and out.
The Dunmows and Kneebone were hilarious in “Prenex six Belles Tomates,” cooking up a storm, chopping vegetables crazily as stems and bits flew around the room.
Smith was a breath of fresh air as Susan, her pretty, refined voice seeming to float to the highest notes without a trace of effort. With a pure, crystal clear tone and delicate lightness to her voice she was the highlight of the production.
Enter Rotoff, brilliantly haughty and convincingly statuesque as the Duchess, and Au, as Phillipe, dressed in a dapper suit. Au has a solid, powerful voice, but he struggled with some of the difficult intervals in “Mon aimée attend la lune,” going out of tune and sounding constricted in his upper register. He also tended to employ the princely accent inconsistently. His acting, on the other hand, was well suited to this comic style, as he gazed dreamily at Susan with puppy dog eyes.
Tenor Darryl Brunger had a small role as the delivery man, appearing twice demanding money. His first effort was secure, with pleasing tone quality, but when he returned the second time, his intonation faltered.
Michael McKay did a fine job accompanying the entire show on piano and creative lighting eliminated the need for scene changes. Flowers projected on the backdrop while lowering the lighting on the overall set effectively moved us into the garden. Very smart!
Berkeley’s score doesn’t offer us much in the way of tunefulness, and all dialogue (lyrics by Paul Dehn) is sung, requiring much abandonment of disbelief from the audience.
But this was obviously a labour of love for all involved and the result was a nice little (one-hour) opera confection that brightened a rainy evening.
Gwenda Nemerofsky