Mozart: The Abduction from the Seraglio - Alexander Andreou - The Grange Festival 2018 (Photo Simon Annand) |
Engaging and visually ravishing account of Mozart's first Singspiel
Kiandra Howarth, Ed Lyon The Grange Festival 2018 (Photo Simon Annand) |
Tim Reed's picturesque set, based around a series of moving screens, provided attractive and varied settings for this traditional 18th century setting of the story. Within this Reed provided much visual interest with the costumes, particular the highly theatrical ones for the Pasha Selim's court. Copley's production told the story simply and directly without any modern glosses, which placed a lot of responsibility on the singers to fully inhabit their roles.
Diction was excellent and performing the work in English enabled a high degree of communication with the audience, the subtitles were hardly needed. David Parry's translation, with rhyming texts for the arias, was lively and engaging and avoided many of the politically incorrect attitudes of the original libretto.
Though the plot involves a number of Enlightenment pre-occupations, the libretto's lack of character development and the fact that crucial information about the back-story is held back until the final scene makes the piece quite light in texture despite some serious intensity in arias like 'Marten aller Arten'. Copley's production did not try to disguise this, but concentrated on telling a story in an engaging manner as possible, with some stunning visual moments.
Jonathan Lemalu, Paul Curievici - The Grange Festival 2018 (Photo Simon Annand) |
Ed Lyon sang Belmonte with vibrant tone with some lovely hushed mezza-voce in the quiet passages. In the early part of the opera, Lyon's Belmonte did not manage to get much beyond the image of the love-obsessed drip, but then the libretto did not give him much to work with. But in his aria which opens Act Three ('Ich baue ganz auf deine Stärke'), Lyon brought a greater depth to the character and sang with real intensity.
As Blonde, Daisy Brown made a wonderful contrast with Kiandra Howarth's Konstanze. Pert, lively and characterful, Brown sang with pin-sharp accuracy and really charmed, as well as giving as good as she got in her scene with Jonathan Lemalu's Osmin. Paul Curievici brought a wonderful sense of character, fun and real physicality to the role of Pedrillo, with a lovely knowing sense which involved the audience in the joke. Curievici has a slightly more dramatic voice than some Pedrillo's and in 'Frisch zum Kampfe' he pushed the tone somewhat, but overally this was a delightfully engaging performance.
Jonathan Lemalu, Daisy Brown - The Grange Festival 2018 (Photo Simon Annand) |
Pasha Selim is a relatively small role, and can be a thankless one. But Alexander Andreou brought real expressive depth to Pasha Selim, and it helped that Andreou was able to be profoundly expressive when in repose. You sense a real magnetism in the character, which helped explain the pull Konstanze has between Selim and Belmonte.
There was plenty for the chorus to do in this production, particularly men providing servants and soldiers. And they sang the chorus scenes with finely vibrant tones.
In the pit, Jean-Luc Tingaud drew a fine-grained and highly refined account of the score, full of lovely details and fine-grained textures which matched the performance on stage.
Mozart: The Abduction from the Seraglio - Paul Curievici and Chorus - The Grange Festival 2018 (Photo Simon Annand) |
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