It’s not quite true to imply, as the City of London Festival’s programme note does, that the violin virtuoso George Polgreen Bridgetower has been all but written out of musical history. Every work of reference I possess gives ample space and credit to the child prodigy who was the son of a former Barbadian slave. Bridgetower became court musician to George III, and Beethoven initially dedicated his Violin Sonata No 9 in A major to him. It was rededicated as the Kreutzer Sonata only after composer and violinist had fallen out over a woman.
But it all makes a rattling good story for a community opera, especially in a year that celebrates the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade. With his librettist Mike Phillips, Julian Joseph, composer and musical director of Bridgetower, attempts to fuse jazz and classical styles in a show that goes on tour in the autumn with English Touring Opera. A different local amateur choir will join forces with the professional cast at each venue.
Joseph and his musicians succeed best when jazz is given its head. The big numbers for the classically-trained singers (the counter-tenor Jonathan Peter Kenny as Prince of Wales, and mezzo Buddug Verona James as Mrs Fitzherbert) are sub-Lloyd Webber, and verbally inaudible. But when Bridgetower’s father (the bass, Franz Hepburn) pleads for his young son (beautifully sung by Jamal Hope), the sparks are kindled.
Cleveland Watkiss’s jazz vocals as the adult Bridgetower are irresistible: every word tells, as it does in the voice of Jacqui Dankworth, who steals the show as the liberated slave Mary Prince.
Advertisement
Bridgetower’s encounter with Beethoven is, wisely, wordless. Joseph’s keyboard pastiche, brave and bold, drifts skilfully, in Helen Eastman’s production, from Vienna to the gin palaces of Wapping, and on to Newgate Jail. This is the scene of a moving duet between Bridgetower and his dying father at the end of a compelling night’s drama.