Roald Dahl is still waiting for a composer to do him justice. Last year the Wexford Festival gave the European premiere of Peter Ash’s The Golden Ticket, a limp adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Now English Touring Opera has picked up Tobias Picker’s family-orientated Fantastic Mr Fox — only the first time that the opera has appeared in its full version since its premiere in Los Angeles in 1998. Unfortunately Picker’s and Ash’s operas are equally insipid.
There’s a common link. Donald Sturrock is Dahl’s biographer and clearly knows his Roald, but his librettos for both those operas are resolutely sappy. In Dahl’s original Mr Fox there was a particular nerviness to the narrative — real danger as the sadistic farmers close in on their furry victims, followed by animal glee as those villains are literally outfoxed. Sturrock has flattened that tension hugely.
Is it because he thinks that a family audience can’t take the heat? “A lot of time seems to be spent on not very much action,” my nine-year-old companion explained at the interval. Well, that is opera’s problem, but it is particularly so for this one. Newly invented characters, including a sub-Bridget Jones hedgehog looking for love (Catrine Kirkman) and a deranged mechanical digger (Fiona Kimm, suitably frenzied) get a lot of airtime. But the real story lacks drama.
The positives of Tobias Picker’s cheery, patchwork score (robustly conducted by Timothy Carey) is that it takes its opportunities for as much variety as this scenario affords. If he isn’t allowed to be properly cunning, Nicholas Merryweather’s cuddly but macho hero gets a nicely lyrical ode to nature. In Tim Yealland’s back to basics production there’s good use of supporting schoolchildren — ETO are drawing on local communities as they tour — as mystical trees and sprightly fox cubs. And Caryl Hughes’s tipsy Rat, dancing to klezmer as she quaffs cider, perks up the tauter second half. The adults will appreciate Farmer Bunce’s addiction to foie gras. For younger ones, it’s a safe introduction to opera, but one that needs more tooth and claw.
Cambridge Arts Theatre, tomorrow; englishtouringopera.org.uk