The Cotswolds’ green curves may lie outside the country-house venue; but inside Longborough’s skilfully converted agricultural barn everyone knows that space forbids anything fancy.
For his new Rigoletto, the designer-producer Richard Studer encases the stage in detachable black walls, with little but steps, openings, ladders and dry ice to help conjure the Duke of Mantua’s jolly world of girls, thuggery and spite. Stripped of distractions, Verdi’s opera becomes more testing and potent a proposition than ever. We face its melodrama head-on, and the cast have no place to hide. With Jim Heath’s Duke, naked exposure reveals a voice too tight to be comfortable; he isn’t even allowed to relax in La donna è mobile, unhelpfully recast as the song of a freezing man, arms grimly folded, waiting in the dockside murk.
Happily, other lead characters emerge in better shape. Craig Smith’s Rigoletto, only lightly humped, cuts a striking cadaverous figure clinging to his makeshift staff decorated with the skulls of goat and ram. Vocally he is equally impressive, years of bitterness and thwarted love etched in, tragedy audible in every note.
At first Lurelle Alefounder’s Gilda appears all song and little personality; but the song is handsome, full-throated, and the more Gilda’s character deepens, the greater this New Zealander’s shades of beauty and emotion. Among the smaller roles, Timothy Dawkins makes particularly strong, nasty work of the hired thug Sparafucile; how could this possibly be the same Dawkins who beams from his programme photo?
The orchestra’s sound is never luxurious, yet the conductor Jonathan Lyness, working from a reduced orchestration, still ensures we have Verdi’s essence. With Don Giovanni and Carmen, Longborough’s season lasts until July 15: not Glyndebourne, I know, but it’s honest, useful and enjoyable.
Advertisement
Box office: 01451 830292