Warning: this production contains a character smoking on stage. Well, the first Elizabethans certainly knew how to live dangerously. The character in question is none other than Sir Walter Raleigh, who brought the weed to Britain in the first place.
Donizetti calls him Sir Gualtiero in his mock-Tudor play of passion that is Roberto Devereux. Stephen Medcalf directs this neglected opera for the Buxton Festival, and has Sir Gualtiero (Jonathan Best) puffing away in the shadows behind the condemned and caged Devereux, Earl of Essex. It’s a nice touch – one of many in a courageous and gripping show, wisely sung in the original, bel canto Italian (with surtitles).
The opera revolves around Elizabeth’s love for Devereux, and his love for Sara, Duchess of Nottingham. It’s the power of the confrontations at which Donizetti excels – and so does Medcalf, supported by a strong cast and robust musical direction by the festival’s new artistic director, Andrew Greenwood. He gives sensitive time and support for the vocal challenges which face Mary Plazas as a feisty yet vulnerable Elizabetta, and Todd Wilander as Devereux. At times they’re pushed to breaking point, but always drive the drama through the notes. And, in the tortured triangular relationship between Devereux, the anguished Sara (Susan Bickley) and her control freak of a husband, the Duke of Nottingham (David Kempster), the singers give their all.
It’s all such strong stuff that we really do need a laugh a minute the following evening – and that’s just what we get. Annilese Miskimmon stages Offenbach’s Bluebeard with immaculate comic timing, on a huge wedding cake of a dais.
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It’s a preposterous conflation of the Bluebeard tale (five wives murdered, and one coming up), and shepherd-weds-princess pastoral. The bluebearded Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts and his butler Popolani (Geoffrey Dolton) hold centre stage in grim glory, seducing and finally fending off the lusty swineherdess Boulotte (Imelda Drumm). Kit Hesketh-Harvey’s new English translation and Wyn Davies’s conducting compete for elegance and wit. Not to be missed.
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