Garsington Opera has just opened an astonishingly beautiful, light and spacious set of rehearsal studios, nestling in the lush Buckinghamshire countryside on the expansive Wormsley estate, the result of a £14m appeal. The building deserves to win architectural awards for its sympathetic use of brick, flint, timber and tile, and it should attract other creatives to use its cavernous studios, particularly television production companies.
Its completion appears to have injected a new confidence into the company, judging by this year’s rollicking season opener, Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Platée, Garsington’s first venture into French baroque. And it is to television that director Louisa Muller turns in her new production, the vacuous nature of reality TV in particular, lifting this 18th-century tale of Greek gods and mortals straight into the here and now with startling, breathless ingenuity.
Rameau wrote the opera for the 1745 marriage of Louis XV’s son to Maria Teresa of Spain, but it’s not a piece that anyone would want at their wedding, as it mocks and humiliates the “bride” and shows all around her to be cruel, feckless schemers. No wonder it played for only one performance at Versailles. Yet Rameau’s idiosyncratic, utterly distinct score ensured it had a life beyond the stiff formalities of court. Here was a composer writing at the same time as Handel, yet in a daringly experimental style, one where strange intervals, abrupt changes of tempi and novel orchestral effects serve to point up the comedy of the opera at every turn.
Jupiter’s wife, Juno, has stormed out in a jealous rage, throwing Olympus TV into a panic. They need to come up with a scheme to get their star back, so they invent a Love Island/Big Brother-style show in which Jupiter will jokingly choose a new bride – Platée, an unprepossessing marsh nymph who deludes herself that she is madly attractive. Rameau casts the part for a high tenor in drag, and Samuel Boden excels in a series of outrageous costumes by designer Christopher Oram: green sparkly swimsuit with matching flippers; peacock-tailed tutu; over-the-top wedding dress.
It’s a part that conductor Paul Agnew knows well, as, perhaps uniquely, he has both sung the role and conducted the opera several times. That special knowledge of Rameau is key to the shining success of this production, allied to Muller’s idea that reality TV contestants are just as deluded in their preening self-regard as poor Platée. Her humiliation when Juno sees the joke feels like an uncomfortable reflection on modern suspicions and hostility towards “the other”.
The energy coming off the stage could power those new rehearsal studios, as movement director Rebecca Howell keeps the young chorus chasing around at a frantic pace, alas sometimes drowning out some wonderfully alert playing coming from the English Concert. Things sag a little towards the close, but there is some fine singing from Robert Murray as Thespis and Mercury, Henry Waddington as Satyr and Chitheron, and Ossian Huskinson as Jupiter, with a lovely cameo from soprano Holly Teague. The street-style dancing is simply superb, bringing cranky old Rameau right into the 21st century.
Stephen Barlow’s magnetic 1960s production of Puccini’s Tosca at Opera Holland Park has not been seen since 2008, so while technically it’s a revival, it’s also unknown to a whole new generation of operagoers. After a 16-year wait, it comes up as fresh as a sun-drenched dawn in Rome in the age of La Dolce Vita, seductive on the surface but seething with danger and deception.
Scarpia, the ruthless chief of police, is here a sharp-suited political populist. Posters shout “Vote Scarpia”; the Te Deum scene in Act 1 becomes an ugly rally, with 1968-style student protesters beaten and hustled away by his thuggish minions. Scarpia runs his operation not from the vaulted chambers of a grand palazzo but like a mafia boss from the tables of a seedy trattoria, its padrone one of his squalid lackeys. Attention to detail is vital when shifting an opera away from its original timeframe, and this production scores highly, maintaining the 60s vibe right to the end.
Striding into this seamy world is an admirable cast. Amanda Echalaz as Tosca reprises her performance from 2008, every inch the heroine, every inch the diva. Her Act 2 encounter with the rapacious Scarpia is electrifying; she’s terrified yet defiant, vulnerable yet steely, a portrayal enhanced by designer Yannis Thavoris’s decision to dress her like Callas in her pomp. Morgan Pearse as Scarpia makes an impressive, chillingly malign Opera Holland Park debut, the voice rock-solid and stagecraft secure. He is more than matched by the Portuguese tenor José de Eça as his victim, Tosca’s lover Cavaradossi, also making his OHP debut.
Notable among the smaller parts are Ross Ramgobin as the frightened Sacristan, Edwin Kaye as the fugitive Angelotti and Philip Costovski as henchman Spoletta. The OHP chorus excels as a parade of citizens, priests, nuns and worried parents, and the City of London Sinfonia, celebrating 20 years as OHP’s resident orchestra, is alert to Matthew Kofi Waldren’s brisk direction, particularly in Puccini’s serene depiction of dawn over deeply troubled Rome.
Star ratings (out of five)
Platée ★★★★
Tosca ★★★★
• Platée is at Garsington Opera, Wormsley, Buckinghamshire, until 30 June
