{"id":1686,"date":"2019-07-29T17:08:52","date_gmt":"2019-07-29T17:08:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/?p=1686"},"modified":"2019-07-30T14:01:33","modified_gmt":"2019-07-30T14:01:33","slug":"30th-anniversary-treats-at-garsington-opera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/2019\/07\/30th-anniversary-treats-at-garsington-opera.html","title":{"rendered":"30th anniversary treats at Garsington Opera"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We opera lovers are blessed by having two world-class rural opera\ncompanies in easy driving distance of Oxford and the Cotswolds. I\u2019ve missed\nLongborough this year, and the first instalment of the new Ring<\/em> cycle they\nare creating, but hope to catch up, if I\u2019m spared, in 2020. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

         Thanks to the thoughtful\nand kind efforts of Clare Adams, the outgoing press office of Garsington Opera\nat Wormsley, I\u2019ve been to every single 2019 production at the stupendous opera house\nfacing the Getty family\u2019s cricket ground at Wormsley. I\u2019ve already reported on The\nBartered Bride and Don Giovanni<\/a><\/em>,\nthe first of which was performed in rollicking, familiar Garsington style, and\nthe second a fine musical experience if a less interesting production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         Garsington\nOpera had 21 years at the founders\u2019, Leonard and Rosalind Ingrams\u2019 Garsington\nManor, with its Bloomsbury associations \u2013 its Italian garden haunted by the\nghosts of Lady Ottoline Morrell and her frequent guests, Lytton Strachey,\nCarrington, D.H. Lawrence, Bertrand Russell et al. \u2013 and its intimate\nproductions, with the loggia of the house serving as the stage. Eight more\nyears at Wormsley followed, and Mark Getty has generously allowed the company\nto lease the \u201ctemporary\u201d but very comfortable opera house for another 50 years.\nThe Garsington\/Wormsley experience is thrilling, partly because there\u2019s a\nremarkable level of service; for instance, it takes more than five minutes to\ndrive through the estate to the opera, but guests are waved through and helped\nto park by a team of people; train transfers are seen to; the catering is\nsuperlative; and even the shop is full of interesting objects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         This season we\nhave relied totally on the catering facilities. It is huge fun to plan and\nbring a picnic from home for the 80-minute interval, and we\u2019ve often\nentertained our fellow guests with food from our garden and wine from our own\ncellar, but maybe I\u2019m getting a little too old to do the preparation \u2013 and my\nwife, after all, has to do the driving, which carries with it the penalty of\nbeing able to drink only a single glass of wine. Thus we have thrice had Feasts\u2019\ntraditional picnic, once choosing the vegetarian alternative. They were always\nexcellent, as were the wine choices, and affordably priced. My only caveat is\nthat when you\u2019ve eaten the same (delicious) cold dishes three times, you do\nbegin to long for a bit of variation from the umami-heavy mushroom p\u00e2t\u00e9 that is\nsurprisingly chicken-liver-like, and the terrific smoked chicken main\ncourse.  It would be a real bonus for\nrepeat visitors if these good value picnic hampers changed their contents once\nin a while \u2013 perhaps allying the nosh to the production being presented?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         For some reason,\nI don\u2019t think I\u2019d dined before in chef Michael North\u2019s interval big tent restaurant\n\u201cLong Room,\u201d overlooking the cricket pitch that is a replica of that at the\nOval. We finally remedied this. My guest and I ate the starters of gin-cured\nsalmon and Iberico ham, served with celeriac remoulade, followed by roast chicken,\nasparagus, wild garlic and mushrooms, and pan-fried hake with mussel velout\u00e9;\nfor dessert there was treacle tart and pear tarte Tatin; and the coffee after\nwas actually good. I could, I think, have ordered more imaginatively; but my\nguest got it completely right, especially her hake. But what really marks the\nGarsington dining experience is the affectionate, alert, champion service by\nlocal young people \u2013 and this is also true of the picnic tents. The food and\nservice combined make this the best way to have a glorious Garsington evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Garsington Opera 2019 Fantasio Hanna Hipp (title role), Flora Macdonald (Tailor), Benjamin Lewis (Sparck) Martin Duncan (director), Justin Doyle (conductor), Francis O’Connor (designer), Howard Hudson (lighting), Ewan Jones (movement) credit John Snelling<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

         Which we did\nwhen seeing and hearing Fantasio<\/em>, a somewhat unjustly neglected comic opera\nby Jacques Offenbach, conducted by Justin Doyle and directed by Martin Duncan. Jeremy\nSams\u2019 translation of the libretto by Paul de Musset is fluent and fluid but, I\u2019m\nafraid, so repetitious that we\u2019d have much preferred to have heard the piece in\nFrench, when we\u2019d perhaps have felt less hammered by the repeats in the\nsurtitles. To tell the whole truth, the singers\u2019 English diction, though ok,\nwas not so good that you would lose anything much by hearing the French\ninstead. Yes, I agree, this is almost universally so \u2013 we were pleased to hear\nthe Smetana sung in Czech \u2013 and I\u2019d be happy to join a campaign to encourage\nthe singing of all operas in their original language, even when that happens to\nbe English, as in Turn of the Screw.<\/em> \nIn the Offenbach, all the performances were commendable, especially\nHanna Hipp as the student disguised as jester, Fantasio. The plot of disguise,\ndeception and political marriage is as thin as the music is entertaining and\nsometimes moving; and nothing much would be lost if twenty minutes of it were\ncut. But it blooms and blossoms after the interval, leaving you happy and\npleased you came.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         When it comes\nto criticising Britten\u2019s The Turn of the Screw<\/em>, perhaps I ought to\ndeclare an interest, as the libretto (from the freaky Henry James story) was\nwritten by our dear, close friend, Myfanwy Piper. But my sole interest is to\nsay what a good job Myfanwy made of writing this libretto in the mid-1950s (many\nyears before we knew her); how she found the way, as Paul Kidea said in his 2013\nbiography of Benjamin Bitten, \u201cto fillet\u201d James\u2019 novella into a series of\nscenes, which give only hints or evoke images that cohere \u2013 and, as Britten\nsaid to Myfanwy, don\u2019t worry about how to achieve the coherence: leave that to\nthe music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         The tale is\nabout a governess engaged to teach the orphaned Miles and his older sister,\nFlora, at Bly, the country house owned by their uncle. They\u2019re home-schooled\nbecause Miles has been sacked from school for an unidentified evil deed. The governess\n(Sophie Bevan in glorious voice) is supported domestically only by the housekeeper\nMrs Grose (Kathleen Wilkinson), and soon realises that the childrens\u2019 nerviness\nhas to do with the atmosphere of the house, and a pair of ghosts who seem (in\nLouisa Muller\u2019s staging) sometimes to be visible to the other protagonists, and\nsometimes not. Ed Lyon sings the prologue, setting the eerie scene. He also\nsings Peter Quint, the late former valet to the childrens\u2019 uncle. He was no\ngentleman, says Mrs Grose; and we can see that for ourselves, as Ed Lyon\nreturns to the stage as Quint, walking with the lope of an oik, not the assured\nstride of a gent. (The same is true of the social class of the governess\u2019s\npredecessor, Miss Jessel, passionately sung by Katherine Broderick). This\nwonderful detail of direction is typical of the care and precision of the\nentire production, and very much true of designer Christopher Oram\u2019s costumes,\nso that all three women are dressed in (identical?) late Victorian black dresses,\nvoluminous and inherently frightening. The children in the performance we saw\nwere played by Adrianna Forbes-Dorant and Leo Jemison. Master Jemison has the\nmakings of a star, if his treble voice holds up when its timbre changes. He\nsings his solo, \u201cMalo,\u201d firmly but reflectively, and the truly scary nursery\nrhyme duets (in Britten\u2019s arrangements) make you gasp; while his enchanting acting\nwhen \u201cplaying\u201d the perverted Mozartian piano sonata is breath-taking and convincing.\nRichard Farnes elegantly conducted his small orchestra, and gave the piece an\nintimacy that exactly suited the Garsington house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         Monteverdi\u2019s Vespers\nof 1610<\/em> was a \u201cstaged\u201d concert performance, but P.J. Harris gave few stage\ndirections, except to move the soloists, the ensembles and the chorus to\ndifferent parts of the stage, to climb up to platforms, and \u2013 sometimes startlingly\n\u2013 to sing while descending the aisles. \nThis, combined with Rob Casey\u2019s lighting, seemed exactly right to me, as\nit helped to concentrate on the music, while, sometimes usefully, ignoring the Latin\nwords of the liturgy. The sole mistake, I felt, was using an odd font for the\nLatin text, while the boring English translation was in an all-too-readable typeface.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This service, celebrating Mary, was\nintended to be used on all feasts of the Blessed Virgin, and I found it\nexciting that my little remaining Latin was still good enough to detect the two\nracy passages from the Song of Songs. This performance was by The English\nConcert, the great orchestra, here  conducted by Laurence Cummings.  The most dramatic thing that happened all\nevening was that Mr Cummings came on stage, and when you expected him to face\nthe orchestra, instead began the piece by singing a capella<\/em> the first\ntenor line. He subsequently danced through the entire evening, except when playing\nthe organ or harpsichord continuo, sometimes doing the latter with his left\nhand, as he signalled his instructions to the players and singers using his right\nhand. If his own was the most virtuosic performance of the evening, it was damned\nnear equalled by the early instrument orchestra (two theorbos!), and soloists Mary\nand Sophie Bevan, Benjamin Hulett, Robert Murray and James Way. The Artistic\nDirector of Garsington Opera, Dougie Boyd, writes in the programme that The\nEnglish Concert will be returning to Garsington for the next five years. I hope\nI can be there, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We opera lovers are blessed by having two world-class rural opera companies in easy driving distance of Oxford and the Cotswolds. I\u2019ve missed Longborough this year, and the first instalment of the new Ring cycle they are creating, but hope to catch up, if I\u2019m spared, in 2020.          Thanks to the thoughtful and kind […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1686","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbv6zV-rc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1686"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1691,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686\/revisions\/1691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}