Madness takes meant forms in the arts but opera offers the opportunity to transform excesses of the mind into beautiful singing.
Perhaps not so welcome is the excuse it gives directors to indulge their zany ideas which all to frequently is at the expense of the audience.
I have a confession to make. My partner adores I Puritani and tells me he listens to it at work on headphones when concentration is needed. But while the singing can be thrilling, as a performed opera it has never set my world alight. Perhaps he is right to just listen to the singing and music and ignore attempts to bring the opera to the stage.
Now this fanciful notion of the Puritan and Cavalier clash at the heart of the work being a hallucination by a woman in Belfast in the 1970s at the height of the Troubles who has overdone the medication adds another necessary level of messiness to the always awkward staging.
Wojtek Gierlach (Giorgio), Rosa Feola (Elvira)
The concept from producer Annilese Miskimmon is presumably based on Elvira’s hyperbolic rant that she has suffered from “three centuries of sadness and horror”. That and I suppose Cromwell’s ugly history of massacring Catholics in Drogheda.
David Kempster (Riccardo) and Simon Crosby Buttle (Bruno Robertson)
Thus we meld the English Civil War with sectarian division in Northern Ireland, and we have Orange Order men in their sashes and bowler hats carrying ceremonial swords, marching inside a lodge with their big bold banner sporting Oliver Cromwell. While this is going on, the Protestant girl, angst ridden, wanders around the set while her Catholic boyfriend disappears outside to avoid the Prods. Judging by flashing lights he is also on the run from the police but I think in this odd analysis of the Northern Ireland situation they seem to be one and the same thing.
The tea trolley (second of this season I note) and union flags are put away and make way for our austere 17th century Bible bashers and their charismatic preacher. Mrs Doyle and her teapot would have brought everyone to their senses. Go on, go on, go on. Anyway, an actress ( Elena Thomas) takes the role of the Northern Ireland girl and stays on the set all through the production which in the flash of a few strip lights starts to be inhabited with Puritans. So we have an Elvira in her wedding dress spinning into madness, observed by the now psychotic girl.
Our protestant girl is now Elvira and her boyfriend is Arturo who jilts her at the altar to rescue the wife of Charles I (thanks to a simple bridal veil disguise) who has been captured by the Puritans but who do not know who she is. The escape is helped by Riccardo who wants Elvira for himself and so is delighted his rival has become a traitor to Parliament and thereby sealed his own fate. Elvira goes mad assuming her beau has jilted her for another woman and therefore we have the theme of the WNO season.
Rosa Feola (Elvira), Elena Thomas (Actress) and Barry Banks (Arturo)
I don’t think the show would go down too well in Northern Ireland, particularly the end when the Orangemen, yes we return to the 20th century for the denouement, ignore the pardon for Arturo and the fact that the Puritans are victorious, and cut his throat. Hmm, Sweeney Todd coming up next so tea trolleys and cut throats.
Enough about the take it or leave it production which, yet again, is redeemed by the most glorious singing in a Bellini cocktail of intoxicating goodies and the Italian soprano Rosa Feola is as attention grabbing as Elivira as the conceit of the staging is forgettable.
And this exquisite singer-actress has everything you could possibly want from a Bellini heroine, meltingly beautiful delivery of the composer’s vocal demands and an empathetic characterisation that transforms the evening, just as her mind is transformed into madness in Act Two.
Is it bad form to comment on the stature of male singers as it seems to be with female? Suffice to say Barry Banks as the Cavalier lover Arturo has what counts; a voice that thrills, especially with that horrendously difficult upper register, the firework stuff that delights audiences, and a rounded, smooth tenor throughout the evening.
The opera needs bel canto singing of great finesse and in Rosa Feola and Barry Banks they have it with Elvira’s “Vien diletto, e in ciel la luna”, a cracker. (You need to say that with a Frank Carson Belfast accent).
Rosa Feola (Elvira)
As Riccardo, a gruff and dour David Kempster is necessarily harder in portrayal and vocally, presenting a bullying, gruff figure to Arturo’s sweeter tones. My ear was drawn more to the delicious singing from Wotjek Gierlach as Giorgio in his main solo aria and the duet “Suoni la tromba” that gets us going when the evening starts to slump a little. The pace-killing second interval didn’t help.
David Kempster (Riccardo)
With Carlo Rizzi back with the orchestra, and the chorus on top form, coping admirably with the pointless choreographed movement, this is yet another feather in that well-plumed Cavalier hat that surely would have convinced those Puritans to lift their ban on theatre!
Touring including Venue Cymru, Llandudno October 27.