|
 The
Glyndebourne tradition is currently flourishing in England where many
large houses up and down the land are entertaining touring opera companies
in lavish surroundings or even holding their own opera festivals.
One of the most ambitious and successful of these is at Banks Fee
House, a fine mansion set in rolling green countryside close to the
small village of Longborough in the heart of the Cotswolds.
In 1991, Martin and Lizzie Graham invited a small travelling opera
group to perform in the courtyard of their country house for their
friends. Their success and enthusiasm was such that they converted
a nearby chicken shed into a proper theatre, adding a palladian façade
and using seats from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden which were
being discarded during the recent refurbishment.
Over the past four years, alongside Traviatas and Magic Flutes, they
have been building a Ring and June 2002 saw performances of the first
complete cycle. We attended the initial Walküre on a glorious
midsummer night.
In order to accommodate Wagner opera in a chamber setting they use
a scaled down version made in the 1980s by Jonathan Dove for the City
of Birmingham Touring Opera Company. The orchestra is reduced to 24
players and only 20 singers are required. The operas themselves are
also substantially edited so that they could originally be performed
over two long nights, however at Longborough they do one opera per
night. Thus, Die Walküre was reduced to just under two
and a half hours in length and Siegfried is even more savagely pruned
- two hours instead of four and a half. Mostly the cuts are of repetition
and recapitulation of the plot but are also required to reduce the
personnel. Three Valkyries doing the work of eight allowed a good
deal of horsing around to be cut. Wotan's narration and final scene
with Brünnhilde are left intact but Siegmund's monologue ( Ein
Schwert verheiss mir der Vater ) in Act 1 and the flight scene of
Siegmund and Sieglinde in Act 2 are lost.
The Bayreuth tradition was also acknowledged by the appearance of
a trumpeter playing the sword motif from a bell tower to summon the,
largely black tie, audience to the performance.
The Longborough production of Die Walküre was set in
a World War 1 battlefield scene with back projection of familiar blasted
landscapes. Since there were no supertitles occasional comments such
as "The Fugitive" when Siegmund appeared in Act 1, were
projected as signposts to assist the narrative.
Hunding's hut was an unlovely dugout, the tree a piece of twisted
metal from which the sword was extracted with ease. Hunding's himself
was clothed in battledress, closely resembling von Stroheim in "La
Grande Illusion", and made up for his relatively short stature
by carrying a large rifle with a long bayonet. He proved his beastly
credentials by being particularly violent with Sieglinde. Nicholas
Folwell sang menacingly as Hunding and Annemarie Sand and Peter Jeffes
capably portrayed the doomed twins.
Brian Bannatyne-Scott sang Wotan with nobility and style in this
small house. Dressed in check trousers and a yellow waistcoat he had
the look of a prosperous bookmaker and carried a walking stick, instead
of a spear, which he waved around in a not very threatening manner
from time to time. He also had a full set of eyes.
Jenny Miller made an attractive and energetic Brünnhilde and
caused the corrugated roof to vibrate with her opening bars; having
negotiated this difficult entrance with ease, she sang confidently
for the rest of the evening. She was finally laid to rest on a catafalque
surrounded by red lights and a couple of small barbecues which Wotan
had to light himself; this was remarkably effective.
Fricka's ram driven chariot was a Victorian chaise longue upon which
she was wheeled on to the stage. Collette McGahon played the buttoned
up matriarch with assurance and her disdainful glance to Brünnhilde
on her departure was suitably frosty.
The Valkyries sang with a clear ringing tone, which didn't fully
disguise the fact that five of their sisters were absent. Similarly,
the quarter size orchestra conducted by Anthony Negus sounded thin
at the climactic moments but for the most part produced an elegant
sound from the deep pit.
There was one long interval during which the elegantly clad patrons
scattered to the whicker hampers in the backs of the Jaguars, although
a keen wind meant that only the hardiest sat for long around their
picnic tables.
At the end, the audience acknowledged a remarkable effort. It was
a mixture of enthusiastic amateur leavened with dedicated professional
and, with the beauties of the surroundings, made for a very civilised
experience.
Terry Clarke
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