Hardly a dazzling sunrise of a renaissance but at least the fields of
Victorian
opera are now being tilled. Several complete operas have been issued on
Naxos.
These include Macfarren’s
Robin
Hood and Wallace’s
Maritana
and
Lurline.
Balfe’s
Falstaff
(RTE Lyric),
The
Bohemian Girl (Decca) and
The
Maid of Artois (Campion) can all be found in the catalogue. Once upon
a
time this sort of repertoire was to be found only on 1950s BBC Third
Programme
broadcasts and on the Rare Recorded Edition ‘cottage industry’
LPs
that one used to find advertised in the back pages of
Gramophone.
How
things have moved on.
We now receive this completely unhackneyed and wide-ranging anthology of
English
operatic overtures directed by Richard Bonynge, the doyen of this
repertoire.
Benedict’s
The Lily of Killarney makes free with a theme from
Beethoven’s
‘Choral’ Symphony
all packaged in wrapping paper owing
more
than a little to Mendelssohn and Weber. Those two composers also lean
benignly
over the pages of Barnett’s
The Mountain Sylph,
rubbing
shoulders
with the lighter Tchaikovsky and diluted Berlioz. The big overture to
Balfe’s
The
Siege of Rochelle suggests an affinity for Bellini and nineteenth
century
operatic ballet music mixed in with Weber and Rossini. There’s some
pretty
striking eerie music at about 5:20 but it is not long before Balfe returns
to
the tried and trusted Weber/Rossini dramatic manner. Balfe’s
Le
Puits
D’Amour is often a delicate and tissuey creature, smilingly
bel
canto in its ways. Bonynge is well experienced in the realms of
bel
canto.
The overture stands out confidently in this company even if it does end
with
conventional affirmative gestures.
Loder’s
The Night Dancers bears a confluence of voices -
those
of Mendelssohn, especially
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, of
Bruckner’s
tensile
ppp material from the symphonies and of the dramatic
rhetoric
of Beethoven and Rossini. Wallace’s
Lurline is also a cut
above
with a superbly curvaceous and affluently rolled out melody from the
opulent
strings. Much else is in the
cantabile lyrical impulse of the time.
There
are some lovely effects and all most caringly and meticulously
orchestrated.
Moments reminded me of Dvořák and Schumann. Verdian - even
Wagnerian
- storm clouds cut across the horizon in the same composer’s
The
Amber
Witch as well as some contrasting heroic romantic work for the horns.
The
overture ends on a downbeat. The prelude to
Love’s Triumph
sports
some liquidly mellifluous clarinet cantabile solos - a touch of Weber and
Mozart
here. Macfarren’s
She Stoops to Conquer owes more than a
little
to that same sweetly flowing Mozartean lyrical line but accentuated with
Weber
and Mendelssohn and ending in a confident gesture. Thomas’s
The
Golden
Web is another big overture with a singingly confident Mediterranean
surge
and flow. It’s a strong overture with high romantic aureate
invention
and the sort of Tchaikovskian filigree one hears in the ballets and the
more
delicate sections of the
Manfred Symphony. It makes us wonder again
about
Thomas and his other works. We have been missing something altogether
valuable.
Victorian Opera Northwest provided the highly skilled orchestra. Its
Director is MWI reviewer Raymond Walker who we are assured has, together
with conductor Richard Bonynge, carried out much research and realisation
work to produce this CD. We also have to thank Valerie Langfield, Peter
Jaggard, Nicholas Temperley and Michael Harris for their own input to
make this disc such a success.
Somm once again prove themselves a pathfinder - this time for some grandly
romantic
English overtures which need no special pleading.
Rob Barnett
See also review by John France
