“It’s not bad for a backyard operation,” says Marylyn Abbott, referring to the West Green House Opera Festival she founded. By “backyard” she means the exquisite, clipped, and fantastical gardens surrounding her impressive Georgian house in Hampshire. I wouldn’t mind a backyard like that.Abbott, a former marketing manager of the Sydney Opera House, upped sticks from her native Australia in the early nineties, and bought the lease of West Green House (1720) from the National Trust in 1993. The house had recently been bombed by the IRA (the target was the then tenant, Lord Alastair MacAlpine) and the gardens had reverted to a swampy, overgrown state.Within five years Abbott, who also trained in garden design, had restored the house and created a magical garden including a walled potager, a lake with an island, hidden walks, fountains and cascades. She also developed her idiosyncratic flair for mashing-up edibles and ornamentals. Once you’ve done a double-take at a bravura six-foot globe artichoke, spotlit from below, you’ll never think of a butter dipping sauce again.An inveterate opera-lover, Abbott established a small-scale opera festival in 2000, which has now grown into an impressive annual fixture. It is set to expand dramatically next year. A new artistic director, William Relton, has been appointed and there are plans for a new theatre to be erected in a botanical glass house.This year the festival concluded with a delightful production of Richard Strauss’s “Ariadne auf Naxos”, sung in English. The opera tells the story of a wealthy patron of the arts who decides to host an opera in his palatial mansion. Appropriate, or what?In Strauss’s piece this patron wants to keep his entertainment short and snappy, and demands that a tragedy and a comedy be performed simultaneously to save time.Having snored through some tedious productions in my time, I’m sometimes inclined to agree with his sentiments.On this occasion, there was no need for the snooze button. There was world-class singing from Rebecca Nash (Ariadne), who displayed a luscious, tireless voice of ear-boggling stamina, and mezzo Rosie Aldridge (The Composer) whose beauty of sound was matched by a charmingly impetuous and engaging stage manner. Maltese soprano Nicola Said gave a sweet, if theatrically underpowered, performance as the burlesque comedienne Zerbinetta.The rising British heldentenor Jonathan Stoughton was a promising Bacchus, with a warm, Italianate sound and enormous reserves of power. The role of Bacchus is a notorious voice-wrecker, and though Stoughton didn’t nail it completely, his style and stamina gave bright hopes for his future.Director Richard Studer set the action on a simple raised dais, and kept the action clear, focussed and straightforward. His one miscalculation was to encourage his Bacchus and Ariadne, who are supposed to supply the tragic elements of the work, to ham up their acting in a breast-clutching, silent-movie style. The tone felt rather muddled towards the end.Conductor Jonathan Lyness occasionally drowned the singers, but also drove the score with appealing vigour.Further theatrical magic was saved for after the show. Coming out of the theatre, the audience discovered the entire garden and all its hidden walks had been lit with fairy-lights, lanterns, and arc lights.Great as the other major country house opera festivals are, they can’t hold a candle to the horticultural splendours of West Green House.For information: www.westgreenhouseopera.co.uk / www.westgreenhouse.co.uk
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