I’d never been to a performance by Bath Opera although various people I know have been involved with the company. But when they put on Peter Grimes (an opera that they also staged some 20 years ago) I felt I had to go.
The 3 performances sold out, and as well as the regular following of Bath Opera had clearly drawn an audience from some distance (apparently across the Severn in some cases). I arrived on spec and for the first half sat in a spare fire-warden’s seat with the double bass and harp between me and the stage (the latter instrument having a large part to play in this work). For the second half I had an unobscured view from a seat that was confirmed as vacant.
I had never been to a live performance and I appreciated much that I hadn’t noticed before, such as the way that the music of the sea interludes generates much of the material for the scenes which follow them. The highlight for me was the quartet for Auntie, the Nieces (all the ‘respectable’ people having gone off to organise persecution of Grimes) and Ellen; I’d not thought of Britten as a composer of female solidarity before.
This opera affords chorus parts for all ages, and if they were occasionally slightly ragged, this only added versimilitude. The acting was convincing throughout The performance was fitted into a school theatre and the soloists sang over the orchestra (conducted by Peter Blackwood) in the confined space with varying degrees of success: Bulstrode (Niall Hoskin) achieving this best. Rupert Drury and Julia O’Connor were the leads.
The sets were straightforward, with the sea suggested by video projected on to the back of the stage. Just after the embroidery aria, this came unstuck and behind Ellen and Bulstrode there briefly appeared not waves, but a Windows desktop with a large image of a traffic cone (the logo of the DVD software). It says much for the performance that this did not diminish its impact.