Bath Opera have found a new venue; the Roper Theatre at Hayesfield School, which I visited a couple of years ago (when it was brand new) to see my son’s final-year primary school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream<\/i>. We were in the front row, which obscured part of the left of the stage, though as the evening went on we got used to this.<\/p>\n
I’ve seen this opera once before (in fact it’s the only one by Jan\u00e1\u010dek that I’ve ever been to), when WNO brought it to Bristol, and realising a bit too late that it really wasn’t the opera to see if you’re pregnant.<\/p>\n
The principals were for the most part familiar voices to me, apart from \u0160teva, and acted and sang convincingly. The orchestra coped admirably with the demanding music – Jan\u00e1\u010dek works his strings in particular extremely hard. I noticed how each instrument got its moment of glory (the violas were the ones most in my line of view). The staging made very effective use of a gauze curtain to show ‘offstage’ action. (No video backgrounds<\/a> this time)<\/p>\n It was a chance to support a friend in the chorus. Now where do they find so many men from?! Contrary to the usual way of things, they outnumbered the women.<\/p>\n As usual there was a raffle, and I got really lucky, as I found after the performance that each of the two tickets I’d bought had got attached to a nice bottle of wine. Indeed we may nearly have turned a profit on the evening as a result!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bath Opera have found a new venue; the Roper Theatre at Hayesfield School, which I visited a couple of years ago (when it was brand new) to see my son’s final-year primary school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We … Continue reading