Don Giovanni - Daily Express Review

REVIEW: DON GIOVANNI BY MOZART, GARSINGTON OPERA

By William Hartston

GARSINGTON Opera is only in its second year at the Getty estate at Wormsley, not far from High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, but it has really settled into its stride with imaginative productions of both old favourites and revivals of almost forgotten works.

The setting is glorious, with a temporary, but comfortable opera pavilion (whose heating problems are beginning to be solved) situated next to the most beautiful cricket ground in the country.

As if to emphasize its commitment to civilised values, there is even a road sign saying: "To the cricket and opera". With sheep, deer and a horse with baby foal all wandering contentedly over the estate's vast fields, complimentary coach rides to a beautifully laid out walled garden, and a long interval to enjoy a picnic, this is an idyllic setting for a relaxing afternoon. Or it would have been if the sun had come out and the rain stopped.

This year's season began with a new production of Don Giovanni for which an impressively talented cast of young singers had been assembled. The Australian baritone Grant Doyle was perfect as the dastardly Don, combining a fine, powerful voice with a splendid swagger and confident and energetic movements around the stage that emphasised his irresistibility.

The many women in his life were led by the marvellous Sophie Bevan, pouting perfectly as Donna Elvira, while Sophie's sister Mary Bevan played Zerlina. With Natasha Jouhl as Donna Anna, this added up to as perfect a trio of conquests, in voice, good looks and acting ability, as the Don could wish for. The other male roles were also well sung and acted, particularly Jesus Leon as Don Ottavio, whose rendition of the lovely 'Il mio tesoro' aria was one of the high points of the opera.

So far, so good, and for the opening acts, this new production directed by Daniel Slater displayed a wonderful energy and delicious bits of humour that perfectly matched the venue and the youthful cast. But then it all went haywire at the end.

The plot of Don Giovanni starts with him killing the Commendatore whose daughter he has just seduced. At the end, in conventional productions, a statue of the Commendatore comes to life, accepts a dinner invitation from Giovanni, and drags him off, unrepentant, to Hell. In Slater's production, it's not quite clear what happens at the end at all, but it seems that the wicked seducer is injected with something by Don Ottavio that renders him helpless and brainless and he is consigned to a lunatic asylum.

The connection of this with the Commendatore's icy handshake is unclear, and the lyrics, which clearly talk about him being dragged into the flames of Hell, do not match the actions. It is not even clear if the Commendatore is dead or on life support, as he seems to be singing from a hospital window, while his cadaver is on stage being addressed by Don Giovanni and his servant Leporello. All a bit of a mess really, which was a great shame as the whole performance was unmitigated joy until the silly ending.

Don Giovanni- BachTrack

Ottavio's Revenge: Don Giovanni at Garsington Opera

Saturday 2-Jun-12 17:50

Grant Doyle, Baritone: Don Giovanni
Joshua Bloom, Bass: Leporello
Natasha Jouhl, Soprano: Donna Anna
Sophie Bevan, Soprano: Donna Elvira
Mary Bevan, Soprano: Zerlina
Jesus Leon, Tenor: Don Ottavio
Callum Thorpe, Bass-baritone: Masetto
Christophoros Stamboglis, Bass: The Commendatore



A trip to the opera at Garsington in its new, idyllic setting at Wormsley Estate, Buckinghamshire, is a fine treat even in the rain. And with a Don Giovanni production which, despite plenty of oddities, is light-hearted and often witty, an excellent evening of high-class entertainment is guaranteed.

The estate’s beautifully designed opera pavilion housed a compact and efficient open-plan set, replete with Macs, iPads and a glossy minimalist feel. There were very few changes of scenery, and so director Daniel Slater had clearly taken great care to make the singers’ movement on stage as varied as possible: the production exuded a sense of motion at all times. While I wasn’t convinced of the necessity to ‘stage’ all the arias – especially with an experienced opera crowd such as this, there’s no real need to force that much extra momentum from the piece – the effort and inventiveness of this production were beyond doubt. There were plenty of great gags as well, from a hilariously deployed printer in Leporello’s ‘Catalogue aria’ to a vigorous tug-of-war between Giovanni and Donna Elvira over Zerlina. The comic acting of Joshua Bloom (Leporello) was a particular delight all evening, and there was a gentle, summery air to most of the proceedings.

But Slater’s vision for Don Giovanni also involves a reinterpretation of the work which throws up a good deal more questions than it answers. During the overture, Giovanni and Donna Anna passionately and consensually flirt over dinner, and soon after, Giovanni only wounds and doesn’t kill Anna’s father, the Commendatore – these are both ‘tweaks’ which run up against flat contradictions in the libretto. But strangest of all is the elevation of Don Ottavio to hero status. Ottavio, Anna’s fiancé, is generally pilloried as a bland and ineffectual character, unable despite good intentions to compete with Giovanni’s charisma and fascination as the male lead – but in this production, he is presented as the mastermind behind the Commendatore’s visit to Giovanni which leads to the rake’s downfall. Ottavio then plays dumb to what’s just happened in the final scene – as the text demands he must – and the overall moral of the piece hence shifts, somewhat bizarrely, from ‘Sinners will be punished’ to ‘Watch out for the quiet ones’.

A further issue in direction is the treatment of Masetto, Zerlina and their friends, whom Mozart and Da Ponte created with copious affection and good will as peasants, but who are recast here as Essex girls, chavs and hoodies. As if that wasn’t enough, Masetto is also made to act on Zerlina’s invitation in her aria ‘Batti, batti o bel Masetto’ to hit her (moments before she sings ‘Ah, I see you don’t have the heart’). Masetto later makes a conspicuous show of regret, but the question remains as to whether this was intended as some sort of comment on the state of society, or whether it was all meant in good humour. Either way, it’s a very big miss.

Callum Thorpe and Mary Bevan played Masetto and Zerlina well, however, and both were in good voice within a generally strong cast. Bevan’s was the female voice which blended best in the ensemble numbers, Natasha Jouhl’s Donna Anna being overpowering at times – even when singing solo, her voluminous, heavy sound didn’t fit easily with what was generally quite a restrained vocal effort from the other singers. Restraint was the characteristic with which Sophie Bevan impressed most as Donna Elvira: improving rapidly over the course of the first act, she produced some gorgeous quiet tones at climactic points in her arias which suggested confidence as well as talent.

In the title role, Grant Doyle sounded appropriately virile and was a strong stage presence as well as a convincing lead. His serenade ‘Deh vieni alla finestra’ was a highlight, with the most delicate of plucked, mandolin-style orchestral accompaniments miraculously audible above the sound of heavy rain outside. Joshua Bloom was strong vocally as well as dramatically as Leporello, and Jesús León sang Ottavio with enough power that had his character’s transformation been believable at all, I would have believed it. The standout singer, though, was Christophoros Stamboglis, the Commendatore, who made a big impression in Act I and then redeemed the ending from the perplexities of its production with a stone-solid and powerful display.

The Garsington Opera Orchestra were on good form, and while Douglas Boyd’s conducting occasionally bordered on the efficient, he brought out some excellent phrasing from the strings in particular. The orchestral sound was light and sensitive and never overly Romantic.

A mixed production, then, but enough quality to enjoy both visually and musically to make this as special an evening’s entertainment as its stunning setting merits.

Submitted by Paul Kilbey on 6th June 2012

Link to original review here

Don Giovanni - The Stage

Don Giovanni

Published Wednesday 6 June 2012 at 11:33 

by Edward Bhesania

Launching Garsington Opera’s second season at its new home - the airy, Japanese-inspired pavilion set in the Getty family’s 2,500-acre Chilterns estate - this Don Giovanni, directed by Daniel Slater, is both refreshingly modern and occasionally lacklustre. Leslie Travers’s designs take the form of chic cubicle-type rooms, all white panels and aluminium trim, with equally minimalist white furniture to match. But the rooms are confusingly multi-use: the Commendatore’s bed is later appropriated by the serial philanderer Giovanni to seduce Zerlina; and though Ottavio is sitting at a computer in another room before the action begins, Leporello later occupies it to print out the famous list of his master’s conquests.

Some of the ideas - such as reversing Giovanni’s and Anna’s roles at the beginning, so that Anna becomes a teasing dominatrix, cuffing Giovanni to the dinner table - are hard to incorporate seamlessly into the drama; others, such as Giovanni’s serenade to (traditionally) Elvira’s maid, are weakly handled. But Elvira, Anna and Ottavio amusingly gatecrash Giovanni’s party in the guise of Wonder Woman and an S&M couple; Zerlina and her bridesmaids are colourfully blingy and scantily clad; and in the final scene Giovanni controls his huge LCD TV via his iPad while awaiting his guest. His punishment is not to descend into hell, but instead to languish in a lunatic asylum.

Sophie Bevan is dramatically expressive as Elvira, though sometimes sounds laboured. Grant Doyle and Joshua Bloom convey a macho camaraderie as Giovanni and Leporello, and Jesus Leon stands out for his Italianate Ottavio, as does Mary Bevan for her agile Zerlina. But the Garsington Opera Orchestra’s playing, under Douglas Boyd, is the biggest draw. Boyd coaxes exquisite balance from his players, and is passionately attuned both to the music’s turbulence and intimacy.

Link to original review here

Don Giovanni - Oxford Times

Don Giovanni: Garsington Opera at Wormsley

2:34pm Wednesday 6th June 2012

By Christopher Gray

Don Giovanni’s catalogue of conquests — including, of course, the famous “mille e tre” in Spain — is removed from Leporello’s fat little book and reproduced as a computer print-out in Garsington’s modern-day staging of Mozart’s great opera. So long is the list that yards and yards of white paper are spewed from the machine and draped across the wide spaces of Leslie Travers’s swish silver-and-white penthouse set, to the astonishment of Donna Elvira, the dirty Don’s rejected lover

Don Giovanni (Grant Doyle) and Donna Elvira (Sophie Bevan)
fight over Zerlina (Mary Bevan).

Photo: Mike Hoban

A rival to this richly comic moment comes later as the furious Elvira (Sophie Bevan, in superb voice) — in an effort to prevent an addition to the lothario’s list — becomes involved with him in a tug-of-war in which the sexy Zerlina (Mary Bevan, sister of the above) doubles as the rope.

Mind you, one suspects that the chavvy gum-chewing minx would far rather victory went to the Don. As portrayed by Aussie, Grant Doyle, he is a gentleman to whom women willingly submit — as in the opening moments when we find Donna Anna (Natasha Jouhl) complicit in her rape to the extent of chaining her attacker to a table. 

Sado-masochism rears its head more than once in a version of the opera that comes across as relentlessly sexy — understandably so, perhaps, in view of its subject matter.
Jesús León as Don Ottavio — ever the poodle of Anna — becomes more than usually her creature here, submitting to the indignity of being dragged in on a lead when the masqueraders visit Giovanni’s dance. Other outfits, including a fetishistic black plastic number, are plucked from the well-stocked wardrobe of Zerlina’s muscular fiancé Masetto (Callum Thorpe), who appears to run a fancy dress hire business when not working (as his own garb suggests) as a circus ringmaster.

So far, so good. Where one does take issue with Daniel Slater, though, is over the scenes involving the ‘slain’ Commendatore (Christophoros Stamboglis). When he accepts a dinner date with the Don, he arrives not as a statue gifted with speech and movement but as a hospital patient who might not even be dead.

And the ‘hell’ to which his host is delivered, by means of a lethal injection from Ottavio, appears from the look of the white-shrouded figures in various uncomfortable poses around him to be some sort of mental institution. Equating hell with such an establishment borders, to me, on the offensive.

Much will be forgiven, though, in a production so richly rewarding musically, under conductor Douglas Boyd.

With so many big voices around — occasionally too big in the case of Anna — Mr Doyle holds his own throughout in the title role. He is well matched by his sidekick Leporello, played by fellow Australian Joshua Bloom — and, mentioning matches, how unusual to find in a production of this opera a master and servant actually able to slip comfortably into each other’s clothes. 

Link to original review here

Don Giovanni - Bucks Free Press

Review: Don Giovanni at Garsington Opera

6:42pm Tuesday 5th June 2012

By Neil Phillips

AFTER a successful opening season in 2011, Garsington Opera’s second year at the stunning Wormsley Estate, near Stokenchurch, kicked off with one of the most famous productions of all – Mozart’s Don Giovanni

I must confess I’m a novice to the opera. I’ve certainly never seen a live show before and as keen as I was to try it, it was with some trepidation that I sat in my seat, fearing the whole thing might be a hard evening’s work.

There was no need to worry, though. What followed was a thoroughly enjoyable, often spectacular production that was easy to follow and a pleasure to see performed.
Don Giovanni tells the tale of a serial philanderer – a user and abuser of women, whose wanton antics come with a price. After killing the father of one of his would-be conquests (or possibly victims) in the opening scenes, the predatory Giovanni finds a growing list of people out to wreak their revenge upon him – even as his own passionate approach to life threatens to seduce them.

This quality production, directed by Daniel Slater and conducted by Douglas Boyd, impresses right from the moment you take your seat in the pavilion. This version has been given a contemporary makeover, using crisp, modern sets with minimalist décor.
And when the music starts it becomes a hair-raising experience, the score playfully telling the story and the cast’s powerful vocals bringing the characters to vivid and often comedic life. The pavilion’s acoustics were excellent, making it easy to appreciate the quality of both the singing and the orchestra.

This particular opera is a humourous morality tale – as such it perhaps doesn’t pack the emotional punch that many who are not terribly familiar with the form might expect. But it is consistently funny and involving, with plenty of drama to keep the pace from flagging.
The performances were, to my admittedly untrained eye, faultless. Every member of the cast had an abundance of charisma and delivered amazing vocals. As Giovanni himself Grant Doyle was a perfect mix of arrogance and sleazy charm, while Joshua Bloom as his servant Leporello made a fine comic foil. The females of the company were equally good, particularly Sophie Bevan as the scorned Elvira and Mary Bevan as the flighty Zerlina, Giovanni’s latest target who is both fascinated and eventually repelled by his behaviour.

The contemporary setting – complete with iPads and the occasional sado-masochistic overtones - works well, although you have to wonder how Giovanni has escaped the attention of the law for so long. He might have been able to get away with his form of sexual predation in 18th century Italy, but you'd hope the police would be paying a bit more attention these days.

While I was won over right from the start, I found the second act slightly more urgent and absorbing – though that may simply be that my brain had fully clicked with the mechanics of the opera by then. But either way, the show was a superb evening of entertainment, and left me eager to see more.

But at Garsington the opera itself is only part of the attraction (admittedly a major one). The opera pavilion is set within the beautiful grounds of the Wormsley Estate, surrounded by lush greenery, and a beautiful lake which makes a perfect picnic spot.
The show is structured with an extended interval so the audience has plenty of time to take dinner in between Acts. This really adds to the experience, transforming it not only into a great trip to the opera, but a wonderful evening out in its own right.

Garsington’s 2012 season runs until July 3, featuring rotating performances of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Vivaldi’s L’Olimpiade and Offenbach’s La Perichole.

Tickets range from £95 to £170 and include a suggested but non-obligatory donation of £60. To book call 01865 361636 or go to www.garsingtonopera.org

Link to original review here

Don Giovanni - The Arts Desk

Exceptional night of realism from director Daniel Slater

by Igor Toronyi-Lalic

Thursday, 07 June 2012

 

For all but two of its 30 years in business, Garsington Opera has had Mozart in each and every season. He's the nearest this company gets to a resident composer. While everything else at the seasonal operation is in flux, their Mozart is a constant. And as with any long-running relationship, there is a confidence in the coming together of the two of them that usually makes any new Mozart production at Garsington one of the Summer highlights. This year was no exception.

We began the night, however, with a cliche. Like many a director before him, Daniel Slater chose to relocate the 18th-century lothario to an American Psycho-type context: Don Giovanni as a high-flying solipsist, Leporello as his chauffeur. But cliche doesn't accompany deja vu. For this very familiar updating is sculpted in the most unusual and brilliant way. Grant Doyle's property developer Don Giovanni is in control - of the women, the men, the music and the mains. The night opens with him flicking on the lights to this swanky block of minimalist apartments. In one flat, the aspirational chavs: gum-chewing Zerlina and lycra-clad Masetto, ready for their big fat gypsy wedding. In another, the city boy, Ottavio, a Giovanni wannabe, and Anna, whose twisted sexual habits sets off this cascade of rape and murder. In another minimal box, Sophie Bevan's Elvira, a snivelling wreck, but ready to return to her brute at the drop of a hat.

Not a single scene, sentiment or word was stranded in the 18th century

Innocence is no where to be found. Good and bad are intermingled. Mozart's score (given a bracing outing by Douglas Boyd and the Garsington Opera Orchestra) does the same; it makes no judgements. In fact, it skewers you with counter-intuitive messages. Just as you think you've got the measure of a character, it confounds you: Zerlina the low-grade tart becomes Zerlina the paragon of love and forgiveness. Slater makes the most of these psychological complexities and finds 21st century homes for all of them.

Not a single scene, sentiment or word (the libretto translation had been neatly tweaked) was stranded in the 18th century. Everything had been thought of, thought through and brought into the the present day. The lover's list became a spread sheet on a computer print out. The musical quotations become opera DVDs that Giovanni flicks through over dinner. Finicky updatings of this kind can come across as contrived. But Slater's analogies are too clever and too well choreographed. Most clever and well choreographed was Giovanni's descent into hell. Slater brings a brilliantly rational sense to bear on this supernatural ending. Don Giovanni's penalty for a life of greed and obsession is a living death, sedated and wheelchair-bound, the white walls of his swish, sinful world morphing into the white walls of a mental institution.

There was a vocal and theatrical strength in the cast that made Slater's job easier. Grant Doyle (pictured with Mary and Sophie Bevan right) and his aggressively floppy hair were made to play Mozart's semi-seductive baddies. As with his Figaro a few years back, his Giovanni was laced with a compelling menace throughout, a rendition that had just enough charm that you could understand why Elvira would return to him. Casting the piercing and powerful voice of Natasha Jouhl as the twisted, S&M-loving feminist Anna was a stroke of genius. She deserved a medal for her sotto voce in "Non mi dir", delivered half-naked and in the freezing cold.

Callum Thorpe was a strong Masetto and Mary Bevan a characterful Zerlina. Joshua Bloom's Leporello was excellently slimy. Accompanied by the fantastic young Garsington chorus, Christophoros Stamboglis's dying but not quite dead Commendatore, a Harvey Weinstein figure, re-emerged from his hospital bed in the final scene and electrified the evening. Only Jesús León's casual Ottavio disappointed. But the night belonged to Sophie Bevan's Elvira. Unlike most great operatic actresses who develop their stage presence to compensate for vocal failings, Bevan really can sing. She starts with a meaty and technically assured vocal sound and uses it to paint extraordinary psychological portraits. The journey her rendition of "Mi tradi quell'alma ingrata" ("That ungrateful wretch betrayed me") took from shouty anger to exhausted self-pity was a thing of bitter wonder.

In one final clever move, Slater gives Ottavio a central role in Giovanni's downfall. One that leaves Ottavio free to take over his empire. It will soon be another poor girl's turn to sing Elvira's song.

Link to original review here

Don Giovanni - Wall Street Journal

"A Fresh Take on the Dirty Don"

By PAUL LEVY

WORMSLEY PARK, England—Garsington Opera kicked off its second season at Wormsley, the enormous Getty estate with its enlarged auditorium and stage, with a special Mozartian arrangement of "God Save the Queen" to mark that this was also the beginning of Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee celebrations.

Director Daniel Slater's production of "Don Giovanni," though, is more subversive. The first scene, the rape of Donna Anna, is portrayed—in a dumb show involving most of the contents of a Soho sex shop—as a sex game gone wrong.
Mike Hoban

The complicity of Anna (beautifully acted and sung by Natasha Jouhl) raises dramatic problems: it means she is cheating on Ottavio (Jesús León), which confuses the issue of her asking him to wait a year to marry. But Leslie Travers's contemporary sets and costumes made the rethink plausible.

I found this radical take on the libretto consistent and refreshing, splendidly cast, with outstanding performances by a wonderful-looking Grant Doyle as Giovanni, Joshua Bloom as Leporello, the Bevan sisters—Sophie and Mary—as Elvira and Zerlina, respectively, and Callum Thorpe as Masetto. Conductor Douglas Boyd's tempi sometimes pushed the singers to keep up with him, but the pace was bracing.

'Don Giovanni,' until July 2; 'L'Olimpiade,' until June 29; www.garsingtonopera.org

Don Giovanni, Garsington - Financial Times

By Andrew Clark

The staging of Mozart’s ‘dramma giocoso’ is right on the button.
 

Leporello and the Don: Joshua Bloom, Grant Doyle

Donna Anna likes kinky sex. Masetto beats up his fiancée. Don Ottavio prefers the computer screen to a private life. Another cheap operatic update? No, living testament to Don Giovanni’s many-sided appeal. If Mozart’s dramma giocoso is about youth and élan vital, then Daniel Slater’s staging for Garsington Opera is right on the button.

We tend to think of country house opera as a dainty dance of picnics and parkland but this Don Giovanni is edgy, risqué and witty – with a serious undertow. Giovanni pays for his anti-social behaviour by being consigned to the life of a vegetable in an asylum. For “fires of hell” read sedatives and a wheelchair.

It’s the kind of show that would click with young metropolitan audiences if only they could see it at their neighbourhood theatre at an affordable price. But country house opera is not a social programme for the inner city masses. It is too exclusive to receive a subsidy. It may pay lip service to education but it survives and thrives on a mix of fundraising flair, social elitism and artistic acumen, conjuring high-quality opera from the begging bowl.

On that reckoning you would think the likes of Garsington and Grange Park would be recession-hit but this summer’s opening shows tell a different story. Despite a 15 per cent drop in private giving, the programme at Grange Park in Hampshire is as enterprising as ever and Garsington, which relocated last summer to the Getty estate on the Oxfordshire-Buckinghamshire border, has suddenly hit its stride.

The pagoda-style temporary home it built there has become permanent and it is on the verge of appointing its first artistic director – a sign of healthy ambition.
Don Giovanni demonstrates that country house audiences don’t need to be patronised. The show – built on an open-plan designer-apartment set (Leslie Travers), with clean lines, multiple levels and minimal accessories – is as good an updating of Mozart’s opera as I have seen.

Garsington goes one better, with a beautifully matched line-up of singer-actors in which there are no weak links: hats off to the casting director.
Grant Doyle is not a physically or vocally dominant Giovanni but he has danger and allure written all over him. Joshua Bloom makes a strong foil, his stage-wide print-out of his master’s conquests providing one of the evening’s best gags. Sophie Bevan’s sexy, predatory Elvira sings her heart out. But the most arresting performances come from Callum Thorpe’s virile Masetto and Natasha Jouhl’s Donna Anna, the latter a stylish stage performer with looks, presence and a classic spinto voice that makes perfect sense of the tricky coloratura.

Douglas Boyd conducts a high-energy reading but what really tickled me on opening night was his choice of National Anthem – a delectable Mozartian pastiche by Andrew Davis. Leonard Ingrams, Garsington’s late lamented founder, would be pleased at the way his well-bred, quirky spirit flourishes at Wormsley.

Don Giovanni - The Void Magazine Review

Wormsley Estate, Buckinghamshire


Two sisters have been wowing opera audiences in South Bucks.

Sophie and Mary Bevan played key roles in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, staged by Garsington Opera and Chorus, at billionaire Mark Getty’s estate at Wormsley, near High Wycombe, Bucks, on June 2.

From left: Grant Doyle (Giovanni), Mary Bevan (Zerlina) and Sophie Bevan (Elvira).
Picture: Mike Hoban

Sophie, who plays jilted Elvira, says: “The amateur dramatics that we did at St Bernard’s was a great starting point for a career in professional opera. I am always grateful to the school for what they taught me.”

Mary says: “The biggest problem I had was playing Zerlina as an Essex girl. People said I was too posh. I had to chav down for the part. So I pulled a huge piece of chewing gum from my mouth just before I sang my first aria, and stuck it on the side of a table, right in the middle of the stage.

“Then I retrieved the gum after the piece, and started chewing again. That works well for the first song. But you can’t use the same gag twice. So I had to push the gum to one side of my mouth for the next big aria. It was rather awkward.”

The audience included BBC Radio presenter Melvyn Bragg and former ITN newscaster Anna Ford.

Giving Mozart’s classic opera a contemporary setting, complete with mobile phones and tablet computers, may be controversial but the staging complemented the newly completed hall in the Getty estate perfectly, giving an extra element of realism to a work more than two centuries old.

That meant some of its themes – such as domestic violence and promiscuity – were all the more relevant, and therefore shocking and disturbing.

Among the world class performers, Joshua Bloom’s incredible bass voice was both inspirational and thrilling in the role of Leporello, the sidekick of serial philanderer Giovanni, exactingly sung by Grant Doyle.

The generously sized seats meant it was pleasure rather than an ordeal to sit through the whole performance, allowing the audience to be lost in another world for a few short hours.
Many of the punters brought along picnic hampers to enjoy in the intermission. It was an extraordinary evening of magical world class opera in the sedate and sumptuous landscape of South Bucks. Truly, a night to remember.