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| Leporello and the Don: Joshua Bloom, Grant Doyle |
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.
