This year’s choice of opera for the New Chamber Opera’s summer production in the Warden’s Garden of New College Oxford follows the pattern of reviving forgotten or near forgotten works of the eighteenth century in scholarly new English-language editions. These are usually slight in nature, their neglect understandable, but providing great entertainment for a summer evening. A long interval enables the audience to wine and dine in the College cloisters. In the case of inclement weather, performances take place in the Antechapel. This year was no exception; the choice of opera was La Locandiera by Antonio Salieri (1750-1825), roughly translated as ‘The Proprietress’.
Salieri is mainly known today from the libellous dramatisations of Alexander Pushkin and Peter Shaffer about his connection with Mozart, to whose family he was a great support after the composer’s death. In fact he was a dominant figure in the musical life of Vienna from the age of 24 but on the evidence of this opera he was not himself a great composer. (A three-page essay on his life and times by Joe Lockwood is contained in very small print in the programme, and deserves wider distribution.)
La Locandiera is closely based on a play by Carlo Goldoni. The same play is the basis of an opera by Bohuslav Martinů: Mirandolina, which was seen at Garsington in June 2009. I can do no better than to summarise the plot much as I did then. The opera has a typical Goldoni plot, a wry look at the battle of the sexes. The eponymous heroine, proprietress of an inn, is wooed with flattery and gifts by two of the residents, a Marquis and a Count. She, in turn, sets out to win and then break the heart of a misogynist Cavaliere, another resident. Her servant Fabrizio is also in love with Mirandolina. After a series of complications and misunderstandings, all the men are dismissed except Fabrizio whom Mirandolina has secretly loved all the time. The difference between the operas, both tremendous romps, is that Martinů resembles a Carry On film while Salieri recalls Fawlty Towers with Fabrizio a mixture of Basil and Manuel. The other character is the scheming chambermaid Lena, also ’in love’ with Fabrizio.
Every year, tension rises during our pre-performance drink awaiting the decision of the conductor Stephen Devine, thirty minutes before the start, whether to perform outdoors or indoors. On this occasion it was overcast but warm, the local forecast being of showers later in the evening and we took our seats in the Garden for the usual prompt six thirty start. The choice was vindicated. With the Band of Instruments, covered, at one end of the performance space and the pavilion at the other, the only props a table and four chairs, the characters made their entrances, most of the cast familiar from previous productions: the servants Lena and Fabrizio were played by Kate Semmens and Trevor Eliot Bowes, the three suitors by George Coltart, Jorge Navarro-Colorado and Tom Raskin. Mirandolina herself was performed by Rachel Shannon. All performed uniformly well with exquisite comic timing, whether in serving refreshment, coffee or omelette or in the inn’s business of providing clean, non-scratchy bed-linen or in the flirtatious repartee with the suitors. As in every year, we marvelled at the clarity of diction in the new translation of Simon Rees, putting to shame the cast of The Rape of Lucretia at Glyndebourne and that of Intermezzo sung in English at Garsington, where it was necessary to refer to surtitles. Is it an acoustical feature of the walled Garden or due to the coaching of the Director Michael Burden?
Once again New Chamber Opera has excelled in resurrecting a forgotten opera for the entertainment and enlightenment of those privileged to attend one of the eight performances.
Review © PETER SCHOFIELD.
22 July 2015
New Chamber Opera’s production of Salieri’s
La Locandiera
was performed in the Warden’s Garden of New College Oxford from the 8th to the 19th July 2015.