Ireland Wexford Festival Opera 2024 [2] – Stanford, The Critic: Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of Wexford National Opera / Ciarán McAuley (conductor), O’Reilly Theatre Wexford, 24.10.2024. (RB)
Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (1852 – 1924) is the greatest composer to emerge from Ireland in the nineteenth century. His reputation has suffered since his death and only his church music has remained in the standard repertoire. George Bernard Shaw was one of his earliest critics praising ‘Stanford the Celt’ but criticising ‘the Professor trifling in a world of ideas’. In more recent years there has been a reappraisal of his work with many commentators praising some of his symphonies, concertos and operas. This year is the centenary of Stanford’s death, so it was a good decision by Wexford Festival Opera to stage his opera, The Critic.
Standford wrote nine operas; The Critic is his penultimate and, in some ways, his most successful opera. It is based on a play of the same name by the Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Standford’s score contains references to works by Beethoven, Wagner, Elgar and Parry among others. These musical references are mischievous in the way they try to poke fun at these composers. The opera was first performed in 1916 and it was well received by the critics although one labelled it ‘a poor man’s Ariadne auf Naxos’. It is clearly a well-constructed work both dramatically and musically and there is much to admire.
The opera takes place on the stage of a theatre where a new opera, The Spanish Armada, is in rehearsal. The impresario Mr Puff and the composer Mr Dangle invite the critic Mr Sneer to attend. When the rehearsal begins, we are transported back to the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and there are discussions about how to thwart the impending Spanish invasion. We discover the governor’s daughter Tiburina has fallen in love with the captured Don Ferolo Wiskerandos, the son of the enemy admiral. There is an unrelated side plot where a Justice and his wife are reunited with their lost son. A Beefeater arrives and reveals he too loves Tilburina. Following a Mexican standoff, the Beefeater kills Wiskerandos and Tilburina is driven mad. While these events take place Puff, Dangle and Sneer interrupt the proceedings and ask the participants to repeat certain scenes in different ways. Nothing is taken too seriously, and the survivors live happily ever after at the end.
Director Conor Hanratty sticks to Stanford’s own conception of the opera by setting the work in eighteenth-century England, while The Spanish Armada play within a play is set in sixteenth-century Tudor England. Stanford wrote in a prefatory note to the published score: ‘This opera is meant to be played as the original piece should be played, in all seriousness. Any attempt to treat it farcically only spoils the humour’. Once again Hanratty very wisely follows Stanford’s advice. Puff, Dangle and Sneer speak in a grandiloquent fashion at the beginning of the opera oblivious to how this might be perceived by others, and this serves to illustrate their inflated sense of self-importance. At one point in the rehearsal, Puff asks Tilburina and Don Ferolo to perform a scene again but with smouldering looks as they take their leave of each other, showing how ridiculous and overblown exaggerated emotions in opera can be. Plot contrivances are glossed over without proper explanation (for example, how did Don Ferolo end up being captured when the Armada has not sailed and what have the Justice, his wife and their lost son got to do with the rest of the plot?). The production descends into anarchy when Puff asks Don Ferolo to perform his death scene multiple times, and the latter gets fed up and leaves the stage. The fact that the performers remained serious and committed during these scenes made them funnier and funnier.
James Comiskey’s sets were designed to allow for fluid scene changes, and this enhanced the flow of the drama. Comiskey produced colourful picture book backdrops to the action, including an eighteenth-century theatre, ornate Tudor halls, castle battlements and rows of Royal tents, and the English Channel. Costume designer Massimo Carlotto was careful to distinguish between the eighteenth-century costumes for Puff, Dangle and Sneer and the Tudor costumes worn by the rest of the cast. Puff, Dangle and Sneer were the height of decorum with their elaborate jackets, breeches and powdered wigs. The rest of the cast all wore decorative Tudor costumes consisting of ruffs, doublets and jerkins for the men and decorative gowns for the women.
Mark Lambert, Jonathan White and Arthur Riordan in the roles of Puff, Dangle and Sneer all had spoken roles. The opening section of the opera in which they set the scene went on a little bit too long. Having said that, they acted their parts perfectly and set things up for the ensuing rehearsal.
The cast all acquitted themselves well. Ava Dodd performed her initial pastoral aria with charm and elegance while imbuing the vocal line with a sumptuous tone. She switched seamlessly between irritation with Puff’s interruptions and the inflated love music of the opera. Dane Suarez’s Don Ferolo Wiskerandos sang with great passion and conviction. His commitment to the overblown nature of the role made some of the subsequent satirical scenes even more amusing. Ben McAteer and Oliver Johnston as Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Christopher Hatton both produced robust well executed phrases in the opening scene of the opera. Gyula Nagy was also impressive in the Beefeater role.
Ciarán McAuley and the Wexford Festival Orchestra proved consummate advocates for Stanford’s music. McAuley succeeded in bringing out the lightness and mock seriousness in the score and together with the orchestra clearly had fun with the musical quotations scattered through it. Violist Adele Johnson performed her concertante solo part brilliantly while the silent Lord Burleigh ambled his way on to the stage and back off it again. The Wexford Festival Chorus sang with great vigour as they pledged to fight for the realm.
Overall, this was a highly enjoyable and witty production that makes a strong case for Stanford’s opera being performed more frequently and widely.
Robert Beattie
Production:
Stage director – Conor Hanratty
Set designer – John Comiskey
Costume designer – Massimo Carlotto
Lighting designer – Daniele Naldi
Assistant Lighting designer – Paolo Bonapace
Chorus master – Andrew Synott
Cast:
Lord Burleigh – Tony Brennan
Governor of Tilbury Fort / Justice – Rory Dunne
Earl of Leicester – Gyula Nagy
Sir Walter Raleigh – Ben McAteer
Sir Christopher Hatton – Oliver Johnston
Master of the Horse / Constable – Meilir Jones
Don Ferolo Whiskerandos – Dane Suarez
Son – Andrew Henley
Tilburina – Ava Dodd
Confidant / First Niece – Hannah O’Brien
Justice’s Lady / Second Niece – Carolyn Holt
Mr Puff – Mark Lambert
Mr Dangle – Jonathan White
Mr Sneer – Arthur Riordan
Hopkins – Olga Conway