LA SCALA DI SETA, LINBURY THEATRE – REVIEW: A BRILLIANT CAST
Holly Pigott designs, Greg Eldridge directs: bravos all round
MICHAEL CHURCH
Friday 24 October 2014
Rossini was just twenty when he wrote this glittering farce: it made
sense that everybody involved in its two-centuries-belated premiere
at Covent Garden should be Jette Parker Young Artists, not much over
twenty themselves.
How pleasant to meet the Australian soprano Lauren Fagan as the
heroine Giulia, and the Portuguese tenor Luis Gomes as Dorvil, who
shins up the silken ladder of the title to tryst with her.
The technical precision of Fagan’s coloratura is matched by the purity
of her tone, while the pint-sized Gomes projects a substantial sound
with vocal agility and impeccable comic timing.
Their pre-coital romp – while the youthful Southbank Sinfonia delivers
the overture under Jonathan Santagada’s direction – sets the tone
for the preposterous plot.
And how agreeable to encounter the Armenian soprano Anush Hovhannisyan
in a role which gives free rein to her quicksilver voice and
personality, with the larger-than-life bass James Platt as her
foppish foil. Baritone Samuel Dale Johnson doesn’t have much to do
as the disapproving tutor Dormont, but he does it with clean and
virile assurance.
As the servant Germano – entrusted with the most complex role and
the most taxing aria of the evening – Ukrainian bass-baritone Yuriy
Yurchuk surmounted initial intonation-problems to become the opera’s
warm centre of gravity.
Holly Pigott designs, Greg Eldridge directs: bravos all round.