REVIEW
THE BARTERED BRIDE – City of Manchester Opera
THE BUXTON FRINGE FESTIVAL
SATURDAY 21ST JULY 2012
City of Manchester Opera have become a regular feature in the Fringe programme and it was good to see them back again this year with their engaging conductor Juan Ortuno and brilliant accompanist Jonathan Ellis. They gave us highlights from Smetana’s The Bartered Bride.
Although that opera has quite a large number of principal roles COMO have so many fine voices that they had no problem casting even if it did mean that the conductor took the part of Kecal, the marriage broker. There was a lot of very memorable singing particularly from the lovers John Elliott as Jenik and Margaret Ferguson as Marenka and from Eric Cymbir as Vasek. COMO obviously enjoyed singing this work and that was readily communicated to an appreciative audience.
After the interval COMO gave us some operatic excerpts which arguably had some vague connection to the Olympic Games. So we had a chorus from Verdi’s Don Carlos which might have a link to the Olympic flame and the lovely quartet from Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream which is set in Athens a city associated with the ancient games. This was followed by a sparkling extract from Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffman with some beautiful bel canto singing from Joan Dean as the doll Olympia. The programme ended with a rousing passage from La Rondine by Puccini with Lucy Lee giving a wonderfully romantic performance of the aria Chi il bel sogno di Doretta.
For an encore COMO sang The Kings of Greece from La Belle Helene. It is Offenbach at his best. And it was COMO at their best too!
Peter Low
Saturday, 21st July 2012