Welsh National Opera’s chorus – bedrock of the company and often its out-and-out stars (witness Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron last year) – are in the spotlight in this all-singing, dancing and acting show. Money may be saved by performing this instead of a new spring staging, but this is not a cheap affair – except occasionally in the matter of taste.
David Pountney and his designer, the late Johan Engels, clearly had fun putting the 25 numbers together: the show is mostly slick and mischievous. Engels’ sets are monochrome with thematic red – that’s red for revolution, dragons and sexy-suggestive – with Christopher Tudor’s scarlet pimpernel dancing through. A sequence of segues from Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress into The Pirates of Penzance via Weill, Shostakovich and Bizet was brilliantly conceived, with conductor and chorusmaster Alexander Martin characterising each well. Yet suspending soprano Lesley Garratt on a red velvet gondola for Offenbach’s Barcarolle from The Tales of Hoffman and then introducing an Elvis impersonator into The Cunning Little Vixen’s Wedding Chorus felt like the production was trying too hard. Another visit to Carmen was the cue for a procession of icons, from film to rugby, complete with a scrum, out of which Tudor emerged as Lily Savage. By the end of the next Verdi, he was inevitably stripped to his pants: red.
There were more predictable choruses: Spinning, Humming, Anvil, even Hallelujah – all delivered with typical resonance and chutzpah. But the long chunk from Khovanschina, meant to embody the dramatic power that Mussorgsky invested in the chorus, dragged. Garrett was game for everything, belting out The Impossible Dream in defiance of the decades that have passed since she first sang with WNO. The chorus joined her to make the final Make Our Garden Grow from Bernstein’s Candide more heartfelt.
• Further performances on Saturday and 22 February. Venue: Millennium Centre, Cardiff. Then touring until 8 April.
