WFO, 01/11/2024

Stanford: The Critic

Wexford Festival Opera Chorus and Orchestra

Ciarán McAuley

Of this year's festival composers, Stanford is probably the least well-known, though that is strictly relative.   For anyone raised in the Anglican tradition, his church music will certainly be familiar, and he was an enormously influential teacher, counting amongst his students Howells, Holst and Vaughan Williams.  However, opera is not particularly associated with him, although in a long career, he completed nine of them.  The Critic was the penultimate one, composed in 1915, and draws on fellow Irishman Richard Sheridan's eponymous play.  Where Sheridan wrote a sharply satirical comedy deriding the fashion for and the conventions of high-flown (not to say overblown) historical tragedies, Stanford and his librettist Lewis Cairns James tweaked it so that Mr. Puff's ridiculously extravagant play becomes an equally ridiculous and extravagant operatic libretto, with music written by Mr. Dangle, leaving Mr. Sneer alone as the titular Critic.  These three roles are speaking parts, and after a spoken introduction setting out the premise, they observe a rehearsal of the Puff and Dangle creation The Spanish Armada, which, like any rehearsal, came with interruptions from all sides and for all reasons.

The first thing that strikes about the music is that it is beautifully crafted, fluid, very melodic, with a rich orchestral score, something like a judicious blend of Arthur Sullivan and Richard Wagner.  The next thing that strikes is that Stanford was having an absolute ball, because this score is a royal send-up of pretty well every major composer of the previous century, and some of those contemporary to Stanford too.  He doesn't touch on the French too much, but the Germans especially, the British and the Italians are all fair game, and the references and spoofs come thick and fast.  The piece ends with a masque, in the Elizabethan tradition (The Spanish Armada being, as the title suggests, set in that era), and at that point the piece runs out of steam a little, which is a pity because the first half of the second act is utterly hilarious.  

There's a scene completely unconnected to the main 'plot' that indulges in the old 'reunification with a lost son' trope, and then there's the scene introducing Lord Burleigh, who is completely silent, but whose scene features a lengthy cello solo, such that we're expecting a solemn monologue in the style of Verdi's "Ella giammai m'amò" from Don Carlo, but which never materialises.  The Beefeater, who is something of a deux ex machina, is introduced by the start of the last movement of Beethoven's 9th, which is an not-so-oblique reference to the penchant of Puff (and Dangle) for a spot of plagiarism.  And then there's the moment that reduced the entire theatre to hysterics, "O cursed parry!".  After last night's laboured contrivances, this was a festival of humour and farce, accompanied by a witty and tuneful score.

L to R: Tony Brennan (Lord Burleigh), Mark Lambert (Mr. Puff),
Arthur Riordan (Mr. Sneer) and Jonathan White (Mr. Dangle)
The Critic, Wexford Festival Opera
(© Patricio Cassinoni, 2024)

Conor Hanratty's production didn't play any fancy tricks with the setting.  The three speaking roles of Puff, Dangle and Sneer were all in Sheridan-period costume, while the 'opera' was appropriately Tudor.  The first half did have a somewhat annoying anomaly, because the set was organised as a view from backstage towards a theatre auditorium, in which Puff and company were sitting.  However, of course, the singers were naturally performing out towards the real auditorium, turning their backs to the stage one, which was contradictory and irritating.  This was rectified in the second half when Hanratty and set designer John Comiskey did what they should have done from the start and put seats to the front of the stage at the sides for the observers, and gave us a proper audience's view of the stage and scenery.  

Vocally, the cast was uniformly excellent.  Gyula Nagy chewed the scenery a little too much as Leicester in the first big ensemble; Stanford specified in the original published score that "This Opera is meant to be played... in all seriousness.  Any attempt to treat it farcically only spoils the humour.", and Nagy proved his point with his mugging to the gallery.  When he reappeared later as the Beefeater, he toned it down somewhat, but the singing in either case was absolutely fine.  Ben McAteer as Walter Raleigh and Oliver Johnston as Christopher Hatton were both excellent, but the star of the evening was surely Ava Dodd's plangent and crystal-clear Tilburina.  She was particularly successful not only vocally, but also with the exaggerated silent-movie style acting Hanratty asked of most of his cast, which seemed most appropriate given the date of the opera.  All of this was very ably supported by Ciarán McAuley at the helm of a particularly bright and responsive Wexford Festival Orchestra, and the overall impression was that everyone was having a particularly good time, as did the audience.

[Next: 2nd November]