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Pamela Hay as Hanna Glawari and John Lofthouse as Danilo Danilovitch |
Merry Widow merits return performance
REVIEW: THE MERRY WIDOW
Bloomsbury Theatre
by Jane Wild
IT’S not over frequently that the comic operetta The Merry Widow is staged, so it was pleasant news to find it on at the Bloomsbury theatre.
However what might have been a great performance never had the chance to be, possibly largely the result of a lack of rehearsal.
Opera UK are clearly a competent enough company to produce good performances, and you can only speculate that they were possibly unable to secure sufficient funding.
Certainly one point in their favour was their young cast, who sang and acted well, and the fact they drew an audience with many more young people than often found at concerts.
Set in Paris, the tale centres round a party of Pontevedrians, one of whom is the merry widow, citizens of a small fictional Eastern European country about to go bankrupt.
Her late husband left her millions, but on condition that if she remarries it must be to a Pontevedrian to keep the money in the ‘Fatherland’.
Pontevedrian diplomat, Count Danilo Danilovitch – who conveniently is unmarried – is enlisted by Baron Zeta to stop the merry widow from marrying a Parisian.
The Baron is oblivious to the fact his own wife Valencienne (Thomasin Trezise) is becoming romantically entangled with suave Parisian batchelor Camille de Rosillon (Jim Heath), and that Count Danilo and the merry widow were once in love before their affair was stamped upon by his family because of her lower-class standing.
Unfortunately chorus members stumbled and fell on two separate occasions and a waiter added an unintentional piece of comedy as he wrestled with a tablecloth that refused to be laid.
A violin solo brought a lovers’ embrace to the verge of parody by being unforgivably out of tune.
And both merry widow (Pamela Hay) and suitor Camille de Rosillon (Jim Heath) had pleasant but slightly thin voices.
But in the main Franz Lehár’s dancing music couldn’t fail to charm, with the widow’s wistful solo Velia having become a classic aria.
Bumbling Baron Zeta (Martin Lamb) turned in a compelling performance by virtue of spot-on comic timing and along with Count Danilo (John Lofthouse), a commanding voice.
Overall, it was an adequate performance with good moments that would merit a visit to Opera UK’s next performance.
Run finished
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