I am getting a bit embarrassed at all my positive reviews – no doubt in part because of 15 months of lockdown and the absence of live music – but the Opera North performance of Fidelio I saw in Nottingham on June 19th really was quite something! I had originally meant to see it in Salford at the Lowry Theatre. I then switched to Nottingham to avoid too much travel into Manchester, as instructed by HMG – though Interestingly even if I had decided to go I wouldn’t have made it….. on the day of the Lowry performance I was returning from London on a train that was meant to get into Manchester at 1727, and from then I would have gone to the Lowry by tram, had I been going. Sadly, someone threw themselves in front of a train at Milford Keynes, so I didn’t arrive in Manchester until 19.40 – I would have missed the performance anyway!
The Nottingham show was very special!! It was a concert performance with no spoken dialogue (instead, some linking read-outs from Don Fernando) but the fact that all the singers were well-versed in their parts and able to interact as if they were on stage, plus the way they were ‘into’ their characters and showed their varying moods and feelings fully and clearly to the audience, meant that this was as intense an experience as if it were a staged performance. Apart from the conductor Paul Daniel, the impressive cast of internationally-well-known singers including Rachel Nicholls (Halle and Longborough Brunnhilde), Toby Spence (who I last saw in ROHCG’s Billy Budd), Robert Hayward (Opera North’s ex-Wotan) and Brindley Sherratt (ROHCG Hagen/Fafner/Hunding) were all in the performance live streamed in November 2020. I was very enthusiastic then – see blog around that time, below – but it was even more affecting to see it face to face. Paul Daniel’s pacing of the opera was swift but the Opera North orchestra coped fantastically well with the challenges of this piece (the horns in Abscheulicher’ for instance were secure and confident, and kudos to the timpanist throughout) and they gave a seat-grippingly tight and powerful performance. Rachel Nicholls’ large voice for Leonore was wonderfully flexible (she in fact started off working as a Baroque specialist) and she was very moving in the ‘Abscheulicher’ aria and in the second Act. Toby Spence was surprisingly loud and forthright as Florestan and sounded like a heldentenor – his opening ‘Gott’, moving from pianissimo to fortissimo was very impressive! Brindley Sherratt made Rocco a much more complex character than usual. There were no weak links in the casting, and the whole experience was completely absorbing. It is a long time since I have been so moved in the opera house
John's musical journey 