I think it’s great to hear new things and I increasingly try to do that when planning my concert-going. I therefore made a bee-line for this when the BIF brochure came out. However, as is only logical, going for the unfamiliar is sometimes a bit of a hit-and-miss affair. While there are masterpieces that either you have never discovered or the world hasn’t, there are also good reasons on some occasions for a work’s being overlooked……
‘The Dancing Master’ is a one act 75 minute opera which was written for BBC broadcast, then rejected by them, and has never been professionally staged. It’s essentially based upon a Restoration comedy by William Wycherley, the 1671 play The Gentleman Dancing Master, and in the libretto by Joe Mendoza a sense of the 17th language is retained, along with some updating. It follows the usual Restoration comedy obsessions with virginity, fops, absurd foreigners and the inheritance of property/money.
How to stage it is one problem. The production team decided on the clever idea – also saving money of course in the socially-distanced Covid context – of making the setting of the opera the first BBC broadcast of the opera (which of course never happened). Everyone is therefore in 50’s dress The stage setting is a central tall microphone and 7-8 chairs around the stage. There are some quietly amusing gags around sound effects the cast produces – kisses and coconuts, as it were. The obverse side of this decision is that there is an inevitable tendency towards rather a static stage picture, though the cast try to be as animated and energetic as they can when they are up out of their seats
But the other problem is a more serious one – the music itself if not really very interesting. Arnold is a composer who produced quantities of music in every genre. Here there just seemed to be too much of an easy facility about the music – not enough variation, not enough insights through music into the inner life of the characters. It flowed along mellifluously enough but seemed to me to be entirely unmemorable, I’m afraid – very different from say the 5th symphony which is a genuinely memorable, interesting even disturbing piece. All the singers were excellent – I’d single out Fiona Kimm as the heroine’s aunt, and Graeme Broadbent (as the heroine Miranda’s father, Don Diego). Mark Wilde (her fiance, Monsieur) was excellent in keeping up his absurd French accent for a hour and a quarter The orchestra played well for John Andrews. Sadly this is a first and last outing, I suspect.
John's musical journey 