Tag Archives: Lea Shaw

Hansel & Gretel

Posted on by

Paisley Town Hall

Stories for children are full of warnings, and there was another for English National Opera in the new concert staging of Hansel & Gretel that Scotland’s national company created for the rejuvenated Paisley Town Hall’s inaugural season: if you employ your orchestra on a part-time basis, you create contractual obstacles to making the most of your work.

Perhaps there were other elements in the decision, but it seems likely that the cost of employing its own orchestra was the major factor limiting this vibrant, compact expression of Humperdinck’s gorgeous score to just two performances. Some might say that sold short the brilliant young cast (of singers the company can be justly proud to have nurtured), the Junior Chorus of enthusiastic children, the good people of Renfrewshire and their very splendidly restored venue.

Still, as Dr Seuss says, don’t be sad that it’s over, be glad that it happened. I look forward to seeing a big budget production from Roxana Haines, but once again the company’s former Staff Director has produced the goods with slender resources, using the venue it was designed to showcase creatively with singers making entrances from around the auditorium. The stage itself was largely occupied by the orchestra, with music director Stuart Stratford on the podium, and that was nothing but an asset, with every detail of the music in perfect balance, not excepting the voices of the choir of youngsters who were directed from the front row of the stalls by Susannah Wapshott.

From the opening of the overture – a piece of orchestration that should be heard more often as a standalone in the concert hall – it was evident that Paisley’s lovely hall has a very good acoustic and it was notable, and a credit to the conductor, that while the brass and horns were clear and sparkling from the start, the voices of Lea Shaw and Catriona Hewitson in the title roles were always absolutely at the top of the mix.

Both former Emerging Artists with the company, and Shaw still an Associate, their voices blended immaculately and they inhabited the front stage with engaging skill. Using David Pountney’s English translation, there were a lot of words to deliver clearly and at pace, but the diction of both was exemplary and always in the service of the music – and the magnificent melodies Humperdinck wrote.

Ukranian soprano Inna Husieva, a current Emerging Artist, was perhaps a little less clear in the words of the Sandman and Dew Fairy, but sang beautifully, while her colleague on the scheme this season, baritone Ross Cumming, is a performer of great skill with a rich tone who made Peter, the children’s father, more genial than he can sometimes be portrayed. The parental ambiguity was left to Shuna Scott Sendall to express, and she drew a fine contrast between mother Gertrude, victim as much as oppressor, and her doubling as a malign but cartoonish Witch. The mezzo was a late substitute for Heather Ireson and clearly not in the best vocal health herself but she gave her all in performance.

Stratford’s tempi were spot-on in an interpretation that made a joy of the opportunity to see the players in details like orchestra leader Tony Moffat’s blackbird as the children awake in Act 3. When the conductor’s baton (not that he uses one) was repurposed by Hansel & Gretel as a wand to undo the Witch’s magic it was a nice directorial expression of exactly how precisely the composer’s classic score works.

Keith Bruce

Picture of Shuna Scott Sendall (Witch) and Catriona Hewitson (Gretel) by Sally Jubb

Festival Gala / Scottish Opera

Posted on by

Perth Concert Hall

The Perth Festival has changed markedly over its 50 years, but as it celebrates that Golden Jubilee, a determination to present opera as part of the annual event remains a commitment. This year’s staged performance arrives at Perth Theatre next week in the shape of Opera Bohemia’s Madama Butterfly, and for many years it provided the only Scottish opportunity to see English Touring Opera and some very fine singers at the start of their careers. Before that John Currie masterminded the festival’s own bespoke productions, but in 1972 it was Alexander Gibson’s Scottish Opera company who brought two productions to the first festival, so it was fitting the national company provided this year’s opening gala concert.

Fitting, but perhaps also a little surprising, in that Scottish Opera has its hands full at the moment, with the revival of Don Giovanni newly opened in Glasgow and its own 60th anniversary season just announced. That meant the orchestra, conductor Stuart Stratford, and one of the quintet of young vocal talent on stage had been performing the previous evening in the Theatre Royal with only the smallest overlap in the repertoire they played in the Fair City.

That Don Giovanni duet, La ci darem la mano, teamed young mezzo Lea Shaw, who sings Zerlina in the touring production, with Jonathan McGovern, who takes over the title role from June 9. It opened a Mozart sequence that also featured Eleanor Dennis as the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro and McGovern duetting with Catriona Hewitson as the Magic Flute’s Papageno and Papagena.

After the interval, that section was mirrored by the music of Puccini where the Intermezzo from Manon Lescaut was bracketed by Hewitson singing O mio babbini caro from Gianni Schicchi and McGovern the very much less often heard Questo amor, vergogna mia from the composer’s early Edgar.

Neither of those parts of the substantial programme included the undoubted star of the evening, for all the quality of the singing throughout. Scotland’s Cardiff Singer of the World winner, Catriona Morison, was a compelling presence whenever she was on stage as well as being, with Stratford, an architect of the shape of the evening.

Her music was all in French and German, beginning with a sequence from Bizet’s Carmen that also involved Hewitson and Shaw as Frasquita and Mercedes, and then McGovern singing the Toreador’s song. Hewitson also partnered her in music from Massenet’s Werther and provided the Sandman to her Evening Hymn with Dennis as Hansel and Gretel. Those three also brought the programme to a close with music from Strauss’s Rosenkavalier which was, apparently, as much a treat for some members of the orchestra as the audience.

In fact the instrumentalists had the meatiest music of the night, in the instrumental interludes, in the appropriate opening fanfare of Shostakovich’s Festive Overture and then the Overture to Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, which began the second half. After all its trials and tribulations, the opera orchestra is currently at the top of its game.

For them, and for Perth Festival, this opening gala ticked a lot of boxes, and admirably included some more unusual music alongside the famous hits, even if that meant some tricky leaps in style, pace and tone, for the listener as much as the performers. Those structural flaws perhaps make it more difficult to berate the citizenry of Perth for failing to fill more of the seats.

Keith Bruce

Sponsored by Brewin Dolphin

Picture: Catriona Morison by Fraser Band