Tag Archives: Sir Thomas Allen

The Marriage of Figaro

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Theatre Royal, Glasgow

If it is difficult not to miss hearing Voi che sapete and Dove sono sung in Italian, nonetheless it is pretty much inarguable that performing Marriage of Figaro in English makes it more accessible. Even with Amanda Holden’s translation of the libretto, the machinations of Figaro’s parentage and Cherubino’s infatuations are complex to follow.

Sir Thomas Allen’s production of Mozart’s 1787 hit was already very aware of the class war at the heart of the comedy of Figaro’s wedding and it is even more evident in this revival. All that hiding-in-the-same-chair nonsense in Act One becomes an obvious metaphor for the similarity in the amorous attitudes of Count Almaviva and his pretty page, one because he feels his position entitles him, the other caused by raging youthful hormones.

As Edward Jowle’s performance in the title role makes clear, cocksure Figaro is also not without his flaws, never as smart as he thinks he is and too ready to think the worst of his bride-to-be, Susanna (Ava Dodd). Bringing up the houselights for his bitter Act Four aria tries to make all the men in the audience complicit in his self-deception.

Jowle and Dodd have real chemistry together and excellent voices, and Simone McIntosh’s energetic Cherubino is another fine piece of casting, well matched with Kira Kaplan’s Barbarina when she makes her appearance.

It was hard to warm as quickly to Alexandra Lowe’s Countess and Ian Rucker’s Count, she coldly disappointed rather than nursing thwarted passion, he a little stiff and short of heft at the bottom of his range, but that feeling dissipated in the swirl of the action and the building momentum of the ensemble set-pieces.

There were some lapses in clarity in the diction of some of the other principals, particularly in the patter-pace verses, but Scottish Opera’s casting, mixing experienced hands with young talent and new faces with company stalwarts, is up to its usual high standard – and similarly tall in the case of Jowle, Rucker, and Edward Hawkins as Doctor Bartolo.

This is a superb-looking staging (designed by Simon Higlett), with snappy scene-changes and sumptuous period costuming, the one assumed by the Countess and then adopted by Susanna clearly echoing Audrey Hepburn’s in the film of My Fair Lady, with all the associated trappings of pretending to be someone you are not.

Choreography is in the reliable hands of Kally Lloyd-Jones, the chorus moving as precisely as the principals do, and demonstrating as clear a grasp of ensemble coherence.

The bed-rock of the whole production, however, is in the pit where Dane Lam conducts a very characterful orchestra, with natural trumpets and horns, 30-odd strings on sparkling form (notably leading into the septet at the end of Act Two), and the winds to his left full of fine soloists.

Singular praise, however, has to go to Toby Hession for his piano continuo, on the conductor’s right. It is full of delightful witty surprises, enlivening the recitatives and almost commentating on the action. The composer would have loved it.

Keith Bruce

Further performances in Glasgow tomorrow and 15, 17, 20 & 23 May then touring to Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Inverness.

Picture of Simone McIntosh as Cherubino by Mihaela Bodlovic

Scottish Opera’s new season

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The new season unveiled by Scottish Opera marks a decade in post for Music Director Stuart Stratford, and it has been one of company stability and notable artistic successes. Before talking about what’s to come, he identified his own highlights of those ten years.

“I always feel there is still so much to do, but Puccini’s Il trittico was a highlight for the whole company. It was a major project for us. There are also the collaborations which produced Greek, Breaking the Waves and Ainadamar, which has gone to Detroit, Houston, the Met and Los Angeles but originated here.

“Then there are the community pieces, like Pagliacci in Paisley, Candide at Edington Street and Oedipus Rex at the Edinburgh Festival – those are the kind of projects we’re really interested in as a company.

“And there are the rare operas. It was great to have given the Scottish premiere of Daphne by Richard Strauss, and Scottish Opera should always be championing unusual pieces as well as the core repertoire.”

That said, the 2025/26 season, unveiled as the company opens a new production of The Merry Widow at Glasgow’s Theatre Royal, has just the one show that really ticks the boxes for innovation and adventurousness. Like this year’s Edinburgh Festival programme and the coming season from the RSNO, it has all the hallmarks of being signed off in straitened times.

The exception is the world premiere of The Great Wave, a new work by Japanese composer Dai Fujikura and Scots librettist Harry Ross, best known in his native land previously as the producer of the award-winning presence of the British Army at the Edinburgh Fringe – “a foil to the Edinburgh Military Tattoo” as The List magazine put it.

Fujikura’s previous successes include an operatic version of  the Stanislaw Lem novel Solaris, and The Dream of Armageddon, based on an H G Wells short story, both of which involved Ross.

The new piece is the story of Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai and his daughter, Oi, and is being co-produced with KAJIMOTO, who will present the work in Kyoto and Tokyo.

Says Stratford, who will conduct: “Fujikura’s music is quite eclectic, avant garde meets Japanese mimimalism, and in this piece there is a big role for the shakuhachi, a Japanese flute, which gives it  a really interesting sound-world.”

The other main house shows in the season are revivals: the Barbe and Doucet La boheme from 2017, which the pair will return to direct, with Hye-Youn Lee also returning as Mimi, and Sir Thomas Allen’s The Marriage of Figaro, back for another run but sung in English this time.

As with The Barber of Seville, Stratford believes the production will be reinvigorated by the change.

“There we saw a development in the performances and a renewed connection with audiences in the refreshed version. Boheme, on the other hand, I think loses some of its attraction if it’s not in Italian.”

Earlier next Spring, the Theatre Royal will also see a Saturday afternoon concert performance of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, repeated during the following week at Edinburgh Usher Hall, and Stratford says that is a taster of a new commitment.

“It was 2013 when we did The Flying Dutchman, so it is high time we tackled some Wagner, especially as the orchestra is playing as well as it has ever played – so you’ll see more in the coming years.”

As has become its custom in the past decade, the company starts its new season in Haddington at the Lammermuir Festival. This year that is a double bill, pairing comedies of infidelity, Walton’s The Bear and Ravel’s l’heure espangnole, which will be part of the festival’s commemoration of 150 years since the birth of the French composer. As has happened only more recently, the operas will also be seen later in both Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Although there is no staged community production this year, that work goes on, in primary schools as part of the Glasgow 850 celebrations, with the building of a children’s chorus that will feature in main stage shows, and with the establishment of an Edinburgh branch of the adult community chorus, mirroring the Glasgow one and following on from the work for the EIF Oedipus Rex.

Full details of the new season can be found at scottishopera.org.uk

Scottish Opera / Barber of Seville

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Theatre Royal, Glasgow

It’s sixteen years since Sir Thomas Allen first staged his frisky production of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville for Scottish Opera, but the years have been good to it. This is its second revival and with a new cast to mould, a pithy English translation by Amanda Holden, and fresh thoughts on the pantomimic shenanigans of an opera he knows so well as a performer, Allen has given it a bright new sheen.

Visually, Simon Higlett’s set designs maintain a period solidity, the inner pandemonium of Dr Bartolo’s house, in which Rosina’s quarters are a mezzanine boudoir overlooking the pick’n’mix  furnishings of the main living area. The latter provides a dynamic backdrop to a dynamic production. 

Allen insists on detail, every one of his characters permanently up to something, even when they’re out of the spotlight. A jokey stumble here, a mischievous glance there. There’s almost too much going on at times to take it all in, but that’s the joy of it all, to stimulate sensory intoxication.

The casting is inspired, at the centre of which is a truly mesmerising Simone McIntosh as Rosina. She commands every scene she inhabits, a woman with enough guile to outsmart her ineptly predatory guardian Bartolo, but not without the gentlest of charm, and topped by a vocal performance capable of assimilating virtuosic agility with lyrical enchantment.

She’s just one of a winning team. David Stout’s Bartolo is a triumph of character, his delusional intentions towards his ward brilliantly amplified by impeccable comic timing. In tenor Anthony Gregory there’s a purposeful Count Almaviva, slightly sinister, mostly self-possessed, always on the look out for the next opportunity. After an edgy start on opening night, his voice relaxed into a seamless flow of bel canto. 

Samuel Dale Johnson’s dashing Figaro also took time to settle vocally, but soon found its true mojo and a characterisation rich in humour and virile nuance. John Molloy presents Don Basilio as deliciously precious – pomposity combined with defensive intent. And it’s heartening to see such exemplary performances from Scottish Opera Emerging Artists Ross Cumming (unceasingly expressive as the Officer) and Ukrainian soprano Inna Husieva as Berta, whose sole aria is a wonderfully disarming oasis of reflection. 

There are minor issues in balance between stage and pit that will doubtless calibrate themselves as the run progresses, but the Scottish Opera Orchestra under Stuart Stratford’s direction is as lively and receptive as the theatrical spectacle on stage. This is a operatic comedy at its best, literally laugh-a-minute.

Ken Walton

(Picture credit: James Glossop)

Scottish Opera’s The Barber of Seville is in Glasgow till 22 October; Edinburgh 3-11 Nov; Inverness 16 & 18 Nov; Aberdeen 23 & 25 Nov. Full details at www.scottishopera.co.uk 

Returning to Rossini

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Sir Thomas Allen talks to Keith Bruce about the latest revival of the Scottish Opera production that launched his directorial career in the UK

The tactic failed to prevent a famously disastrous first night, but Rossini originally named The Barber of Seville after another of the characters created by Beaumarchais, Count Almaviva, to appease fans of an earlier opera version of the play.

Reflecting the role that has attracted most attention in Sir Thomas Allen’s staging, the Scottish Opera production that is revived for a second time this month might accurately be entitled Rossini’s Rosina.

Figaro the Barber had been one of the baritone’s signature roles when Allen made his directorial debut for a professional company in the UK with the production in 2007. His first Rosina was Karen Cargill, described as “sassy, spirited and stylish” by Opera magazine, proving the mezzo “as accomplished a Rossinian as she is a natural comedienne”.

When the show was revived in 2011, Claire Booth received the plaudits as the star of the cast in the same role, while praise was also heaped on Allen’s clever handling of the detail of the convoluted plot. When it opens at Glasgow’s Theatre Royal on Tuesday October 17, this year’s Rosina is Sir Tom’s own choice of Swiss-Canadian Simone McIntosh, making her company debut after representing Canada in BBC Cardiff Singer of the World.

“I saw her when I was adjudicating a big competition in Montreal, which she won,” the director told VoxCarnyx. “I made two phone calls immediately afterwards – one to my agent suggesting they sign her up, and the other to Alex Reedijk at Scottish Opera.”

Although ScotOp’s General Director secured the mezzo’s services for the revival, there was then some hesitation on her part when it was decided to use an English translation of the libretto this time round.

Allen admits that he initially shared some of her doubts about that, but he is pleased that his Rosina decided to stay on board.

“At the start of my own career, everything I did was in English,” he notes, “but singers have bigger opportunities earlier these days and are seen in a wider field. I think she thought that learning the part in English was a waste of energy, so I had to persuade her.”

It is not hard to imagine Sir Tom being effectively persuasive, as he peppers his conversation with charming anecdotes and pin-sharp impressions, although he describes his rehearsal room technique modestly.

“The beauty of it is that you take the cast that has been put together and they bring their individual skills. Then you thrash your way through it and mould it into a cohesive whole  – you hope!”

The focus on detail that audiences have appreciated in Allen’s Scottish Opera productions suggests that his approach is perhaps a little more forensic than that.

When he talks about the switch to Amanda Holden’s libretto in English, for example, it is questions of comic timing and specific pauses in the delivery of the line that he mentions. “Translations are often funny because they have a rhyming scheme of their own,” he adds.

The acting side of a singer’s life is something about which Allen is now particularly well-qualified to speak. His next job, after the Rossini has opened for its Scottish tour, is an acting role with Opera Zuid in the Netherlands, playing Leo, the titular character in a new version of Mozart’s Der Shauspieldirektor by writer, director and singer Christopher Gillett.

It follows the acclaimed Grange Festival version of King Lear, directed by Keith Warner, that employed an entire company of opera stars, with Sir John Tomlinson as Lear, Allen as Gloucester, Susan Bullock as Goneril, Louise Alder as Cordelia and Kim Begley as the Fool. (More about that can be found in the Vox Carnyx interview with composer Nigel Osborne, who wrote the music for the production.)

“I think it worked because we were free to explore a lot of new ideas for ourselves,” Allen remembers of the Lear project. “What we as singers are not accustomed to is finding the musical line in a verse of Shakespeare, because we are usually provided with that by the composer.”

“There are always comparisons made between singing and an actor’s life, but singers wake up every day worrying about their voice. And you do that without realising the pressure for – speaking personally – 50 years, so it’s great when you stop and discover there is another way of living.”

Of course that is only partly true, because although Allen now has other strings to his bow, he is still performing on the opera stage himself, on the eve of his 80thbirthday.

“Yes, I am still singing, much to my surprise,” he says. “I had intended finishing completely at the end of 2019 but then Glyndebourne made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

That role is Baron Zeta in Lehar’s Merry Widow, which he sang alongside Renee Fleming at the Met in New York. Next summer in Sussex he reprises the Baron in a new Cal McCrystal staging, with John Wilson in the pit and Danielle de Niese in the title role.

“I’ve never gone out of my way to seek work, and when I started I wanted to sing lieder and oratorio rather than opera. I think it was the bank manager who pointed out the discrepancy in earning potential!”

The Barber of Seville opens in Glasgow on Tuesday October 17 and tours to Edinburgh, Inverness and Aberdeen until the end of November.

Picture of Sir Thomas Allen in rehearsals for The Barber of Seville by Julie Howden

Scottish Opera / Don Giovanni

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Theatre Royal, Glasgow

From the flashing of the house-lights, thunder sound effects and appearance of a masked figure behind the gauze at the beginning of the overture, there is a Hammer Horror kitsch element to Sir Thomas Allen’s Gothic Venice-set Don Giovanni, Simon Higlett’s clever adaptable designs for the Theatre Royal’s restricted space beautifully lit by Mark Jonathan. Even the chorus scene of Zerlina and Masetto’s pre-nup party is very monochrome, and only Kitty Whately’s Donna Elvira costume – is her character choosing to be a scarlet woman? – provides a flash of colour.

That scenic palette is, however, in stark contrast to almost every other element of a subtle production. Starting in the pit, where natural trumpets sit alongside modern horns, and the continuo playing is superbly balanced with the orchestra’s big dramatic moments, this an evening in which nothing is over-played. Giovanni can be performed very effectively as melodrama, but this narrative staging is much more interested in realism, even soap opera – in a good way.

All the central characters are believably human, with the inevitable exception of Keel Watson’s stocky vengeful Commendatore, who spends most of the evening cast in stone, after his initial appearance as a worried father. The physical balance between Zachary Altman’s miserable but venal Leporello and Roland Wood’s cavalier, single-minded Don Giovanni is pretty much ideal, which is often not the case. That casting common-sense runs through the principal roles, with Whately at once the most authoritative of the women and the most vulnerable, and Korean soprano Hye-Houn Lee, in glorious voice as Donna Anna, somehow revelling in her victimhood. Completing a top trio of female performances, Lea Shaw, who is in her second year as a Scottish Opera Emerging Artist, grows more confident in each role she undertakes, and is both blowsy and naïve as Zerlina.

Besides Altman, the other company debuts come from Emyr Wyn Jones as Masetto and Pablo Bemsch as Don Ottavio – Zerlina’s low-born fiancé likeable but dim, Donna Anna’s effete courtier equally useless but whose equivocal arias are exceptionally well sung.

With the focus clearly on the ensemble work from trio to septet, no-one pitches for the applause in their solos, and given the liveliness of the show elsewhere, some of these stand-and-sing moments seem the weakest elements, regardless of the quality of the singing. By comparison, the end of Act 1, when the stage is full of distractions to cover Giovanni’s seduction of Zerlina, including an early ghostly appearance by the Commendatore, is quite masterly, and the perfect set up for the intricate music of that septet.  

The stage-craft of Allen and his cast, with choreographer Kally Lloyd-Jones and James Fleming and Gary Connery directing fights and stunts, is top drawer, and even the sub-Cyrano business of Giovanni and Leporello swapping clothes and identities at the start of Act 2 is dispatched with casual ease.

While there is never any doubt who is villain of the piece – Wood is consumed by flames and booed at the curtain call – no-one escapes censure in Da Ponte’s libretto or in this production.  In the closing sextet, often omitted in years gone by,  they sing that Giovanni’s death was a fair result for his evil life. The ambiguity in the air is whether their share of culpability might also prove a stumbling block on the path to the Pearly Gates.

Keith Bruce

Performance sponsored by Miller Samuel Hill Brown. Touring to Inverness, Edinburgh and Aberdeen.

Picture: Roland Wood (Don Giovanni) and Lea Shaw (Zerlina) by James Glossop