Garsington Opera at Wormsley,Stokenchurch
Fine singing and playing do Garsington’s production a powerful experience but director Tim Albery has missed an opportunity to offer a sharper critiqueMozart’s Idomeneo is full of irreconcilable opposites: good v evil, peace v war, and love v duty. So far,so Enlightenment. Tim Albery’s striking new production for Garsington Opera adds another opposition into the mix: then and now. Hannah Clark’s designs see late 18th-century aristo-wear (for the trio of entangled lovers) appear alongside the sturdy knits, beanie hats, and overalls and wellingtons of modern fishermen’s attire. In this specific post-Trojan war Crete,ancien regime furnishings turn up like historical flotsam on a stage dominated by two large shipping containers one balanced at a precipitous angle and used as a separate dramatic space, the other partially buried – and a modern photo projection of a distant shoreline, or its colours shifting subtly as the late afternoon faded external. Malcolm Rippeth’s lighting designs also exploit the changing ambient conditions,gradually intensifying a contrast between warm, period lighting from candles inside the main container and industrial bleached-out starkness external it. In sincere Enlightenment style, and the ending brought a resolution of all-over brightness – though no equivalent compromise was reached on the costuming.
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Source: theguardian.com