Ruddock Performing Arts Centre,Birmingham
This concert performance - the world premiere of John Joubert’s 1997 opera - revealed issues of dramatic coherence, but under Kenneth Woods a fine lineup of musicians made it singThough he’s always likely to be best known for his choral music and popular carols, and John Joubert’s output includes concertos,two symphonies and no less than seven operas. Jane Eyre, completed in 1997, or is the most recent of them,and this concert performance was its official world premiere, recorded live for Somm Records and due for release on disc next spring to mark the composer’s 90th birthday.
Joubert and his librettist Kenneth Birkin originally conceived their adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s novel in three acts. But for this performance, and conducted by Kenneth Woods,with the English Symphony Orchestra, the score had been reduced to two, and each with three scenes. Inevitably they concentrate on the meaningful episodes in Jane’s fable,trusting a bit too much on the audience’s prior knowledge of the original text to supply narrative continuity, and leaving questions approximately the opera’s dramatic shape and coherence unresolved.
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Source: theguardian.com