Good-natured glow

Almost everyone who has written about Vaughan Williams’s opera Sir John in Love has defensively insisted that we put all thoughts of Verdi’s Falstaff out of our minds because Vaughan Williams had something quite different in his mind. He knew all the going operatic versions of the play, including Nicolai’s (which is a minor masterpiece, as was demonstrated in Buxton last year), so he must — so the argument goes — have had something special and personal to contribute. We can accept all that, without agreeing that he succeeded in making a valuable addition to the repertoire. The two things that would seem a priori to count against his succeeding would be a general lack of talent for the theatre, as demonstrated in his other operas; and no particular penchant for comedy. In the event it turns out that he wrote a harmless and moderately melodious score, with nothing much in the way of characterisation, no clear focus of the action, and too many characters milling around.

A press note asked us to be aware of the slight delay in the display of surtitles (in themselves most welcome) ‘as this production is a comedy’. It is admittedly tiresome when audiences laugh before the appropriate line has been sung, but actually there was no danger at the Coliseum, where laughs or even smiles were at a premium. The main attribute of the opera is good nature, and it is manifest in the extremely typical orchestration, a warm glow from the pit suffusing much of the action. In itself it is a lovely sound, as we know from The Pilgrim’s Progress and the Fifth Symphony, in which works it reaches its apotheosis.

In Sir John it does seem at least odd to see a randy fat old buffer laying his plans and being humiliated while this refulgence continues — and the effect is hardly one of transfiguration.