Michael Tanner

Northern lights

It’s been too long since I saw The Merry Widow. I have been thinking that for some time, and the superb new production of it by Opera North only made me feel that we should be able to go to more performances of it than we get a chance to. It has been newly and wittily translated by Kit Hesketh-Harvey, and the production is in the safe hands of Giles Havergal, with set and costume designs by Leslie Travers.

It’s been too long since I saw The Merry Widow. I have been thinking that for some time, and the superb new production of it by Opera North only made me feel that we should be able to go to more performances of it than we get a chance to. It has been newly and wittily translated by Kit Hesketh-Harvey, and the production is in the safe hands of Giles Havergal, with set and costume designs by Leslie Travers.

It’s been too long since I saw The Merry Widow. I have been thinking that for some time, and the superb new production of it by Opera North only made me feel that we should be able to go to more performances of it than we get a chance to. It has been newly and wittily translated by Kit Hesketh-Harvey, and the production is in the safe hands of Giles Havergal, with set and costume designs by Leslie Travers.

In this economic climate nowhere but the Royal Opera would be able to mount a lavish production, but Travers, clearly working closely with Havergal, cleverly manages to suggest glamour, which is indispensable in this piece. At the same time, the rather pinched nature of the glamour — very obviously two-dimensional chandeliers, for instance — gives an accurate indication of the state of Pontevedro’s finances. There is a slightly moth-eaten quality about the Pontevedrians’ clothes, too, except for Hanna — when she enters she brings with her a sense of wealth and style, if not exactly of class. I don’t know if it is a planned effect, but Stefanie Corley’s Hanna looks marvellous, but when she speaks she sounds a bit common, and when she sings it is with a soubrettish, mildly acid tone.

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