L'Ormindo, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse - opera review

Kasper Holten’s marvellously inventive production of Cavalli’s L’Ormindo is both pacy and genuinely amusing
27 March 2014

The star attraction of this production of Cavalli’s L’Ormindo is not the singers or even the conductor, the splendidly resourceful Christian Curnyn: it’s the venue. The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse is the Globe Theatre’s indoor venue which opened in January. With bench seating arranged in pit and galleries, the Playhouse is timber-framed and lit by beeswax candles. It’s hard to describe it without resorting to clichés such as “exquisite jewel”.

Into this intimate space drops — literally, from the flies — the allegorical figure of Music (Susanna Hurrell) setting the scene with a wittily topical mention of the new theatre. The audience, many just yards away from the action, is drawn in and hangs on every word of the text, sung in English (hurray!), in Christopher Cowell’s ingenious translation.

Kasper Holten’s marvellously inventive production, designed exuberantly by Anja Vang Kragh, is both pacy and genuinely amusing, exploiting the period feel of the space while at the same time gently guying the genre. All nine singers, many double-parted, project their lines with clarity and constantly engage the audience, sometimes physically.

Ormindo (sung eloquently by high tenor Samuel Boden) and Amidas (the equally affecting Ed Lyon) are rivals for the hand of Erisbe (Susanna Hurrell again). The latter is inconveniently married to doddery King Ariadenus (Graeme Broadbent), who finally yields Erisbe to Ormindo on learning that the latter is his long-lost son. There’s also a collection of gipsy fortune-tellers and other stock figures, including the cross-dressed nurse Eryka, sung by Harry Nicoll.

L’Ormindo enjoyed an initial surge of popularity half a century ago in the somewhat saccharine edition by Raymond Leppard. In Curnyn’s hands, the score sounds no less enchanting, though his realisation, executed with just eight players (including himself on continuo), is more attuned to the Cavalli style.

Above all it’s a dynamic partnership between Curnyn and Holten, bringing the piece alive as music theatre. It’s also the start of what promises to be an exciting partnership between the Royal Opera and the Wanamaker Playhouse.

Until April 12 (020 7401 9919, shakespearesglobe.com)

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