Magnificent Martinu

If you're near London, have an interest in opera, and have not seen it yet, I'd thoroughly recommend catching the last performance of "The Greek Passion" at ROH on Friday. Despite never having heard any Martinu opera (there are apparently 14 of them), I went along last night and enjoyed every minute of it. The design and production was wonderful - I was wondering where I'd last seen the same kind of thing until I looked at the credits and saw it was Pountney/Lazaridis, and echoes of the glory days of early '80s ENO (but with more money to spend). There's a rather poor photo of the opening scene here, along with a synopsis. They make excellent use of the multilevel set, and the whole stage rotates very slowly during the 2nd act allowing some excellent scenes of trekking through and setting up home on a barren hillside. It's possibly not an unequivocal recco if you've never been to an opera before (it doesn't have the heart on sleeve drama of Puccini), but the gradual transformation of the villagers into their passion characters really does grip you as the opera progresses.

Mackerras worked his magic on Czech music again (although as he says, it's a bit more Italian than Czech). The genre varies quite a bit, from some Greek folk, through some angular passages verging on the Janacek to some lush neo-romanticism. Timothy Robinson was excellent in his supporting role, Peter Sidhom similarly as the village priest, and Chris Ventris as the lead tenor was suitably ardent. Robert Lloyd and Willard White provided their usual commanding but slightly past-it gravitas!

It seems it's far from a big draw (surprise, surprise) and there were planty of seats available on half-price standby yesterday: I got a front row (restricted leg-room) amphitheatre ticket for £18 by turning up at 4pm and there were plenty of amphitheatre seats left in the performance. (I'll probably be going to The Tojans at ENO on Sunday - it's done so rarely you have to go, although the reviews for when it was done in two halves last season indicated it was execrable)