A Feast In The Time Of Plague review: Lively, accessible, but in no sense backward-looking

A Feast In The Time Of Plague starring Susan Bullock at the Grange Park Opera is lively, accessible, but in no sense backward-looking

A Feast In The Time Of Plague

Grange Park Opera

Rating:

A Feast In The Time Of Plague is terrific; a contemporary opera that’s easy on the ear but never facile, with a storyline based on a Pushkin sketch that manages to combine death with humour. 

It shares with Garsington the honour of being the first opera performance in a theatre since lockdown. Well ahead, needless to say, of English National Opera and Covent Garden. 

This is also the first – and presumably the only – opera to be commissioned during lockdown. These sad circumstances inspired veteran David Pountney to come up with the libretto while on lockdown in Wales.

The opera is lively, accessible, but in no sense backward-looking, and with some marvellous burlesque, such as Susan Bullock’s (above as Claire the Clairvoyant) patter song

The opera is lively, accessible, but in no sense backward-looking, and with some marvellous burlesque, such as Susan Bullock’s (above as Claire the Clairvoyant) patter song

‘The virus exposes truths about all of us in surprising ways,’ he writes. ‘The opera captures this – as well as the essential lesson that we must carry on laughing.’ He finished his bit in June, handing it over to the 25-year-old Alex Woolf, who completed the 90-minute score in six weeks.

It’s lively, accessible, but in no sense backward-looking, and with some marvellous burlesque, such as Susan Bullock’s patter song. She’s supported by a roster of respected names, such as Simon Keenlyside, and Clive Bayley as Death, whose impeccable diction shows up several colleagues.

But that would be my only criticism of an entertainment full of good things, like the vampish Elena (Claire Booth) dragging the playboy Antoine (Keenlyside) off stage in a flurry of passion. 

She returns but he doesn’t. He died happy, she assures the audience, and I believe her.

Mystic Mellor confidently predicts a bright future for Alex Woolf. I hope his opera will get a fully staged production at a future festival, complete with surtitles.

And with an orchestra this time, though Woolf’s piano playing is, like the piece itself, full of character.

A Feast In The Time Of Plague will be available to watch online at grangeparkopera.co.uk later this month 

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