A number of familiar faces around me in the stalls showed that I am far from alone in journeying from Oxford to the glorious Peak District and the delights of the annual Buxton Festival. Well-judged programming made it possible to see, as I did, the three principal opera productions — all unusual and imaginative choices — on consecutive evenings. It was a matter of regret, however, that the disappointing one was Handel’s Jephtha , with Harry Christophers conducting the Orchestra of the Sixteen, an outfit with strong Oxford links.
Musically, there was little to carp at. Soprano Susan Bickley was in superb voice reprising the role of Jephtha’s wife Storge, which she sang to great acclaim for WNO in Oxford and Milton Keynes, when Mark Padmore (see above) was in the title role. Buxton saw James Gilchrist (above) — excellent in the work’s big number, Waft Her, Angels — as the Israelite general, with Gillian Keith sounding good as daughter (and potential victim of sacrifice) Iphis.
Alas, director Frederic Wake-Walker’s staging, which repeatedly showed us the singers on a concert platform, seemed designed constantly to remind us that the work is an oratorio. Garbing the hard-working chorus in black, with big ruffs at the neck and stockings over their heads, seemed merely perverse.
Boos from some quarters during the curtain call struck me as ill-mannered as the constant chattering from some members of the audience during the orchestral interludes that divide the 13 scenes of Richard Strauss’s filmic account of an episode in his family life that is his Intermezzo . These passages supply much of the opera’s delicious melody, and were superbly delivered by the Northern Chamber Orchestra, conducted by festival director Stephen Barlow.
Janis Kelly gave a wonderful performance as the frightening Christine Torch, convinced that composer husband Robert (Stephen Gadd) is having an affair. Meanwhile, she comes close to one herself with an exploitative aristocrat (Andrew Kennedy).
We were off to the nursery, set wise, for the third festival offering, a pairing of Sibelius’s The Maiden in the Tower with Rimsky-Korsakov’s equally rarely seen one-acter Kashchei the Immortal .
Both mightily melodic, as conductor Stuart Stratford demonstrated, the works each feature an imprisoned woman. In the Sibelius Kate Ladner was victim of an odious bailiff’s son (Owen Gilhooly); in the Rimsky-Korsakov she was held captive (above) by a malicious sorcerer (Richard Berkeley-Steele). Each was a rare treat.