A sort of "jolly good chaps and let's build a bridge," Mr Searle said in his first broadcast interview for three decades.The humorist said that the railway was seen rather as a source of national shame with British officers assigning any troublemakers in their number to keep them out of the way, The Sunday Telegraph reports.Mr Searle began work on the railway in 1943 after he and two other prisoners began producing a magazine to keep up the PoWs' morale. Poor, brutalised Sesto is Kirchschlager's first Handel role, and what a revelation it is to hear such an uninhibited and distinctive musician sing these arias under William Christie's authoritative direction. From the propulsive sea-sprayed overture to the plaintive flute obbligato of Cornelia's Priva son d'ogni conforto and the glorious horn solo in Caesar's Va, tacito, this is a dramatic performance from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.a.picard independent.co.ukTo 20 August, 01273 813813. What makes it even weirder, for me, is the fact that SFA have chosen the Memorial Hall, whose boards my eight-year-old self twice trod as a junior member of the Barry Arts Centre, in Treasure Island and A Christmas Carol.The "Memo" is also the scene where real teenage dramas were acted out at the youth disco. (Who is that cute girl in the polka-dot ra-ra, dancing to Dexys? And why is Emma sat in my lap, when Karen's the one I want? Angst!) And here I am again two decades later watching Gruff Rhys, Huw Bunford, Cian Ciaran, Dafydd Ieuan and Guto Pryce walking out in neon yellow radiation suits (Gruff with added red crash helmet, jamming the mic in through the visor-hole), to road-test their forthcoming album, Love Kraft. "Surreal" doesn't begin to describe it.There's been precious little advertising save for one canvas banner strapped to the side of the Memo itself, but there has been enough word-of-mouth to fill the hall, and hear exclusive premieres of tracks such as "Frequency", "Lazer Beam" and "Zoom" introduced with winsome simplicity and deadpan literal-ness ("This is a song about cloud-shaped berries - and it's called 'Cloudberries'").SFA's genius has always been in realising that stoner rock music is all well and good, but hey, let's see what happens when you make pure pop music on drugs. Both are miraculously returned to life at the end of the opera.Bardon's gravity, Kirchschlager's intensity, and Connolly's sincerity and sustained beauty of tone make for the most satisfying and meaningful moments in what is otherwise an entertaining, if shallow, production.
Dumaux's steely, brittle counter-tenor is ideal for Tolomeo (here played as the evil twin to Big Brother's belly-dancing transvestite Kemal), while Maltman makes easy work of the grotesque Achilla. Which leaves Patricia Bardon (Cornelia), Angelika Kirchschlager (Sesto), and Sarah Connolly (Caesar) in the difficult position of looking variously wounded, traumatised, and noble for several hours, while Christophe Dumaux (Tolomeo), Christopher Maltman (Achilla), and Danielle De Niese (Cleopatra) have lots of fun playing Mr Mad, Mr Bad, and Ms Dangerous to Know.For De Niese, last seen as N?ne in Jos?ontalvo and Dominique Hervieu's production of Les Paladins at the Barbican, this is a career-making showcase. V'adoro, pupille, with its silken on-stage accompaniment of violins, viola, cello, gamba, lute, harp, oboe and bassoon, is as intimate as a kiss, Da tempesta as bold as a slap. Though light of voice, she is a persuasive seductress: shimmying her way through Cleopatra's arias as flapper, odalisque, amazon, and queen, with lithe coloratura and stylish phrasing. As in Faust, Carmen, and Rigoletto, it is the vamps and thugs that attract McVicar's, and therefore our, attention: cracking bull-whips, playing footsie, and using Pompey's funeral urn as an umbrella stand.
(By the final act, the tall ships on the horizon have become aircraft carriers.) But McVicar merely toys with these issues, and offers archetypes instead of characters. Remember Madama Butterfly and The Rape of Lucretia? The days when this director invested serious intellectual energy into his more honourable characters are seemingly gone. Camp, colourful, and with more than a hint of Carry On sensibility, it is Handel made-over for those who'd normally favour Die Fledermaus. Designers Robert Jones (sets) and Brigitte Reiffenstuel (costumes) have plundered several centuries, empires, and art-forms for eye-catching details to charm, beguile, and distract. Fellini-esque waves wink like candy-canes on the Alexandria shoreline, fezzes collide with topis, jodhpurs brush against harem pants. The frigid columns of Caesar's camp melt into the billowing veils of a silent movie seraglio, while the movements of the principals and extras are as intricately stylised as a Bollywood routine Motifs of colonialism and orientalism are everywhere. David McVicar's flamboyant new production of Giulio Cesare - remarkably the first staging of this opera at Glyndebourne, and therefore the first in this country to be performed with period instruments - falls firmly into the second category. Statement productions come in two forms at Glyndebourne: those that are a truly innovative and arresting marriage of repertoire to realisation, and those that are simply a far classier version of what is already available elsewhere.
