Don Carlo at Grange Park Opera review: Bravo for the beggar's opera (are you watching ENO?)

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Don Carlo 

Grange Park Opera, Hampshire                                                          Until July 10

Rating:

Don Carlo is the last staged production Wasfi Kani will present at Hampshire’s Grange, home to Grange Park Opera since 1998. The company’s founder begins again at Surrey’s West Horsley Place next summer, with a real coup: Joseph Calleja singing his first Cavaradossi in Puccini’s Tosca.

The indefatigable Wasfi is more than half way to raising the £10 million for her new ‘Theatre in the Woods’, seating 650 and modelled on the four-tier horseshoe shape of La Scala in Milan. Meanwhile, the owners of the Grange have launched a new opera festival under the direction of the counter-tenor Michael Chance, to begin next summer.

This Don Carlo shows how far Grange Park Opera has come since 1998. It’s a generally excellent performance of arguably Verdi’s most ambitious opera. 

The title role is played by the veteran Stefano Secco. He’s not a heroic figure but this experienced and accomplished Verdian does really well

It was once said of Il Trovatore that it required nothing beyond the four best singers in the world, and Don Carlo isn’t far behind in the demands it makes.

The title role is played by the veteran Stefano Secco. He’s not a heroic figure but this experienced and accomplished Verdian does really well. 

As does Clive Bayley as King Philip, with David Stout a strongly sung Rodrigo. Only Virginia Tola’s Queen Elizabeth is a bit pallid. But Ruxandra Donose, a Covent Garden regular, is star casting as Princess Eboli. 

And though some find him slow, conductor Gianluca Marciano offers a persuasive account of Verdi’s great score, extremely well played by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

With a sympathetic production from Jo Davies, and atmospheric sets by Leslie Travers, Grange Park can leave on a high, with only a concert performance of Tristan & Isolde to come. 

For this, Wasfi has one of the pre-eminent Wagner sopranos of our time, Anja Kampe as Isolde, to banish memories of English National Opera’s recent disastrous casting of an inexperienced young American for arguably opera’s most demanding female role. Yet ENO gets the government subsidy, not Grange Park.

I first caught up with Grange Park in 1999, when the theatre was a mere shell compared to now. Shamefully, I fled a stolid Handel opera at half-time, but still well remember a door on the set being shut by someone pulling on some frayed rope. It’s hard not to marvel at the progress since then.

Onwards and upwards to West Horsley Place, which is much nearer to London and a major railway station, and where 50 cheap seats will be made available every night to encourage young opera-goers.

Lisa Friend

Cinema Affair, Silva Screen                                                                         out now

Rating:

Lisa Friend is a remarkable flautist, from an intensely musical family. Her father, Rodney, was leader of the London Philharmonic and also the New York Philharmonic. 

And it was listening to the New Yorkers playing movie music as a child that first got her hooked. Here Lisa plays a dozen arrangements of film tunes, some well known, others not. 

She shows her admiration for Ennio Morricone, which I share, by playing two pieces from Cinema Paradiso, and the haunting Deborah’s Theme from Once Upon A Time In America. 

Lisa Friend is a remarkable flautist, from an intensely musical family. Her father, Rodney, was leader of the London Philharmonic and also the New York Philharmonic

She is partnered by the Prague Philharmonic, and not the least of the attractions of this delicious disc, full of the most beautiful sounds, is the quality of the recording. It’s a bit short weight at just over 40 minutes but the beauty of her playing, and the sophistication of the arrangements, put this album right at the top of the movie-music class. 

Morricone maniacs please note, Milan Records has just rereleased a 2002 album, Jubilee (★★★★★), not previously available over here, of Morricone conducting 23 of his finest inspirations from the almost 500 movies he has scored in his long career, which continues. 

Unmissable.