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Handsome … Samuel Barber’s Vanessa at Wexford Festival Opera.
Handsome … Samuel Barber’s Vanessa at Wexford Festival Opera. Photograph: Clive Barda/ArenaPAL
Handsome … Samuel Barber’s Vanessa at Wexford Festival Opera. Photograph: Clive Barda/ArenaPAL

Herculanum/Vanessa review – Wexford makes a strong case for Barber's uneven opera

This article is more than 7 years old

National Opera House, Wexford
The Wexford festival opened with two contrasting works. Félicien David’s overblown opera about the eruption of Vesuvius was the less distinctive

The first two operas of Wexford’s 2016 festival could scarcely be more different. Félicien David’s Herculanum is an overblown mid-19th-century French grand opera with all the trimmings (though here, the ballet is cut), while Samuel Barber’s Vanessa is an elusive piece of nostalgic late-Romanticism, subtly scored and essentially intimate.

Herculanum is set in a fictionalised version of the ancient Roman town Herculaneum in the period leading up to its burial by Vesuvius, whose AD79 eruption brings the action to a spectacular close. In 1859, Parisian critics, Hector Berlioz among them, found its visuals thrilling.

Simon Bailey and Daniela Pini in Félicien David’s Herculanum. Photograph: Clive Barda/ArenaPAL

These days we’re used to cinematic special effects that outdo anything stage budgets could come up with – as with the rest of the show, though, director Stephen Medcalf, designer Jamie Vartan and videographers Ted Moran and Shadowlab produce something respectable. Vartan’s Empire-style court costumes are particularly elegant.

A strong team of singers attempts to flesh out stock roles. Daniela Pini flounces regally as the pagan queen Olympia, with Simon Bailey seizing whatever opportunities David gives him as her wicked brother Nicanor, who turns into Satan halfway through. Olga Busuioc and Andrew Haji are memorable as their Christian victims, with the latter’s delicate tenor marking him out as a potential star.

But despite focused advocacy from conductor Jean-Luc Tingaud and the Wexford forces, the score lacks distinctiveness and this feels like a long evening.

Claire Rutter as Vanessa and Michael Brandenburg as Anatol in Vanessa. Photograph: Clive Barda/ArenaPAL

Barber’s Vanessa is incomparably more sophisticated, and conductor Timothy Myers points up its numerous subtleties. Director Rodula Gaitanou and designer Cordelia Chisholm move the action – usually set in a grand house in an unspecified northern country around 1905 – forward to the period of the opera’s composition, the 1950s, with no harm done. The result is a handsome show that makes an impressive case for an uneven piece.

Claire Rutter’s deluded heroine is delivered with forthright tone and sensitively complemented by Carolyn Sproule as her niece Erika, the second family victim of the superficially charming Anatol, who is convincingly represented by Michael Brandenburg. But it’s Rosalind Plowright as the Old Baroness, the elderly matriarch who has Anatol’s measure from the start, who walks off with both vocal and acting honours.

  • At National Opera House, Wexford. Herculanum is in rep until 4 November; Vanessa until 5 November. Box office: +353 53 912 2144. Herculanum is broadcast live on Radio 3 on 28 October.

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