UK Edition
Review
Candide review, Iford Arts: a banquet of delights
After more than 25 years, the summer season of opera at Iford Manor is coming to an end. The owners of the estate need their privacy back, and the opera’s producers Iford Arts have been asked to move on.
The success of the recent re-relocations of Garsington and Grange Park Opera should hearten them, but it won’t be easy to replicate the atmosphere of Iford’s exquisite gardens, originally designed by Harold Peto, or the adorable Italianate cloister in which perfomances are presented.
For this melancholy final season, Iford is going out all guns blazing with Handel’s Partenope and Madama Butterfly, as well as a tribute to centenarian Leonard Bernstein in the shape of his operetta Candide - an unruly problem child with disputed parentage (seven librettists contributed lyrics to its many different versions), but so full of charm, energy and wit that it just won’t lie down and die.
Iford has entrusted this tricky case to Jeff Clarke’s Opera della Luna, a small, low-budget outfit with a brilliant track record for drawing the zest and pith out of the lighter repertory – its G&S is legendary, and its version of Orpheus in the Underworld is without question the best I have ever witnessed.
This Candide has only one egregious fault. Running at close to three and a half hours with only one brief interval, it is simply too long by about thirty minutes.
I don’t know whether Bernstein’s estate forbids cuts, but the rambling second half with its relative dearth of strong numbers cries out for a pair of shears as Volatire’s picaresque plot drifts through its world tour before coming to rest with its tear-jerking call to “make our garden grow”.
Aside from prolixity, I can’t fault Clarke’s absolutely super staging. By dint of resourceful theatrical imagination he has managed to produce a witty, lavishly costumed spectacle on a shoe-string, and although the overall length may be wearisome, each of the 23 individual episodes is immaculately paced and sharply characterised, with due weight given to the darker moments.
Oliver Gooch leads the Orpheus Sinfonia in a zinging account of the glorious score, and a terrific cast of 14 multitasks with infectious enthusiasm: among them, David Horton nicely captures Candide’s ingenuous optimism, Paula Sides sings the socks off “Glitter and be gay” and Rosemary Ashe is a class act as the mono-buttocked Old Woman. You may end up feeling sated, but it’s a banquet of delights.
Until June 5. Tickets: 01225 868124; ifordarts.org.uk