Mozart – Apollo and Hyacinth, 2007
(an education project with Queen’s College)
Press reviews
a delightful, spirited
evening
Opera
Queen’s College, with an exclusive address in London’s Harley Street, is a school founded in 1848 for the purpose of providing ‘general female education’. Happily that, nowadays, includes staging opera. And what better for a girls’ school to stage (besides Dido and Aeneas, perhaps) than Mozart’s first bona fide effort in the genre? He composed Apollo and Hyacinthus in 1767, at the ripe old age of 11 for a student performance at Salzburg University. As one might expect, the characters are none too deeply drawn, and the drama is a bit clumsy – almost childish, one might say. But some of the music is amazing, to the extent that it would indeed be very surprising if some of it were not the result of Mozart’s pushy parent, Leopold, lending a helping hand. The phrasing, the subtle sense of tension and release, betray depths of feeling that no 11-year-old, not even the divine Wolfgang Amadeus, could possibly possess.
This was the third educational collaboration between Bampton Classical Opera and Queen’s College, and the first to result in a fully-fledged production. It was given in a sometimes slightly clumsy English translation by Gilly French and Jeremy Gray – well-spoken girls singing about ‘attitude’ in recitative doesn’t quite work. There was one professional singer, the tenor Tom Raskin as Oebalus. Hard to be the one mature singer amid a cast of inexperienced adolescents, however innately good they might be, but he made a reasonable fist of it, though he did not seem at ease playing the blind man, as Oebalus is until Apollo cures him. It was plain that there had been little time spent honing the part in Jeremy Gray’s straightforward, simple and gently humorous production.
Innately good the adolescents were too, attacking with remarkable confidence and even more remarkable expertise all the difficulties thrown at them by the Mozarts. Deborah Brougham, as Melia, showed every indication of being the new Emma Kirkby if she should chose to follow that path. Katya Farkas, as Apollo, strutted proudly around as all gods should and sang with remarkable confidence. As Zephyr, Hyacinth’s assassin, Katie Danaher winningly summoned a conspiratorial sensibility. Theodora Hand’s singing of Hyacinth made us regret that the character is rendered mute by his death after only one act. And Theodora de Jasay danced the role of Hyacinth’s Spirit beautifully. There was excellent work from the school’s chamber choir, whilst the mostly neat and well-paced playing from Bampton’s instrumental group under French’s direction completed the recipe for what was a delightful, spirited evening. Now let’s see what Bampton can do for an inner-city comprehensive.
