Nina (1789)
Press reviews
from Opera Magazine
Bampton Classical Opera summer productions are staged al fresco in a delightful village deanery garden just south of Witney, Oxfordshire. No strimmers from grousing neighbours. Swallows, and later bats, flit. The adjacent church spire looms impressively. A solitary chestnut mare clops by. It’s take-your-own-seating and (optional) champagne. A tented gazebo prevents the orchestral sound getting diffused, focussing wind and brass – through marginally cramping the strings. Thanks to intelligent stage positioning and enfolding hedges, the voices carry well, despite a small measure of directional loss.
Rare 18th century fare is a Bampton speciality, and for this reason alone it deserves recognition. This year’s offering, Paisiello’s Nina, proved several notches up on last season’s visually good but marginally amateurish staging of Arne’s Alfred, whose vocal impact hinged largely on Michelle Harris’s gustily projected Prince Edward. Harris, who sang Nina here, has an assured stage presence and marked strengths in the mezzo range, slightly tailing off in upper registers in the title role’s Act 1 arias. Paisiello’s forlorn tale – reworked by his regular collaborator, Giambattista Lornezi, from a French original – of a girl driven mad by her father’s intransigence and her true love’s apparent demise in a duel (happily her reclaiming beau resurfaces to beef up Act 2 with some effective duets) is frankly sentimental stuff. It was first seen in 1789, Celeste Coltellini taking the title role, and retained its popular appeal for half a century, into the 1830’s. The lack of a sub-plot renders it a pretty monochrome melodrama, though the lightweight melodic charm Mozart admired in Paisiello (1740-1816) is certainly there in abundance.
Jeremy Gray’s tidy and compact production, imaginatively updated to a 1930’s hospital setting, worked well thanks to intelligent consistency in sets, props and costumes and a well-marshalled chorus impressively free of overacting. The extended recitative was fluently delivered, if occasionally a bit protracted. The opera’s main strength lay in some pithy second-half exchanges between Harris’s Nina and Howard Kirk as Lindoro, her restored boyfriend; in the pathetic gradual stages by which she comes to her senses and recognizes him; and in a pair of cheerfully sung arias from Justin Harmer as Giorgio, the excitable valet-chauffeur (a real 1934 Rolls Royce was drummed into service), and Amanda Pitt as Nina’s flustering governess, Susanna. The translation by Jeremy Gray and Gilly French, came across well. Guy Hopkins conducted.
Roderic Dunnett
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from 'Opera Now'
Bampton Classical Opera, annually based outdoors in an Oxfordshire village, specialises in reviving rare 18th centuary fare. Lesser Mozart, Arne (Alfred), Gazzaniga (Don Giovanni), and this summer Paisiello (Nina) have all benefited. The talents of Giovanni Paisiello (1740-1816) were drummed into the service of Russia, Naples and Napoleonic France. With 80-plus comic and tragic operas to his name, he ranked high among stage composers of his day. Mozart rated his strengths, which included a marked melodic gift, charm and an able collaborator and librettist in Giambattista Lorenzi. So where are all Paisiello’s operas now?
Nina, first seen in 1789 with Celeste Coltellini in the title role, enjoyed favour longer than most. With its rather monochrome, sentimental though touching tale of a girl driven mad by paternal intransigence and her fiance’s apparent demise, it won many hearts. It finds echoes, arguably, in Lucia di Lammermoor.
Jeremy Gray’s carefully considered staging updated Nina to the 1930s, and from the meticulous opening chorus entries looked and sounded well in its enchanting garden setting. Not just set (1934 Rolls-Royce fronting a stylishly designed backdrop, well lit) but make-up and costumes (an apt hospital setting) kept this production taut and focused. The outdoor setting diffuses the sound, but not too badly. The reactive accompaniment (non-Paisiello) was attentive, if occasionally hazy. Clarients, bassoons and flute shone, though some subtler, more charismatic coaxing from the conductor, Guy Hopkins, might have enhanced a few later string passages. Pick of the performers were Michelle Harris’s appealing Nina and, vocally, Howard Kirk as Lindoro, her unexpectedly restored sweetheart. Her two delicious Act 1 arias entranced, and her upper tessitura gained strength in Paisiello’s meatier second half exchanges. Other moments stood out: if Henry Herford’s Count rather lacked presence, Justin Harmer as the valet/chauffeur delivered his ‘breathless’ Mozatian message with zest; and Amanda Pitt briefly triumphed in Susanna’s Act II aria. The well-directed chorus characters caught the asylum atmosphere effectively, without a hint of overacting.
Roderic Dunnett
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from 'The Oxford Times'
The Bampton summer opera is now in its seventh year, and last week continued its tradition of rarely performed classical and baroque works. The production was Giovanni Paisiello’s Nina, subtitled The Girl Driven Mad for Love. All the action takes place in a sanatorium, where the unfortunate Nina waits hopelessly for the return of her lover Lindoro, who has been killed in a duel with a rival suitor preferred by Nina’s father. Or so we are led to believe.
Under the direction of Jeremy Gray, the setting is transposed from the late 18th century to sometime in the 20th, which provides a good excuse for having Nina’s guilt-ridden father arrive on the scene in a fine vintage Rolls. Against all the odds, Lindoro turns up in the second act (with no explanation for his miraculous recovery), Nina gradually recovers her reason, and the happy ending unfurls at the sort of length usually reserved for tragic heroines to die in.
Paisiello’s music, noted among his contemporaries for its elegance, simplicity and charm, is altogether too charming for the sombre first act but well suited to the sweetness and light of the second. But if the music seemed to lack depth, the quality of everyone on stage more than made up for it. The professional singers in the leading roles of Nina (Michelle Harris), her companion Susanna (Amanda Pitt), her father (Henry Herford) and Lindoro (Howard Kirk) were outstanding, and there was also a fine performance from Justin Harmer as Giorgio, a valet somewhat in the tradition of Figaro.
The chorus of staff and patients at the sanatorium more than held their own, both vocally and dramatically, and the characterisation of the patients was at once subtle and disturbing.
The opera also benefited from an exceptionally good local orchestra, conducted by Guy Hopkins, and despite the potential hazards of an outdoor performance, the balance of singers and instrumentalists was everything one could hope for.
The weekend’s audiences had the satisfaction of knowing that they had seen a production which has just pipped La Scala, Milan, to the post (the opera is to be revived there this autumn) as well as the pleasure of being entertained in lovely surroundings and reasonably clement weather.
Paula Clifford
