8 Monday June 13 2022 | the timesfirst night
A
t what point should pop
queens pass the throne on?
After a wobbly turn at
the Platinum Jubilee
celebrations, Diana Ross
was back on form at the opening night
of her first European tour in three
years. Despite a few technical
gremlins, this outdoor jamboree was a
soul-pop masterclass from the eerily
ageless 78-year-old glamazon: sparkly
and vintage — musical champagne.
After racing through a jewel case of
Supremes classics including Where
Did Our Love Go, Baby Love and You
Can’t Hurry Love in the first half-hour,
Ross cherry-picked the rest of this set
from her solo career.
She may have a daunting reputation
as a diva but she came across as warm
and human in Cardiff. She wore a
dazzling parade of gowns throughout
the evening, each more architecturally
outlandish than the last.
Ross was flanked by a big band,
including backing singers, a horn
section and a bassist who made sure
that classic disco-era songs such as I’m
Coming Out and Upside Down retained
their funky, crunchy edge.
A pop-house remix of If The World
Just Danced, taken from her 2021
album Thank You, proved kinetic too.
Ross rolled with the rhythm, sashaying
around the stage in liquid motion.
A few, more syrupy arrangements
veered into cruise-ship cabaret, while
an extended version of I Will Survive
dragged on. You can hurry, love.
Ross was canny enough to include
several UK chart-toppers that proved
more popular in Britain than the US, a
rollicking Chain Reaction, marred by
sound problems that she handled with
good grace, and the silky-voiced 1970
ballad I’m Still Waiting.
After all the sparkle, Ross dressed
down in practical top and boots for the
finale, softly purring The Best Years of
My Life from a seated perch. “Anybody
got a chair for this elderly lady?” she
quipped. “You know I’m 78 years old,
right?” Maybe so, but you don’t look a
day over fabulous, your majesty.
Stephen Dalton
Touring to July 1, dianaross.comDiana Ross
Cardiff Castle
{{{{(opera pop
T
he conflict between
Tamburlaine the Great and
Bayezid the Thunderbolt,
settled in the former’s favour
after a battle in 1402, shaped
the Islamic world. This background is
almost absent from Handel’s 1724
opera — except that the defeated
Bajazet (as he is here) is Tamerlano’s
prisoner, until he commits suicide
after a succession of solos in Act III.
No, the opera — as usual with
Handel — is more concerned with
love, lust and loathing. Tamerlano
tries to woo Bajazet’s daughter Asteria.
Bad idea. She not only hates him as
her father’s enemy but is in love with
the Greek prince Andronico. A
Byzantine princess, Irene, is also in the
mix. Handel loved these tangled plots
because the feelings of each character
could be explored in arias, of which
this opera has magnificent examples:
plainly orchestrated but emotional.
The Grange Festival has assembled
a fine cast to do them justice in Daniel
Slater’s modern-dress production.
With his leather jackets and Carnaby
Street trousers, Raffaele Pe’s
Tamerlano seems too lightweight and
jokey at first: hard to imagine him as
the “scourge of God”, as Marlowe
called Tamburlaine. In Act III,
however, he turns on the power for his
big coloratura aria, and lifts the show.
Another countertenor, Patrick
Terry, is excellent as Andronico.
Sophie Bevan is lustrously toned as
Asteria, and Angharad Lyddon
suitably icy as Irene. However, it is the
veteran Paul Nilon who dominates as
Bajazet, singing with intensity. Lively
playing, too, from the Bournemouth
Symphony Orchestra, though the
conductor Robert Howarth could have
encouraged more delicacy and colour.
And Slater’s staging? It’s handsome,
in a Middle Eastern style (Robert
Innes Hopkins) and lit to indicate time
passing (Johanna Town). As if to prove
that countertenors can also pack a
punch, it features a boxing match
between Tamerlano and Andronico.
That must be a first in Handel.
To July 3, thegrangefestival.co.uk
Richard MorrisonTamerlano
Grange Festival, Hampshire
{{{{(MARILYN KINGWILL; RICHARD HUBERT SMITHdance
Will Bozier (Luca) and Zizi Strallen (Lana) in The Car ManIt purrs along
and then stalls
Matthew Bourne’s hot take on Carmen is let
down by its second half, says Donald Hutera
M
atthew Bourne must rank
as one of the smartest
populist theatre-makers
on the planet. There was
never much doubt that
this expanded revival of his steamy
dance take on Carmen was going to
look at home in the vastness of Royal
Albert Hall. Certainly the three dozen
or so dancers on stage on the press
night delivered about as full-out and
hot-blooded a performance as could
be wished. The first act was especially
terrific. Shame, then, about a secondhalf that suffers from some of the
same unconvincing narrative choices
that were present at the production’s
premiere in 2000. The result is an
initially great night out that goes
dissatisfyingly pear-shaped.
Bourne’s premise is sound and
seductive. The setting is a small Latin-
American community somewhere in
the Midwest named, with no little
irony, Harmony. Here the self-
determined, cigar-smoking vixen of
Bizet’s opera becomes Luca (Will
Bozier), a catalytic drifter who blows
into town and lands a job at a garage-
diner run by gone-to-seed Dino (Alan
Vincent) and his younger wife Lana
(Zizi Strallen, in slinky femme fatale
mode). Also on the premises, and
sharing a romance, is the latter’s sister
Rita (Kayla Collymore) and hired
hand Angelo (Paris Fitzpatrick).
A sign hanging outside Dino’s
grubby little establishment reads
MAN WANTED — a pointed visual
gag. What ensues is an amatory
thriller — The Postman Always Rings
Twice but with a bisexual love triangle.
Bourne’s storytelling is also loaded
with kinetic juice. The show opens like
gangbusters with a tone-setting
ensemble dance rife with zesty leaps,
swirls, stomps and swivelling turns.
But Bourne is also adept at devising
character-revealing movement. Bozier
makes the most of a solo that shows
exactly what kind of a brooding yet
swaggering stud Luca is. No surprise
that his and Lana’s ravenously athletic,
kitchen-set coupling (a nod, perhaps,
to the 1981 remake of Postman) leads
to wittily rampant carnality among the
rest of Harmony’s inhabitants.
Lez Brotherston’s designs —
including a catwalk-like highway
extending into the auditorium, and a
trio of large, hoarding-like screens
overhead for occasional movie-style
close-ups of the leads — evince all
of his trademark skill. Terry Davies’
score, cleverly riffing off Rodion
Shchedrin’s Carmen Suite and played
live, is another huge plus. Pity, though,
about the hollow, melodramatic flaws
of a considerably weaker second act
featuring scenes in a cabaret and a
jailhouse that just don’t make sense
or, ultimately, carry the pay-off that
Bourne’s absorbing, high-octane
entertainment deserves.
To June 19, new-adventures.net
or royalalberthall.comThe Car Man
Royal Albert Hall
{{{((into fun and frolics (perhaps because
they live in a road). On the other
hand, they are vividly characterised.
Daniel Scofield is especially impressive
as a burly, mostly drunk Marcello, and
Sehoon Moon (a late replacement)
delivers a charmingly acted Rodolfo
that just needs a bit more vocal light
and shade.
There’s also Vuvu Mpofu’s
flamboyant Musetta — and eclipsing
all else, the young Chilean soprano
Yaritza Véliz. Her haunted and
terrified Mimì is the sort of megawatt
performance, vocally and visually, that
proclaims a star in the making.
Much fine playing comes from the
London Philharmonic Orchestra, but
sometimes at unconvincing speeds.
The conductor Jordan de Souza
elongates some climactic moments
indulgently, then seems to hurry
singers who want more time. With
17 performances ahead, there are
plenty of chances for everybody to
agree on the tempos.
Richard Morrison
To August 14, glyndebourne.comdarkness. Mimì is almost drawn down
it in Act III, until she sings about
wanting to delay parting from Rodolfo
until “the flowers appear”. Death
promptly uncovers a roadside flower
stall. There’s no escape.
As you might surmise, Visser is
stronger on dark subtexts than comic
horseplay; his Bohemians aren’t reallysimilar, surreal lines. Mimì’s flickering
candle is made to symbolise her fragile
existence. And during an often
freeze-framed Christmas Eve scene
the revellers spook her by revealing
macabre horrors in their menus —
and I don’t mean Paris’s café prices.
Then there’s that walled road,
disappearing into an inescapableI
t’s rare to encounter a staging that
presents the world’s most popular
opera in a radically different way.
And doubtless there will be
traditionalists who — after
watching a Bohème entirely played out
on a bleak road between two high
walls — will feel that Glyndebourne
shouldn’t even have attempted a new
spin on Puccini.
I’m not one of them. I was transfixed
by Floris Visser’s production. And not
just by the bold unifying idea of Mimì
being silently stalked by the figure of
Death from start to finish, but also by
the superb stagecraft deployed to
ensure that this sour-faced, overcoated
figure (superbly mimed by Christopher
Lemmings) was subtly sinister rather
than a naff, horror-film ghoul.
Having the Grim Reaper watching
every scene hugely increases the
sense of Mimì living on borrowed
time. You feel it is only her
determination to cling to her joie de
vivre that persuades Death not to
claim her earlier. Around this central
metaphor Visser assembles others onLa bohème
Glyndebourne
{{{{(opera
On the road: Ivo Stanchev, Sehoon Moon, Luthando Qave and Daniel Scofield