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whose depth and weight of emotion makes
the air quiver. Against the chorus, and often
emerging from it, is a uniformly excellent
cast. Eric Greene plays Porgy with such
ferocious optimism that it shades over into
something close to madness. When, deprived
of his crutches, he kills Crown (Nmon Ford,
whose singing had the sheen of cold steel),
it’s not just the bad guy who dies. After Bess
leaves, and Greene’s handsome baritone
— so gentle and proud in ‘Bess, You Is My
Woman Now’ — disintegrates into jagged,
rust-streaked pain, the defiance of the final
chorus feels desperately upsetting.
Nicole Cabell’s Bess, meanwhile, reveals
her vulnerability only slowly. She wears her
face, and her warm, even-toned voice, like
a mask — numbed by what she’s endured.
Her last-ditch resistance to Crown’s brutal-
ity makes her final relapse into the hands of
Sporting Life (a sidling, obscenely grinning
Frederick Ballentine) all the more tragic.
And yet you come out on a high. Perhaps the
sense of hope is located in the opera’s evoca-
tions of Christian belief, channelled by Ger-
shwin into that soul-shaking choral writing
and the character of Serena, whose radiant
affirmations of faith, as delivered by Lato-
nia Moore’s searchlight soprano, would have
had Richard Dawkins shouting Hallelujah.
Or perhaps it’s just the generosity and
compassion of Gershwin’s score, and the
alternating dazzle and tenderness of the
ENO orchestra under John Wilson. All that
energy, all that style and all that loving but
unobtrusive care for the music’s inner voic-
es merely served what Wilson has always
insisted is his overriding artistic goal: to finda sound that lets the music speak. I’m not
sure that every aspect of this production will
revive well (the squeaky-clean costumes are
presumably a concession to the co-produc-
ers at the New York Met, where audiences
like their poverty to look expensive), but for
now, who cares? This is thrilling, heartbreak-
ing music drama and you need to see it.
The Merry Widow inhabits a different
universe, but Opera North’s revival of Giles
Havergal’s 2010 production, complete withsparky translation by Kit Hesketh-Harvey
and an embassy ball’s worth of tiaras, epau-
lettes and moustache wax, proved some of
the same points in a very different way. Not
because the cast is stellar (though they’re all
engaging and listenable), but because they
seek and usually find the precise balance of
sweet and sour that story and score demand.
It’s mostly marzipan, obviously, but in play-
ing ‘Vilja’ as a sort of intimate flashback,
Maire Flavin’s Hanna and Quirijn de Lang’s
Danilo became just believable enough to
stop the whole Ruritanian confection from
floating off in a champagne bubble.
Martin André conducted the Opera
North orchestra with such colour and
schwung that it practically became a char-
acter in its own right. The only misfire was
at the end, where Havergal brings down the
curtain on the final waltz, rather than the
altogether fizzier finale that Lehar wrote,
which served here for the curtain call. You
can see why Havergal thought it might
work: every musical instinct tells you that
it’s wrong. As with Gershwin, so with Lehar.
When you’re dealing with a master, it makes
sense to trust them.Thrilling, heartbreaking music drama — you need to see it: Sarah-Jane Lewis as Annie with the chorus in ENO’s Porgy and BessTRISTRAM KENTONSerena’s radiant affirmations of faith
would have had Richard Dawkins
shouting Hallelujah