I spent the afternoon watching two of the Anthony Warlow productions from Opera Australia: FLEDERMAUS and the double bill of HMS PINAFORE/TRIAL BY JURY. The Gilbert & Sullvans were excellent, nicely staged, very funny, rather well sung except for the comedienne playing Little Buttercup who looks great but she's a strident belter, not a G&S singer who seems out of sync with everyone else. The other ladies and the men, especially Warlow who plays Captain Corcoran and The Learned Judge, were superb. TRIAL BY JURY, about abreach of promise suit, is updated to the present and it's still an outrageous look at the British legal system. I don't know why they cut Angelina's arrival in court in her wedding dress with her bridesmaids in full regalia. This meant cutting the Judge sending love notes to the Maid of Honor until he sees Angelina and transfers his affection along with the Defendant flirting with the bridesmaids the everything else is staged really well. I recommed this DVD highly.
FLEDERMAUS was also quite wonderful, although it was a bit broad for me: they're all playing to the back of the opera house, especially the singer playing Adele the parlor maid, and it's Way Too Big - sometimes Too Shrill - for TV. The staging, set in 1930s Manhattan instead of 1874 Vienna, looks good and the orchestraplays the score beautifully. For some strange reason, the last part of the second act, before the great finale, is suddenly played darkly, about exposing the characters behnd the masks, which is a wrong move: the masks are all part of a revenge plot. Warlow is a fantastic lead; his French Marquis Renard disguise is really excellent.
I had seen the FLEDERMAUS before but I'd never seen the PINAFORE. After the Guthrie Theatre G&S abortion PBS showed early this year, it was nice to know that someone can still direct a 19th Century comic opera with zest, fun and taste. The videos from the Stratford Festival of the early to mid 1980s are terrible: a lot of revising of score and text, prancey campy staging by a choreographer who thinks swshy movement and nelly queens are funny, and a lot of the battle-axe ladies' roles played by men. Pathetic.
