YOU really are very near the performers at Iford Opera, and while I wouldn’t go as far as to say you should be able to smell Shakespeare’s fat knight Sir John Falstaff, it is essential to any production that the drink-sodden, over-larded old reprobate should be a pretty repulsive romantic prospect. Gavin Carr, in the Opera Project’s current production, is much too young and attractive to be convincing. A bit of badly trimmed beard growth and subtle make up could have worked wonders. The proximity of audience and performers also means that every loose cotton and bodged seam is visible. While we all know that opera companies (and most other arts organisations) operate on the frayed shoestring of 21st century funding a bit of care must be taken. Richard Studer and Jonathan Lyness virtually created Iford Opera and this is their 10th year at what is probably England’s most beautiful festival venue.
Director Studer knows every nook and cranny of every stone in the Harold Peto designed cloister, which just about seats an audience of 90 and accommodates a small orchestra, giving the singers a square with four, cruciform, aisles. It is always a challenge for directors, and in this hilarious helter-skelter story of secret trysts and jealous outbursts, poor old Falstaff has to negotiate a way through not just the music and the story but the seated audience, and in a laundry basket.
The Opera Project production is well sung and enthusiastically played by Lyness’ excellent orchestra. Of course the cloister is a tricky space in which to work, but perhaps it’s time for Mr Studer to think about “production values.” On the opening night it all looked a bit rushed and under prepared, as women with lampshade frames and everyone in shades of cream-to-taupe dashed in and out, and the director himself did his customary “I’m a worried Richard Branson” dash around the stage moving props. Time for a more disciplined look at things, from an earlier look at Mr Carr’s beard to a later look at the set and costumes.

Gay Pirrie-Weir

Fosseway Gazette 30/07/04

SUCH is the appeal of Shakespeare’s great comic character that at least six other composers have written operas about him, including most recently Hoist and Vaughan Williams.
Verdi can claim pride of place, though, with a rumbustious, larger-than-life work, which catches the essence of Shakespeare’s balance between ridicule and a precarious hold on dignified pathos.
This performance from The Opera Project showed us an array of talent which provided a consistent level of quality throughout the whole company, in a production by Richard Studer which fairly crackled with energy and good humour, handling the constraints of space and movement with unfailing ingenuity in this uniquely intimate cloister.
Gavin Carr, as a rather youthful-looking fat knight, brought a potent mix of wit and affronted dignity to the part, balanced by Adam Green’s Ford, both in fine voice.
The four women, Caitlin Hulcup as Mistress Page, Caroline Childe as Mistress Ford, Gaynor Keeble as Mistress Quickly, and Rebecca Ryan as Nannetta provided not only a quick witted response to Falstaff’s advances, but fine vocal quality and a ready sense of fun. Nick Sharratt’s Fenton gave us a high clear tenor and his aria in act three was done with great style. Peter Wilman and Mark Saberton as Bardolph and Pistol, together with Michael Bennett as Dr Caius completed a fine group of singers, complemented by an excellent band under music director Jonathan Lyness. The final ensemble, brimming with exuberant jollity, and sung with enormous gusto, brought proceedings to a spectacular conclusion. The sun shone —eventually — and the gardens looked as lovely as ever. Floreat Iford.

Peter Lloyd Williams

Bath Chronicle 23/07/04