2024 marks the 50^th anniversary year of Dorset Opera Festival, which launched at Sherborne School back in 1974 with a production of Smetana’s The Bartered Bride.

Over the decades – and particularly since former leading bass Roderick Kennedy assumed the company’s artistic direction in 2004, and the event’s subsequent move to the Coade Theatre at Bryanston, just outside Blandford Forum – it has expanded its operations considerably.

From the beginning there was ambition and initiative: the company has given the British premieres (or in some cases British stage premieres) of works by Donizetti, Massenet, the 19^th century Brazilian composer Carlos Gomes, his Hungarian contemporary Ferenc Erkel, and the 20^th century English Lord Berners, as well as – extraordinarily – the world premiere of a second work by Donizetti.

Cast of Under the Greenwood Tree | © Julian Guidera

Paul Carr – Under the Greenwood Tree 

⭐⭐⭐

This year, to mark its half century, Dorset went a step further and for the first time commissioned an entirely new opera from British composer Paul Carr.

Now 63, Carr has spent most of his career in stage management and latterly – initially at Kennedy’s invitation, and again for Dorset Opera – as a stage director: since 2012 he has achieved a string of successes in works ranging from Mozart to Verdi, Tchaikovsky and Wagner.

But he has also enjoyed a second career as a composer, with a substantial catalogue largely of choral and orchestral pieces to his credit.

For his Dorset commission, and indeed his first opera at the venue as composer as well as director, he selected Thomas Hardy’s beloved novel Under the Greenwood Tree as his source – a canny choice to win favour with Dorset audiences -- which the new opera clearly did on its first night on July 23^rd.

Working with librettist Euan Tait, Carr has produced a relatively short piece (two acts running to some 110 minutes) emulating the book’s seasonal trajectory, beginning in winter, and ending in the following autumn.

Two simultaneous stories are linked in a plot set in the fictional Wessex village of Mellstock: a love story involving the recently arrived schoolteacher Fancy Day and local villager Dick Dewy, whose path to happiness is nearly derailed by the amorous interests of local vicar, Reverend Maybold, and wealthy farmer Mr Shiner; but all ends happily as Fancy’s fancy turns slowly but resolutely towards Dick.

A second, parallel plot line shows how Fancy and Maybold conspire to end the long tradition of the quire (Hardy’s spelling) who have long sung and played their instruments to provide music for local church services: the purchase of a new harmonium and Day’s developing musical gifts sees the quire replaced in a manner that Hardy, at least, views as detrimental.

To realistic sets by Rufus Martin and period costumes by Stewart J Charlesworth, all lit by James Smith, Carr’s staging offered a nostalgic vision of Hardy’s mid-19^th-century Wessex peopled by individual members of a lively community.

Carr’s score was similarly nostalgic, to an extent recalling English composers such as Vaughan Williams while moving back and forth between broader operatic styles (though scarcely any recent ones) and those of the musical. There is a good deal of spoken dialogue. Though not much of it proved musically memorable, Carr’s writing for chorus and individual voices showed considerable skill.

Strong performances from the four leads: Jamie Groote’s delicately lyrical Fancy Day, Felix Kemp’s ardent Dick Dewy, Thomas Humphreys’ haughty Reverend Maybold and Ossian Huskinson’s forthright Mr Shiner.

A second notable group of performers made up the members of the quire who initially oppose but who are eventually obliged to accede in their joint dissolution: along with Dick himself, these comprised Eddie Wade (Reuben Dewy), Matthew Bawden (Thomas Leaf), Aled Hall (Elias Spinks) and Tim Bagley (Robert Penny).

If Under the Greenwood Tree seems unlikely to leave a lasting impression on the repertoire, for this anniversary occasion it made a pleasant, easy-listening, old-fashioned entertainment.

Lucia Cervoni (Suzuki), Hattie Grainger (Sorrow) and Eri Nakamura (Ciòciò-san) in Madama Butterfly | © Julian Guidera

Puccini – Madama Butterfly

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Dorset’s second choice this year fell on Puccini’s Madama Butterfly – a work never previously staged at the Festival which – with its penchant for the rare – has nevertheless produced the same composer’s Edgar, as well as his Turandot with both the Alfano and Berio completions.

In Jamie Hayes’ production the considerable musical and dramatic demands of Puccini’s tragedy were fairly and squarely met, notably by Japanese soprano (and former member of the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme at the ROH) Eri Nakamura, whose complete assurance and skilful vocal pacing, as well as her commitment to the character as a tragic heroine, saw her triumph in the role.

As Pinkerton, José Simerilla Romero’s sole limitation was a lack of resonance towards the top of his otherwise fine tenor: in physical and dramatic terms he gave a more than creditable account as the US naval lieutenant.

David Kempster’s experienced Sharpless took a while to move into vocal gear but proved profoundly rewarding later in the opera. Lucia Cervoni’s Suzuki emphasised the anger and resentment felt by the Japanese at Pinkerton’s crass and racist attitudes.

In Martin’s colourful, adaptable sets, the staging generally worked well. Its less successful elements – some odd costumes by Charlesworth, too much villainous laughter from Aled Hall’s otherwise impressive Goro, extra (and entirely unnecessary) appearances from Tim Bagley’s vocally strong Bonze – have to be weighed against a dream sequence set to the orchestral intermezzo that movingly presented Butterfly’s forlorn fantasy of marital happiness.

Once again, the choral singing was formidable, while – apart from a few blips suggesting that one more rehearsal was really needed – so, too, was the playing of the festival’s orchestra under the astute baton of José Miguel Esandi.

dorsetopera.com