Rossini and Tchaikovsky are brought together, rather uneasily, in the latest production by the Guildhall School's opera department. Early Rossini, in the form of La Scala di Seta (The Silken Ladder), is partnered with Tchaikovsky's final opera, Iolanta, originally composed as part of a double bill with his Nutcracker ballet. Clive Timms conducts and Stephen Medcalf directs.
The Silken Ladder isn't top-drawer; a one-act farce, it is engineered with Rossini's usual comic efficiency, but contains only a couple of memorable numbers. The story hardly bears detailing: Giulia has secretly married Dorvil, who can only visit her after dark by means of a silken ladder lowered from her balcony; but she is to be married off to Blansac, and the plot consists of her efforts to extricate herself from that arrangement.
There's the usual quota of secret assignations and unexpected arrivals (by the end, everyone is getting their leg over the balcony), and predictably everything ends happily. Medcalf directs it skilfully enough, but this is the kind of piece that needs top-quality singers and sharp-witted acting to make anything of it. In the Guildhall cast, only Ailish Tynan, well on top of all Giulia's coloratura demands, makes a real impression.
Iolanta, sung in the original Russian without surtitles, creates a far more powerful and involving piece of drama. It is a strange, allegorical story of a Provencal princess, blind from birth, who has been kept in ignorance of her condition by her father, King René, and can only be cured when she longs to see the light. The impasse is broken when she falls in love with a Burgundian knight, Vaudemont, who reveals to her what she is missing. The score may be slightly patchy, but the best of it, especially the great love duet and the final scene, is white-hot Tchaikovskian inspiration.
Medcalf's production is spare, yet wonderfully detailed in its portrayal of Iolanta's world and those around her. And he has drawn grittily involving performances from the whole cast. Iolanta herself is sung by Camilla Roberts, touchingly and increasingly commandingly. Adrian Dwyer is a robust Vaudemont, Joao Fernandes an implacable King. All the smaller roles are taken with equal commitment, and Timms really gives the score dramatic presence. Thoroughly recommended, if you can survive the Rossini first.
Further performances tonight and Friday. Box office: 020-7638 8891.
