original and amusing stuff, brightly per- formed by a well-chosen
cast led by Jill Gomez as the Marg of Arg figure and cleanly directed by David Farr. What lifts the evening is the brilliance of the music. Ades, in his early twenties and scarcely out of Cambridge, has a sophisticated tech- nique and a wonderful ear for orchestra- tion. He writes well for the voice and, most important, bubbles with inventiveness Powder her Face renders everything from tango to fellatio with a positively Straussian virtuosity. Thereby hangs my reservation: there is too much pastiche in this score, too much self-conscious cleverness, too many echoes of Lulu, Arabella and The Rake's Progress, too much imitation and not enough authentic personality. But it's still an exhilarating talent, with the potential to communicate to a large public.
I think people have been a mite hard on the Almeida's other offering, Ian McQu n's East and West. Jonathan Moore's libretto deals with violence between exiled Bosnians and Fascistic thugs in modern Germany. Shock, horror, it features skinheads, obscenities, glue-sniffing and a spot of bower down at the community centre but — as with all such attempts to force opera to get 'real' it sinks like a stone beneath the weight of its earnest, preachy pretensions. Its sheer naivety was infuriating.
Which is a pity, because McQueen clear- ly knows a thing or two about writing an opera: he is a clear-headed composer — an apostle of Hindemith's philosophy of Gebrauchsmusik perhaps — who knows how to build a climax, how to write a duet, how to get text across and engage an audi- ence's emotions (there are some touching moments in the second act). I wish him better luck with his libretto next time and commiserate with this time's accomplished and valiant cast.
The charming but financially shaky Buxton Festival seems to have settled (via the agency of their shared board member Lord Harewood, I guess) on the thoroughly sensible policy of collaborating with Opera North rather than going it alone on a shoe- string. This year brought a very impressive and enjoyable new version of Monteverdi's Il Ritomo di Ulisse. Perhaps because it was played in a thick-eared English translation, it didn't quite match the emotional impact of the great Glyndebourne performances in the 1970s, but Annabel Arden's staging was quietly original and seamlessly integrated, elegant, witty and spry. It also looked very beautiful: the shadowy set by Tim Hatley made imaginative use of Renaissance the- atrical conventions and there were some wonderfully simple, magical effects. An excellent band (under Harry Bicket) and cast was led by Glenn Winslade, a virile Ulisse, and the willowy bob-cut Jean Stil- well as Penelope. But I hated her singing `Homeward turn, Ulysses' or some such clumsiness when it should have been the eloquent loma, deh toma,
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