<<  -- 5 --  Robert Hugill    MOMENTS OF MAGIC

As the more comic couple, Bella and Jack, Cora Burggraaf and Gordon Gietz have a slightly easier job as their relationship is barely touched by the marvellous, numinous elements in the opera. Bella is a soubrette role and Burggraaf has a neat, attractive voice; she has sung a lot of Baroque opera and Mozart with Anne Truelove in the offing. She made a suitably lively Bella, full of charm and wit; only occasionally in the bigger moments did you suspect that parts of the role were a little bit of a stretch for her. It is a character she will certainly grow into and I hope that she has other occasions to perform it. Gordon Gietz was charming as Jack, easy on the eye and ear, exactly as Jack should be, and with the easy confidence necessary to bring the role off.

Whenever Tippett's magical music in the orchestra indicated that the ancients were about to appear, their sphere swivelled and opened to reveal Diana Montague and Brindley Sherratt inside. Dressed in severe black, as were all the ancients, they rather resembled early American pictures of Quakers; only the addition of black trilbies (a very Magritte-ish touch) rendered their image rather quirkier. Montague and Sherratt were excellent as the Ancients, both brought to the roles that mixture of authority and amused tolerance that they require. These were people who, outwardly charming, always got their own way and of whom you could never be quite sure.

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