West Green House Opera 2023
Water Music?
West Green House Opera
The Theatre on the Lake, Hartley Witney 21st – 30th July
Season Preview by Quentin Weiver
In anticipation of a pre-taste of a fantastic season of opera, I took a trip to where Surrey just tips over into Hampshire at the picturesque village of Hartley Witney, to revisit West Green House, the early 18th century house, built by Gen. Henry Hawley, who led the charge at the Battle of Culloden.
In 1990 the IRA bombed the front of the house, planning to assassinate Lord Robert McAlpine, a prominent member of Margaret Thatcher’s government. It had been his home, but Lord McAlpine no longer lived there. The house was dislodged from its foundations, and the freeholders, The National Trust, were thinking of demolishing it. Then along came Marylyn Abbott, who had known McAlpine when he lived in Australia.
One of the crowning features of West Green House is the magnificent gardens. Marylyn Abbott had created the wonderful Southern Highlands garden, Kennerton Green in Mittagong, New South Wales. She sold up, and three decades ago bought a long lease on West Green House. She had fallen in love with the broken house and set about rebuilding it, and importantly turning the neglected overgrown grounds into what Matt Jackson, who is a charge of Sissinghurst Gardens, called a garden that is “individual and filled with personality”.
It has great variety from potager gardens to formal gardens, from topiary to elaborate chicken houses. Marylyn Abbott has restored and recreated the garden’s original features including a grand water staircase, a focal point to the Nymphaeum and fountain designed by Quinlan Terry.
Marylyn Abbott had also been an opera professional in Australia, and had been on the management of the Sydney Opera House. Perhaps opera is an even greater passion for her, as in 2000 she inaugurated the West Green House Opera. On both sides of the globe her garden design and opera production careers have run in parallel.
West Green House Opera was originally located in marquees on the lawns surrounding he house, but the opera setting has grown stepwise and with passionate ambition. One of the most remarkable and inspired ideas in landscaping for opera, is the “floating” stage, a brilliant response to the distancing requirements as the Covid restrictions were being eased. It has the audience in pavilions on the lakeside and the performance on a stage that is an extension of the island. This concept has evolved over the last three years and the stage now seems to hover over the lake.
The lake island setting was cleverly used in last season’s L’elisir d’amore, when Dulcamara, the quack apothecary, arrived in a real boat. An even better opportunity to exploit the island this year may arise with Offenbach’s Robinson Crusoé, which involves a pirate ship! However, this particular opera is semi-stage in concert. Cast as Robinson Crusoe himself, is Robert Murray, whom we saw earlier this month in another eponymous role in Garsington Opera’s Mitridate, re di Ponto.
The repertoire of West Green House Opera this season seems very wide ranging. Offenbach’s opéra comique is in his operetta mould and Stephen Sondheim’s masterpiece Sweeney Todd edges towards musical.
The grand finale piece, though, treads more traditional ground with that inseparable pair of single act operas, Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci or, as everyone affectionately knows the double bill, “Cav&Pag”. These two operas give great musical opportunities, including the famous intermezzo in Cavalleria Rusticana. The versatile John Andrews is back as conductor. Also returning are Angharad Lyddon, a captivating Cherubino in last season’s Le Nozze di Figaro, and the renowned mezzo Sarah Pring.
Possibly the most intriguing offering this season must be the opening production, for just one evening, of Mozart’s Constanze, which recalls of the last days of Mozart as told by his widow, Constanze. However, it uses dance, traditional in many operas, and puppetry, used only in few modern productions, to create that bringing together of widely varying art forms, that is the essence of opera.
Within the ten-acre magical gardens, amongst the delicately lit trees reflected captivatingly in the waters of the lake, the setting of West Green House Opera’s Theatre on the Lake is utterly enchanting. Sitting in pavilions on the water’s edge, and hearing the most beautiful singing and music, and seeing the colourful spectacle on a stage poised on the living waters of the lake, is an unmissable experience. It is one I, for one, will not let be missed.
Quentin Weiver, July 2023
Photography by Elizabeth Wait, video courtesy of West Green House Opera
Mark Aspen 