Charles Villiers Stanford: The Critic
O’Reilly Theatre, National Opera House, Wexford
★★★★★
Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924) was the most accomplished and successful composer to come out of Ireland in the 19th century. He was a major force in English musical life, as professor of music at the University of Cambridge, professor of composition at the Royal College of Music in London (where he also had responsibilities for conducting and opera) and as conductor of the Leeds Triennial Musical Festival. His 1896 opera Shamus O’Brien even had a run on Broadway, and no less an individual than Gustav Mahler programmed and conducted his Irish Symphony with the New York Philharmonic.
A century after Stanford’s death his Anglican church music is still widely admired, and it is his operas that are the least well-regarded part of his output. Wexford Festival Opera has only once staged any of his operas, back in 1964, when Much Ado About Nothing was given, for two nights only, with piano rather than orchestra. The critical response was dismissive.
Sixty years on, to mark the centenary of the composer’s death, Wexford is offering Stanford’s penultimate opera, The Critic, of 1915, an operatic treatment of the 1779 play The Critic: or, a Tragedy Rehearsed, by his fellow Dubliner Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
The play was adapted by Lewis Cairns James, a colleague of Stanford’s at the Royal College of Music, who had made a mark in the world of Gilbert and Sullivan. And the roles of words and music in The Critic are probably best understood in terms of G&S, where “Prima la musica e poi le parole” (“First the music and then the words”) simply doesn’t apply. Sheridan’s title had to be amended, changing “tragedy” to “opera”, and the full new title tells you most of what you need to know about the plot.
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The speaking roles in The Critic – the publicist Mr Puff (Mark Lambert), the composer Mr Dangle (Jonathan White), the critic Mr Sneer (Arthur Riordan) and the underprompter Hopkins (Olga Conway) – get to strut their stuff (vanity, deceit and incompetence) untrammelled and free of music.
The mostly mild-mannered music takes its cue from the words, creating a kind of witty scaffolding for them, and has little sense of independent life. It would be hard to imagine anything further away from, say, a soaring aria or an ensemble sharply etching contrasting characters than this.
But the libretto is good, and the composer’s real-life sense of humour and wit are all about. The period production by the creative team in Wexford – the director Conor Hanratty, the designers John Comiskey (set), Massimo Carlotto (costumes) and Daniele Naldi (lighting) and the conductor Ciarán McAuley – doesn’t miss a trick.
The cast of Rory Dunne, Gyula Nagy, Ben McAteer, Oliver Johnston, Meilir Jones, Dane Suarez, Andrew Henley, Ava Dodd, Hannah O’Brien and Carolyn Holt has no weak link, and the singers carry off everything with the gusto of people who would make great pantomime dames. They find the right balance of knowingness and unknowingness, of willingness and grumpiness in the face of tedious rehearsal.
The standout performance, appropriately enough, is the cameo of Lord Burleigh (Tony Brennan), who commands the stage in the one attitude-rich character from whom not a single word is heard.
Greatest credit must go to Hanratty and McAuley, who treat Stanford with all the loving care that he himself had first bestowed on Sheridan.
The Critic is at Wexford Festival Opera on Thursday, October 24th, Sunday, October 27th, and Friday, November 1st
