Utopia Limited

The penultimate opera in the canon tells of the decision of King Paramount the benevolent monarch of a South Sea island, to adopt British institutions. This cues a sort of heavy-handed satire familiar from Iolanthe, The Mikado and The Gondoliers, along with the almost mandatory digs at governments, whilst the islanders model themselves on commercial principles and a gutter press quite literally in bed with the monarchy.  That said it is still relevant today especially when the story has references to debt, company failures, and editors of ‘scurrilous papers’ in England being publically flogged!!

It is far from an easy opera to stage but the end result was a pleasant evening of theatre and the judicious and essential pruning of the original score and libretto made this somewhat elongated opera much more watchable.

As always, this group perform with a live orchestra of 13 under the baton of the musical director, and whilst some of the numbers were perhaps a little slow for my personal taste, the orchestra was generally good.  It is a shame that no overture was written for this show, to give the orchestra their chance to shine.

Costumes were colourful, although, as this opera is performed so rarely it would have been nice to see it set in the original time-line and costumed accordingly. Congratulations on the set – I loved the South Sea Idols – and the ‘wallpaper’ and the drawing room was just right.

The show requires a large cast of men and the group are to be congratulated in assembling so many men to take solo parts.  That said some of the minor principals seemed to be ‘just saying the lines’ meaning that some of the humour and satire got a little well hidden in places but the lifeguards added some lovely touches of humour.   One of the problems in doing a less well-known opera is that the audience need to hear the words to know what is going on and on some occasions the lines did not appear to be quite secure which did slow the pace somewhat and muffled the diction.  

Chorus and principals alike generally made a good sound and there were undoubtedly some excellent characterisations throughout, but I must whole-heartedly congratulate the group on Eagle High – the singing was so well-balanced- it sounded really good and was greatly appreciated by the audience as Sullivan at his best.

Taken as a whole it was a real pleasure to see this production doubly so as it is so rarely performed so thank you for inviting me so giving me this rare opportunity to see it. Is Grand Duke likely to be ‘coming to a stage near us’ any time soon so that you can complete the canon?

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