English Touring Opera’s Il viaggio a Reims is an inspired choice — review

Four months after Arts Council England’s bombshell on funding for the arts, the dust is still settling. The opera sector was the worst hit and one of the few organisations to get a modest uplift in its grant is English Touring Opera. Setting out on its spring tour, the company can look to marginally rosier times ahead.

The three operas it is taking round the country are Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia, a revival of its successful production of Handel’s Giulio Cesare and — an inspired choice — Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims.

Over the centuries a handful of operas have been written to celebrate coronations, but the Rossini is the most glitzy. Commissioned for the coronation of the French King Charles X in 1825, it includes multiple paeans to peace and prosperity and culminates in a grand gathering of aristocrats from across Europe, each of whom entertains the party with a song from their native land. The English Lord chooses “God Save the King”, though to new, poetic Italian words. English Touring Opera’s tour lasts until late May and Cheltenham is the lucky town that will get a performance of Il viaggio a Reims on May 6, the coronation day of Charles III.

An updating might have seemed tempting (imagine the fun that could have been had with visiting EU dignitaries), but English Touring Opera has gone for safe and traditional. This production by Valentina Ceschi is a touch flat, but catches the celebratory spirit at the end and is positively lavish as ETO productions go. The stage is festooned with flowers and a painted vista of bucolic countryside forms the backdrop until a delightful coup de théâtre flies it away just before the interval.

There is minimal sign of character or dramatic involvement, though the sketchy plot hardly allows for much. This is not laugh-out-loud Rossini, but the sparkle of the music compensates. About half of it turns up again in Rossini’s later, French comic opera Le comte Ory.

With 14 principal roles and chorus, the opera calls for a big cast and ETO has done well to assemble an able company of singers (Rossini had an all-star line-up by royal command). None is obviously outstanding, but Lucy Hall and Luci Briginshaw vie with each other on top notes, Richard Dowling displays a youthful, lyrical tenor of note and Esme Bronwen-Smith shows off her agility. Jonathan Peter Kenny conducts a lively performance.

There are 14 towns and cities on ETO’s spring tour, of which 11 will get Il viaggio a Reims. Liverpool, which has lost visits from both Glyndebourne Touring Opera and Welsh National Opera owing to Arts Council England’s cuts, is regrettably not on the list, at least this year.

★★★★☆

englishtouringopera.org.uk