Send in the Clowns: Garsington's Bartered Bride returns

Garsington Opera’s The Bartered Bride was new in 2019 and this first revival of Paul Curran’s original production was directed with some flair by Rosie Purdie. Reviews from 2019 mention bits of stage business no longer here in 2023, and the narrative was largely uncluttered, reducing the chances of confusing the two sets of parents, or chorus members with circus members in Act 3. Plenty of fun and frolics remained, much of it bred from the transfer of the setting from 19th-century Bohemia to 1960s Britain. The very opening action saw a clergyman enter a community hall, while someone moved the gramophone close enough to a plug, prior to playing an LP of the overture to Smetana’s opera. This bit of silent business even touched on the subdued class elements in the work (what kind of person should a girl choose?) since the clergyman let his menial associate do the table lifting, but he held the art object in its 12” sleeve.

The incongruities occasioned by any production moving an opera’s time and place mattered little here. Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge opens with bride-bartering at the fair back in the 1880s but one hopes it was a rare occurence in a 1960s pub, even though Hardy’s sailor’s price of five guineas (child included) may have been accurately inflated to Jeník’s £300. And perhaps no polka was ever danced around an English maypole, but when it is done with such energy, on stage and in the pit, why not?

The production’s integration of main characters, chorus, plus circus members in Act 3, was fluent. Clowns and acrobats had to blend into stage movement with their audience, and this was persuasively choreographed. And Vašek, the plot’s fall guy, pressured into a bear’s costume made a nice final curtain.

Mařenka, the bartered bride herself, was very well taken by Pumeza Matshikiza, a voice of power (too much at moments) but also lyrical appeal when needed. Her Act 3 soliloquy of despair (“That dream of love, how fair it was”) was as moving as the superb slow sextet that preceded it. Her beloved Jeník, tenor Oliver Johnston, relates to everyone else at different moments, and adapted his singing well to those combinations. When he too had an extended soliloquy (“How could they think I would sell my beloved Mařenka?”) in Act 2, his quality was evident, berating those who would wreck his future with ringing defiance.

The marriage maker Kecal, bass-baritone David Ireland, plotted against them both, using bullying as his preferred method, so that a hectoring tone predominated. But as the opera progressed and different methods were needed, he could exploit more of his range of colours. Vašek is both a comic and a pathetic figure, characterised musically by his stammer, and Smetana worked and reworked his role to achieve that duality. John Findon’s portrayal was both ridiculous and touching as appropriate, his tenor suitably self-pitying to distance it from that of Jeník. The smaller roles were all well taken, essential in this ensemble piece.

The circus troupe, led by Jennifer Robinson, was diverting enough, despite their slightly unhappy position extending the third act and holding up the plot’s dénouement. Conductor Jac van Steen seems to know and love every bar of this work, bringing rhythmic élan to the overture, the Act 3 Dance of the Comedians and much in between. The Philharmonia Orchestra were highly responsive and the Garsington Opera Chorus sang excellently in their very busy role.