Il viaggio a Reims

Of the 75 young artists who have
taken part in the scheme, many have already gone on to glittering careers and
the performance drew a few of them back – Ailish Tynan, Jacques Imbrailo,
Marina Poplavskaya, Matthew Rose and Edgaras Montvidas – putting them together
with more recent and current members. 
Some of the newer faces have already caught the eye, such as Hannah Hipp
who shone in the recent Les Troyens, and the line-up was an
altogether fitting tribute to the efficacy of the programme.

The plot outline above is as much
as you need to know about the opera, except to say that the event is the
coronation of King Charles X in Reims, during one of the brief periods that the
French forgot that they were no longer a monarchy, and the place in which the
would-be revelers are stranded is the spa town of Plombières.

Madeleine Pierard dominated the
first half as the slinky, fashion-obsessed ninny (the sort the Revolution was
supposed to have put paid to), La Contessa di Folleville, who could faint at
the mere mention of wardrobe malfunction and suffers a good deal more over the
loss of her luggage.  While some artists
were more score-bound, Pierard’s was a fully-formed and riveting performance.  Whether fully conversant with their parts or
not, the whole cast benefited from just enough adroit direction by Pedro
Ribeiro (class of 2011) to take it off the page and make it live.

Grandstanding apart, and Rossini
makes sure everyone gets their turn, some of the finest moments, as so often
with this composer, were the ensembles. 
A ravishing sextet (Imbrailo, Tynan, Ji-Hyun Kim, Kai Rüütel, Lukas Jakobski and Kostas Smoriginas) ushered in Poplavskaya’s
entrance, accompanied by a luscious harp solo, giving hints as to why she’s one of
the brightest stars the scheme has produced so far.   Jakobski brought the first half to a close
with a gallop through national stereotypes, by way of luggage inventory, which
he carried off with comic aplomb.

A series of national songs, with
Rossini making even our own dreary old anthem sound like a half decent tune,
followed by a paean to royalty (almost forgiveable given the opera was
commissioned to celebrate the coronation) polished the whole thing off.  Daniele Rustioni (2008 intake) conducted the
English National Opera orchestra (we weren’t told why) with great care and
energy and it was a thoroughly enjoyable way to end the Royal Opera season.

Participants not already mentioned
were Justina Gringyte, Jihoon Kim, Daniel Grice, Pablo Bemsch, Anna Devin, Zhengzhong
Zhou, Susana Gaspar and Jean-Paul Pruna on continuo.

– Simon Thomas