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Richard Bratby

~ Classical music writer, critic and consultant

Richard Bratby

Tag Archives: Gilbert and Sullivan

Review: Patience (English Touring Opera)

16 Sunday Apr 2017

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Birmingham Post, English Touring Opera, Gilbert and Sullivan, Reviews, Wolverhampton Grand Theatre

Patience ETO

The Birmingham Post isn’t always able to post online everything that I’ve written for its print edition, so – after a suitable time lag (ideally you should go out and buy the paper) – I’ll be posting my recent reviews here. As per the print edition, they’re all fairly concise – just 250 words. This is of a performance at Wolverhampton Grand Theatre on Monday 10 April 2017.


You have to be pretty silly to take Gilbert and Sullivan seriously. But a lot sillier not to. With the CBSO’s superb concert performance of The Yeomen of the Guard still fresh in the memory, English Touring Opera’s staging of Patience arrived in Wolverhampton (it visits Cheltenham and Warwick shortly). Patience is G&S’s satire on Aestheticism: the 19th century fad for languid sighs, poetic airs and generally wafting about trying to live up to one’s blue china.

And if we don’t see it more often, that’s probably why. Gilbert’s never sharper and Sullivan’s score is Mendelssohn-level ravishing, but unless you’ve got a sensational Reginald Bunthorne (G&S’s version of Oscar Wilde), you haven’t really got a show. The great news is that ETO have. Bradley Travis drifts in wearing a velvet beret and brandishing a peacock-feather quill. With a hand to the brow and an infinite variety of languorous poses, he sashays away with every scene in which he appears.

Which, given the quality of the rest of the cast, is saying something. Ross Ramgobin is dapper and droll as his rival Grosvenor, Lauren Zolezzi is picture-perfect as the milkmaid Patience and Valerie Reid gets the audience very much on side as Lady Jane – another of Gilbert’s ladies of a certain age. The singing throughout is both clear and expressive; Ramgobin’s baritone is particularly handsome and Zolezzi shapes a line with real style.

Add lovesick maidens, a detachment of heavy dragoons who deliver patter songs with rollicking vigour, Liam Steel’s lively direction and Timothy Burke’s luminous, feather-light conducting, and it’s hard to imagine Patience being revived more persuasively. Or indeed a funnier, fresher or more delightful night at the opera. Abandon any lingering prejudices about G&S: this was delicious.

Lobster, chips and G&S

17 Monday Aug 2015

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Amati Magazine, BBC Proms, Edinburgh Festival, Gilbert and Sullivan, Glazunov, Jamie Phillips, LPO, Mahler, RLPO, The Arts Desk, The Spectator, Vaughan Williams

By mid-August, concert life in the UK has narrowed down to two basic locations: the Edinburgh Festival, and the Royal Albert Hall. Having already been to the Proms, I wasn’t planning on going to Edinburgh until ten days ago and out of the blue I received a review commission that…well, let’s just say I couldn’t refuse. Watch this space for more details.

A lot’s changed in Edinburgh since I last went to the Festival in 2004. The new trams, whatever their troubled history, are a huge asset to the city, and very handy indeed when sky-high August hotel prices have driven you out to the wilds of Haymarket. But it’s still just as hard to find somewhere decent to eat when you’ve emerged from a show that finishes at 10.30pm – and at my advanced age, my preferred Edinburgh late-night snack of deep-fried white pudding is no longer an option. Nor too is lobster and chips, at least not every day. Sadly…

Street Food, Edinburgh Festival style.

Street Food, Edinburgh Festival style.

And the place is still as maddening and exhilarating as ever in Festival season. I was delighted to bump into my colleague Anna Picard for the first time in person (rather than on Twitter) and I managed to duck out of the mayhem of the Royal Mile for a couple of hours for an afternoon catch-up and pint with a particularly brilliant conductor friend – bringing the Halle Youth Orchestra to town as part of a summer tour.

At the Edinburgh Festival, even the graffiti is meta.

At the Edinburgh Festival, even the graffiti is meta.

Anyhow – watch this space for my Edinburgh report. Meanwhile, we headed up the road again to beautiful Buxton to raid Scrivener’s bookshop (surely the only second-hand bookshop in the UK equipped with a fully-functioning harmonium) and see HMS Pinafore – it being a basic maxim of mine never to miss a chance to see G&S done professionally. Happily, at The Arts Desk, I have an editor who understands exactly where I’m coming from.

Scrivener's bookshop, Buxton.

I’ve also been writing about Berio’s Folk Songs and Vaughan Williams’ Eighth Symphony for the RLPO, and interviewing Vladimir Jurowski about Mahler for the LPO’s in-house magazine – always an astonishingly insightful and provocative (in the best possible way) interviewee. Oh and my official birthday tribute to my beloved Alexander Glazunov has gone live on The Amati Magazine – a bit of self-indulgence, very generously indulged by my terrific editor Jessica Duchen. Next stop: Rachmaninoff, Martinu and Rebecca Clarke!

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