![]() ![]() Mikhail Davydov more than amply filled Sir John’s cuban-heel playboy boots, and although the voice has more golden youth to it than we’re used to in the role, it would be churlish to complain that he was too good. ![]() Not a staccato-dot goes wasted in this punchy reading that blazes along like Toscanini in a six-litre sports car, although he could perhaps have been more generous with his cueing to the singers.īertman is able to jettison more Shakespearean baggage in Moscow than a London production might, and instead of the usual septuagenarian member of both weight-watchers and the Lonely Hearts Club, we get a Sir John in his mid-30s, a rippling physique and tennis-star hairstyle. He hits exactly the right mode, encouraging playing that’s sympathetic to a chamber-size venue, but a sweep and scope that would knock their socks off in Verona. The Master of Ceremonies in the pit is the awesomely young Greek maestro Theodore Currentzis, whose super-physical style of conducting wasn’t to the aesthetic taste of some of the audience (I would imagine those seated immediately behind him in this notoriously tiny auditorium) - but if the means justify the ends, then Currentzis was justified in excelsis. In the "straight" theatre it’s a popular saw that getting laughs out of Shakespearean jokes is almost as easy as trying to get them out of Strindberg, but Dmitry Bertman doesn’t put a foot wrong in this crackling revival. Panto season’s come a bit late to Moscow this year – but when it’s a riotous rump-up like the Helikon’s Falstaff, you don’t really mind. ![]() Verdi, Falstaff The Helikon Opera, Moscow, 16 th May 2002 (NM) ![]()
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