Comic relief | 7 April 2016

Comic opera is no laughing matter. Seriously, when was the last time you laughed out loud in the opera house? The vocal slapstick of Gianni Schicchi, laid on six banana skins deep? The farcical plot convulsions of Il barbiere? What about the arrival of Mozart’s ‘Albanians’ in Così? (Oh, those moustaches! Oh, those naughty boys!) It’s all about as spontaneous as a health-and-safety briefing, and almost as funny. Thank goodness, then, for Gerald Barry’s The Importance of Being Earnest — an opera that’s dangerously, anarchically hilarious.

The project sounds like a joke in itself. Have you heard the one about the Irish composer who tried to improve on Oscar Wilde? But the punchline (and it’s a punch that lands square in the face) is that Barry actually succeeds, taking a highly polished comedy of manners and turning its toothpick barbs into blades, wielding them not only at the social pretensions and conventions of the drawing-room, but also at contemporary opera and opera-goers themselves.