These are nervous times at the opera. When should we expect the gratuitous rape scene? Will the director relocate the action to a Croydon laundrette? Who might be booed, and for how long? With Opera Holland Park’s Lakmé, however, almost any of these diversions might actually be welcome — anything to save us from the tasteful visual torpor that looms over Aylin Bozok’s production like a choking black cloud.
Consider the riot of colours embedded in Delibes’ opera. We’re in India in the late 19th century, where officers of the British Raj fly the flag and march to fife and drums. There’s a bustling bazaar and glinting jewellery. Sensuous hues burst from the music. Flowers creep in everywhere, from the luminous lotus to the poisonous datura. But what does designer Morgan Large serve up? Acres of dull blues, greys, khakis and in-betweens, pierced only by the gilded cage from which Lakmé, the fated heroine, trills her famous Bell Song. No wonder so many characters and chorus members lie on the floor, seemingly asleep.
What keeps forty winks at bay for us? The singing, fortunately, and Delibes’ score. So many riches lie beyond the Bell Song and the Flower Duet that it’s a mystery why most companies here give this opera the cold shoulder. Are they afraid of the Bell Song’s top E? The note is no problem for Fflur Wyn, though she’s closer to her best cascading to and from, or lancing the air with pinprick staccato. Infuriatingly, Bozok smudges the impression of her eight-minute carillon by filling the front stage with one of the show’s ‘Indian’ dances performed by Lucy Starkey, whose lurching hand movements suggest Harry Houdini pushing his way out of a trunk.
Elsewhere, good things roll out of tenor Robert Murray as the English officer Gérald, even when his character seems to have been stabbed by remote control.

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