Falstaff in Buxton

Six years after its first outing, Repton Opera Society has sampled virtually all of the venues that the Midlands has to offer. The most recent excursion to Buxton Opera House was, however, a first for the group, and long overdue. The opera was Verdi’s great comedy Falstaff, in an English translation, performed with a small ensemble of ten musicians by the Mid-Wales Opera Company. The performance, under the expert direction of conductor Nicholas Cleobury, surpassed most of the productions the Society has seen in larger venues, and in terms of inventiveness and stagecraft had the potential to put many major companies to shame.

Fine singing and acting brought out all the humour in Verdi’s final score, in a simple yet highly effective staging. Making a virtue of its limited financial resources, the company set the action on a simple raised circular platform, dotted with a few chairs only for “scenery”. Props and signs were used to illustrate the busy narrative, most memorably in a fantastic display of bird skeleton puppets in the final act, at once genuinely funny and more than slightly troubling to behold.

Charles Johnston as Falstaff and Lee Bisset as Alice Ford were exemplary in the central roles, and the ensemble singing, particularly in the closing fugue, was a joy to hear. The Society will be looking forward with great interest to Mid-Wales Opera’s next production, and will undoubtedly return to Buxton in the near future.

The next scheduled Opera Society trip is to Opera North’s new staging (their first in twenty years) of Franz Lehár’s ever-popular operetta The Merry Widow, in Nottingham on Tuesday 16th November. The trip is open to all pupils - if you are interested in going or would like to be kept informed of future events please email Mr. Stevens at pjs@repton.org.uk.