As the near-capacity audience settled and orchestra members warmed up ahead of Guildhall School’s latest double bill of operatic rarities, a familiar tune emerged from the pit: a tuba parping its way through Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries. Talk about setting the tone. Ethel Smyth’s Der Wald (premiered in Berlin in 1902) and Ottorino Respighi’s Lucrezia – first performed in 1937 although this, remarkably, was its UK premiere – will have been new to most in the Silk Street theatre. Yet both scores could have “RW woz ’ere” graffitied on them, such is Wagner’s impact on their musical language.
Der Wald veers into total fandom. Here’s a dark, Romantic forest inhabited by innocent lovers. There’s a dramatic soprano wreaking social havoc. “Tod und Liebe” – death and love – sings the female innocent at the end in her own miniature Liebestod. In Stephen Barlow’s production, the lighting is set at “gloomy” and the action is in 1950s North America, the woodlanders clad in denim and plaid while Iolanthe the pseudo-Valkyrie arrives on a motorbike.
