Opera Scotland

Ballo delle ingrate 1971Ledlanet Nights

Read more about the opera Ballo delle ingrate

Ledlanet Nights put on a summer show of a distinctly light-hearted double-bill of early opera with Monteverdi's delightful Ballo delle ingrate very much the earliest on display.. The autumn pairing was to be a contrasting combination of Dido and Aeneas followed by Pergolesi's classic intermezzo La Serva Padrona, in which an elderly bachelor is outwitted, and eventually married, by his cheeky young maid, assisted by his silent manservant. A few months earlier, in the summer, the first piece was a predecessor of the Pergolesi, Telemann's Pimpinone, in which an elderly bachelor is outwitted and eventually married by his cheeky maid - on this occasion without the aid of a silent manservant.

After the dinner interval, the Monteverdi work was given a delightfully irreverent and appropriately ribald performance. In modern dress of mini-skirt and jewellery, Venus was clearly a working girl who took her recalcitrant teenaged son, Cupid, to have an argument with Pluto. On the tiny Ledlanet stage, Richard Angas was a majestic Lord of the Underworld, even in his lift attendant's uniform. The dance of the cruel ladies allowed these benighted souls, personated by Mr Lindsay Kemp's troupe of male dancers in drag, to issue from the small lift - having climbed down a very steep ladder inside the liftshaft, and invisible to the audience - a simple, but very clever piece of stagecraft. As they danced slowly round the tiny stage, the soloist emerged in the tiny form of Sheila McGrow in the uniform of a bus conductress. She sang her lament most movingly. Quite what director Brian Mahoney did, or attempted to do, on the buses in his youth was discreetly veiled.

One performance tempted Scottish Opera's Peter Hemmings through from Glasgow, to see his Erda letting her hair down, and he seemed to enjoy himself.

The Ledlanet summer season included a week-long residency by Scottish Opera for All - piano-accompanied stagings of La traviata, Martha and Cinderella, as well as Ledlanet's own production of Telemann's Pimpinone coupled with Monteverdi's Ballo delle Ingrate. There was also an oratorio performance - Haydn's Creation. The Autumn schedule included another double bill - Pergolesi's Serva Padrona paired with Dido and Aeneas.