Longborough's Rinaldo a jaw-droppingly fine intro to Baroque opera

Thanks to my husband for taking dictation and typing, so I could get this posted despite my inability to use a keyboard while recovering from surgery.

Last night was firm proof that I can appreciate avant grade staging of traditional operas … if done well.

This blog has seen many objections to misguided attempts (most recently the ROH's awkward Maria Stuarda) and a general preference to keep things staged in the eras in which they're set.  But Longborough Festival Opera's transformation of Handel's Crusader-era tale Rinaldo into a fairground/circus romp worked a charm.  In fact, I think it was my favourite of all the operas we've seen at Longborough since we discovered it in 2010.

Any staging of Rinaldo needs to get creative to move past two big challenges.  First, it's about conflict between Christians and Muslims, firmly establishes the latter as evil and ends with the bad guys finding salvation by converting to Christianity.  These days, that's a dangerously incendiary plot line.  Second, if you were to stage it literally, you'd have to include battles, sea journeys, exotic Saracen clothing, knights in shining armour … scenery and costumes to break the bank.

Longborough chose to dress the chorus as clowns, the lead characters as ring masters, strongmen, sexy burlesque vamps and one doll-like innocent for our heroine.  A giant clown's head stood centre stage, its mouth alternating as a cavern, prison and entry point.  Folding partitions in carnival stripes and polka dots became walls, paths, boats and chariots.  The orchestra, with period instruments anchored by a beautiful harpsichord, sat on stage, with singers striding through them as the plot moved along.  It instantly defused the Muslim/Christian sensitivities, instead giving us a play-within-a-play atmosphere of romping performers pitting a less-defined good against a menacing, but ultimately harmless, evil.  With a happy ending.  A rare but sweet treat in opera.

Delightful and appropriate as the visual interpretation was, it's the music that sent the show into the stratosphere.  Rinaldo was Handel's first opera, strung together from already popular, previously-written hits.  Think Mamma Mia, circa 1711. The music is fantastic, with arias covering every mood from sublime to bombastic, melancholic to passionate.

The most famous tune is the poignant Lascio ch'io pianga, a lament from our imprisoned heroine to the chief villain to let her go.  Eloise Irving delivered this as flawlessly as any recording I've heard, and with such emotion she made it completely believable that her captor would fall in love with her there and then.  (An important plot twist.)

But even more jaw-dropping is our hero Rinaldo, played by Jake Arditti.  One of the oddities of Baroque opera is the preference for men with boyish, high voices (usually castrati … singers who'd been castrated in childhood to preserve their voices) to play the lead roles.  These days, it usually means women singing as men.  And, as good as they are, it's hard to be cajoled into admiration of a swashbuckling hero with both a high voice and a bra.  Arditti is a broad-chested, virile, manly action hero who just happens to have the voice of a choir boy.  He employs his counter tenor to vibrant effect, trilling up and down vocal fireworks that leave you amazed the human voice can actually be persuaded to work that way.  Several times during his arias, my jaw literally dropped.

Not only did I enjoy every moment of the production, but … as the first Baroque opera I've ever attended … it triggered all sorts of revelations about the more familiar operas that would follow it.  Suddenly, the Queen of the Night's mind-blowing aria in The Magic Flute wasn't a one-off, but a progression in a tradition of vocal gymnastics.  Wagner's sexy temptresses in Parsifal seem to have descended in a straight line from the sirens who try to lure Rinaldo off his path.  The experience has left me very keen to see more Baroque opera and to learn more about how it influenced the following centuries.

Next summer, Longborough returns to its roots of Wagner and 19th century classics.  We already have our rooms reserved at Windy Ridge for Tristan and Isolde.  But I do hope they return to the Baroque in some future season.  How about the Coronation of Poppea for summer 2016?

Surgery means a slow summer for Bencard's Bites

Dear readers,

Today I have surgery to remove a collapsed disk in my lower neck.  Turns out this is the cause of the mobility problems that I've occasionally mentioned here.  The op should, eventually, return me to something pretty close to normal.

However, it means a six-week recovery period with no work, limited mobility and a neck brace.  Using a laptop or keyboard for any length of time will be forbidden, and some planned events are going to have to go.

Sadly, this means no coverage of the planned opera double header of The Barber of Seville and Tosca at this year's Longborough Opera Festival.  I hope to get to Rinaldo the next weekend, sitting quietly and letting everyone else do the hard graft of country house picnicking.

I should be returned to my adventuring self in time for the big birthday trip in September.  In the mean time, I may post some very short pieces, or talk my husband into guest blogging.

Bye for now,
Ellen

Hampton Court Flower Show makes the shopping even easier

 Hampton Court is a very different flower show than Chelsea.  It's huge, and it's all about shopping.  Sure, there are display gardens here, too, but this is a festival of acquisition.  Regulars turn up with their own shopping carts and pack them densely.  My final haul this year … carefully hunted down to fill specific holes in the garden … is pictured left.  A couple new pond plants, hardy Alpines for my pond margins, a red-almost-black scabious and several fine specimens, including the stunning "Sum and Substance" to fill out my host bed.

For the first time in my memory, the organisers made some big changes to the traditional layout.  All of the areas for purchasing plants are now grouped together, near the main entrance.  Making it far more convenient for shoppers.  Now that we know, in future years we'll loop through the rest of the show and return to the front for our plants as we're on our departure path.  This year, we started at 10:30 and all had full trolleys by 1, making a drop off to one of the plant creches a necessity.

The show gardens are more spread out than at Chelsea and far more eclectic.  It's hard to pinpoint any specific trends.  Densely-packed planting interspersed with grasses or Queen Anne's Lace continues to be popular, as in the Macmillan Cancer Garden, below.  For a donation, they gave away seeds on the latter plant; I shall try my own interspersing next year.

Like any flower show, Hampton gives you examples you can take home.  I have this achillea in my own garden, and was deeply irritated when what was billed as red with a tiny yellow centre turned orange as it matured.  (I started out banning both yellow and orange from my garden, but they keep creeping in.) Sandwiched between purple and white, it's lovely here.  Maybe I won't move it beyond my walls, after all.

My favourite show garden was much quirkier, however.  This was inspired on a Roman hypocaust, the under-floor heating systems found in the great baths.  Flowers surround what would have been the support columns, and smoke trailed out to evoke the furnace once burning there.

Another "hot" garden was my pick of the conceptual gardens.  Each year, these have a theme and are meant to provoke thought and discussion more than show off horticulture.  They're the conversation starters of the show.  This year, the theme was the Seven Deadly Sins, and this cauldron of angry oranges, reds and yellows springing from volcanic rock was, of course, anger.  It spewed a jet of hot water every so often, if you waited around.

Elsewhere across the show grounds, working with the environment took centre stage, with lots of bug houses, composting, hedgehog friendly gardens, wildflower meadows and the like.  This included an impressive vegetable patch, where cabbages became high art.

Corporate sponsorship seems a little more present every year, though still not in an obnoxious way.  Here, Ocean Spray sponsored a garden to evoke cranberry bogs.  Lots of juice testing and coupon distribution taking place in the adjacent New England beach hut.

More puzzling … Viking Cruises had sponsored a garden at Chelsea.  No garden here, but they still sent the Vikings.  Upload your photo with them to Twitter with a specific hashtag, enter yourself to win a cruise.  Why not?

The shopping isn't just about potted plants. There's a great craft tent, acres of garden furniture and accessories.  Here, for £80 and up, you can have one of these instant wire-frame topiaries.  I fear our dogs would tear it to shreds in under 10 minutes.

And finally, for my readers in St. Louis.  Look, Clydesdales don't just pull the Budweiser beer wagon.  Here, they take tourists on a leisurely ride around the formal gardens at Hampton Court.

Maria Stuarda: Loved the star, underwhelmed by the opera

I wouldn't have bought tickets for Maria Stuarda were it not for Joyce DiDonato.

I'm a huge fan of the American mezzo-soprano, who combines a remarkable voice with tremendous acting on stage, and champions good causes with a bright personality off.  I'd seen her in broadcast performances, but never live.  Thus prompting me to get tickets for the Royal Opera House's production of Donizetti's opera about the conflict between Scottish and English queens.  Even though I've always been underwhelmed by the composer, whose music all sounds generally similar, and never seems to match the mood of the action on stage.

The evening lived up to expectations on both fronts.  DiDonato had me dropping my jaw in amazement, while the opera left me cold.

The premise is a great one.  Take the conflict between Mary Stuart and Queen Elizabeth.  Use artistic license to insert a love triangle:  Robert Dudley's in love with Mary, but Elizabeth is in love with him.  Power politics mixes with human passion.  We know how it's going to end, but this takes us on a different route.  One that includes a face-to-face meeting between the two queens.  It never happened, but any novelist would make it so.  And perhaps most odd for an English audience, Elizabeth is the villain, and Mary the noble martyr.

DiDonato is compelling as Mary.  Her voice is tremulous in fear, soaring in joy, scathing in anger.  In every mood, it touches your soul and makes you wonder if you've ever heard better.  Certainly, I've never seen any other opera star so thoroughly inhabit her character.  In the aria where she remembers the beauties of the world beyond her prison, and regrets the life that brought her there, your heart will break.  Her farewell before she goes to the block stirred tears.  And the scene where she meets Elizabeth, attempts to restrain herself, and finally rises in the towering anger than condemns her to death … utterly magnificent.

Sadly, she's let down by the rest of the production.  The staging just doesn't work.  The director has decided to use modern sets and costumes on all but the queens, who wear 16th century gowns.  I suppose it was a statement on a queen's distance from her people, but they didn't bring the point alive in any other way.  The last two acts, set in the forest outside Mary's prison of Fotheringay Castle, and later inside it, have been placed in a grim, grey modern prison block.  The chorus shuffle in occasionally like zombies.

Ismael Jordi's Dudley has a lovely voice but seems a confused boy rather than a passionate hero.  In the first act, the passionate Elizabeth strips him to the waist, an uncomfortable take on workplace sexual abuse.  And yet he goes on to champion Mary and naively believe Elizabeth will pardon her.  A believeable mistake from a man who doesn't realise a woman is in love with him.  But this staging makes that ignorance unbelievable.

The music does nothing to help.  Donizetti's score is perfectly pleasing, but it all sounds like cheerful 19th century light opera.  There are no ominous sounds, no swelling doom; the music simply doesn't match what's happening on stage.  This might have been the fault of the conductor.  I'm no expert on the musical part of opera, but the guy next to me, who'd seen Maria Stuarda many times, said this was the worst he'd ever heard it from the pit.

The other bright spot was Carmen Giannattasio's Elizabeth, an exquisitely pure soprano who sang her role with a combination of passion, bullying, self-doubt and mild hysteria that made a perfect, villainous counterpoint to the saintly Mary. 

I'll go out of my way again to see Joyce DiDonato in anything.  I'll look out for Giannattasio as well.  But I'm in no hurry to see another Donizetti any time soon.

An American 4th, an English 5th … it's down-home BBQ and elegant Henley in the same weekend

The Henley Regatta is always right around the 4th of July, giving someone who celebrates both events a vivid opportunity to compare wildly different styles of national summer entertainment.

This year I did one of my occasional July 4th parties, in which I strive to bring the down-home experience of a Midwestern Independence Day to my English friends and family.  All of whom, of course, consider it an exotic theme party.  There's country music, American food, flag decorations, icy Budweiser or Sam Adams and fireworks.  The centrepiece of this party was actually quite a gourmet meal, even if it was eaten with disposable cutlery off flag-patterned paper places.

We started with a variety of typical BBQ nibbles.  The classic crab ball (crab meat, cream cheese and a bit of soured cream) on a bed of cocktail sauce, plus Ranch dip and queso dip.  This is the part of the meal where replicating America is the most complicated.  In America, these are all assembled quickly with readily available convenience foods.  We don't have cocktail sauce in England, so you have to make it by grinding fresh horseradish root into catsup, adding sour cream and lemon juice to taste.  No Triscuits to serve with it; I opted for Ryevita as the closest choice.  No Ranch dressing mix; I bring it from America and still had some in stock.  The queso dip is the biggest issue.  No Velveeta here, no Ro-tel.  So we had to start with a classic roux, soften with beer and add cheddar and red leicester cheeses.  The guests loved it, I thought it was a disappointing runner-up to the Velveeta/Ro-tel dip that takes 1/5 of the time to make.

Moving on to the main course, things should get a little easier.  Prepping and slow-smoking a pork

Putting the nephew to work

shoulder in your Weber is not much different on either side of the pond.  Except if you get too precise about trying to dictate the cut.  Because "Boston Butt", preferred for pulled pork, doesn't exist here either.  Our butcher at Newlyns tried his best to follow the instructions I brought him.  I came home with a quarter pig.  Which led to an amusing FaceTime call between kitchens in St. Louis and London, as my brother-in-law directed camera angles and coached us on how to butcher down and tie the piece we needed.

Any decent BBQ sauce is stupidly expensive and comes in relatively small bottles here, so it's best to make that, too.  (I use former First Lady Barbara Bush's recipe, obtained from a Texas cookbook when I lived there.)  Baked beans?  The Brits think they come out of a tin.  So have to do those properly, stewed down for a day with maple syrup and studded with bacon.  Bob Gibson's Alabama cole slaw better than any available here, so make that too.  And those bread and butter pickles that form the finishing touch to a great pulled pork sandwich?  Despite a huge section of "pickle" at the grocers, we don't have those here either, so add another thing to the home made list.

Finally, the big cake decorated with white icing, blueberries and strawberries to form the American flag.  You can't stroll into a bakery and pick one of those up.  Start baking.

So, all in all, it takes as much effort to do the traditional July 4th bbq as it does to do a formal dinner party.  Which is why I don't do this every year.

The next day was a totally different, and far more relaxing, experience at the Henley Regatta.  We exchanged shorts, tee shirts and baseball caps for dressy summer wear and proper hats.  Beer for champagne and pulled pork for poached salmon.

The rowing event has been taking place on a long, straight stretch of the Thames above the picturesque market town of Henley since 1839.  It's become a solid part of the London social season and tends to draw a more exclusive crowd than other events.  Anyone who gardens enjoys the Chelsea Flower Show.   Builders and waitresses are as likely to enjoy a horse race and do a day out at Ascot as the toffs.  But rowing tends to be a sport confined to expensive private schools, and the places to watch the race at Henley are almost all corporate hospitality or private clubs.  Egalitarian, this is not.  But, good lord, it's fabulous people watching.

Start with the usual summer semi-formal wear.  Women in elegant summer frocks and hats, men in light coloured trousers, blue blazers, straw boaters or panama hats.  Then there are the famous "Henley Blazers".  Every school or rowing club has its colours, and these are traditionally used to create striped blazers, often worn with a straw boater with a matching hat band.  The more obnoxious, the better.  Thus my husband, who shudders with revulsion at Brooks Brothers madras plaid bermudas, would have no problem being seen in public in the outfit to the left.  All part of the enduring mystery of the Englishman.

Our membership at the Lansdowne Club gives us reciprocal rights at the Phyllis Court.  The Regency-style manor house with sprawling grounds along the Thames really comes into its own in Regatta week, since it's placed fortuitously at the finish line.  Members (permanent and reciprocal) can choose from a variety of packages, from the simple parking and picnic pass that allows you to do your own thing on the lawns, to entry to the clubhouse with a buffet, to access to the Isis Lounge … a modern, glass-fronted pavilion right on the banks of the river … with a sit-down lunch in the ballroom.

We did the last, figuring we'd never done Henley before and might as well do it properly.  And this option offered the best views combined with the best rain protection.  A good choice, since it was one of those days that danced between sunshine and showers.

Of the racing, admittedly, we didn't watch much.  Everyone tends to look up as the skulls hove into view, watch the last minute, cheer the teams as they go over the line, then return to drinking.  The most exciting bit, naturally, was Piers' school, St. Edwards Oxford, winning its race to make it into the finals of the Princess Elizabeth Cup the next day.  (Sadly, they went on to lose to those pesky lads from Eton.)  Otherwise, like so many events of "The Season", it's really just an opportunity to dress up, swan about in lovely surroundings, eat, drink, and check out the fashion.

I'm not sure we'll do the Regatta every year, but we'll certainly be back to the Phyllis Court for a summer lunch or dinner on their riverside patios.  Rowers or not, it's a delightful view.

Tartufo: A hidden fine-dining gem in elegant Belgravia

If I were looking for a romantic spot for a secret assignation … with great food … I'd be at Tartufo.

It's a quirky location, tucked in the basement of an Edwardian townhouse now kitted out as a super-posh boutique hotel at 11 Cadogan Gardens.  Nestled between Sloane and Cadogan Squares, this is a busy part of London, but you'd never know it on this quiet lane, in this subtly signposted hotel.  (It is, in fact, very easy to stroll by without realising it's a commercial premises.)

Giving Sarah an elegant send-off

Enter through a marvellously lush hall, decorated as if Oscar Wilde has just stepped out for a moment, head down the stairs and you'll find yourself in a warren of small dining rooms.  There's a conservatory roof in one, and they've all been decorated with mirrors, pale upholstery and light blue accents to make the place seem bigger.  But I doubt you could get more than six tables in any of the rooms without making it feel crowded.  Overall, this adds a cozy feeling, as if you were dining in someone's home or a private club rather than a restaurant.

Of course, we were there on a Monday night and it was fairly empty.  It risks feeling loud and crowded when full.  The set-up means rooms can easily be converted to private dining for groups, which was what took us there.  A farewell dinner for my longest -serving employee, who's been steadfastly at my right hand for more than eight years, deserved something really special.  And this fit the bill.

As you'd guess from the name, Tartufo is Italian.  It's on the gourmet end.  Definitely in Locanda Locatelli territory, this is Italian classics given the modern gourmet treatment: beautiful presentation, surprising combinations, the odd bit of foreign fusion.  Like smoked eel with yuzu jelly and chlorophyll sauce.  Everything we had was delicious and faultlessly cooked, even if it didn't trip my ethnic Italian buttons the way current favourite Luce e Limone does.

In traditional Italian style, you're encouraged to dine over four courses: antipasto, pasta, main and dessert.  Portion sizes are determined accordingly.  At four courses you emerge pleasantly full; at three, less delicate appetites might have felt a bit peckish.  As you might guess from the name, truffles feature heavily across the menu.

I started with the beef carpaccio, sliced ethereally thin and dressed with the appropriate delicacy to enhance rather than overwhelm the meat.  The paccheri pasta with crab was a touch less balanced.  Though the pasta was obviously freshly made and succulently al dente, the chef had edged just a bit too far into tomato territory, losing the subtlety of the crustacean.  The pork fillet wrapped in smoked pancetta was a tasty basic, made special by its base of aubergine and fennel puree (must try that at home) and a shaving of black truffles.

The standout course, ironically, didn't seem particularly Italian in any way other than its name: Conte di Cavour.  (He was an Italian nobleman and gourmand who was a force in the unification of Italy and died relatively young.  If this dessert is anything to go by, probably from diabetes.)  It's a dark chocolate wedge, somewhere between mousse and cheesecake, on a delightfully crunchy hazelnut base, slathered in dark chocolate ganache, decorated with praline and served with a bit of lemon ice on the side to cut the richness.  It's a dessert worth returning for.

There's a small, mostly Italian wine list filled with really interesting choices; regions or varieties that often don't leave the country.  We had the light yet fruity Shioppettino, one of my favourite reds from the North of Italy, and a crisp, friendly Vermentino from Sardinia that married well with many dishes.  But all sorts of other things tempted, from Puglian unknowns to Italian takes on Gewürztraminers and Reislings to a beguiling Morellino di Scansano.  Surprisingly for this very expensive area, more than 20 of those Italian options are under £50 a bottle and there are fine choices in the low £30s.

In fact, the prices are a pleasant surprise over all, with a flat a la carte rate of £30 for two courses, £35 for three and £40 for four.  Which probably brings your total for fine dining here in at less than The Orange, the posh gastropub I reviewed last entry, that's in the same neighbourhood.

I suspect the prices will go up.  This has the feel of a place testing the waters as it builds its reputation.  Alexis Gauthier, of the well-known eponymous Chelsea restaurant, is the financial backer.  GM Michael Lear, who was the front-of-house constant at our old favourite Roussillon (I wept when it closed) is at the helm here.  Back in the kitchen is a young Italian named Manuel Oliveri, about whom I predict we're going to be hearing a lot.  Check this place out now, before he gets famous.

The Orange, Pimlico: The very model of a modern gastropub

The traditional pub is an endangered species.  The latest statistics from the Campaign for Real Ale say that, on average, 26 a month closed in Britain in the six months leading up to March 2013.

Food has been the saviour of the pubs now in thriving health.

Most people consider the rise of the gastropub a good thing.  Sure, there are a handful of the old guard who miss the local boozer filled with regulars downing pints. But most people appreciate that the conversion of drinking establishments into restaurants with decent food, often with cozy areas still preserved for the business of drinking.  The margin on food, and the higher-margin wines almost always consumed with meals, keep these places from being shuttered.

The Orange in Pimlico is an exemplar of the new breed of gastropub.

Casual drinking and dining happens downstairs; upstairs there's a proper dining room.  The look is casual yet elegant, lots of scrubbed, pale wood in Georgian architecture.  The first floor dining rooms are particularly light and airy, with towering ceilings over what were once gracious drawing rooms.  On sunny days, doors to little false balconies stand open.  With a tree-filled square just across the road, the whole place has a pastoral, Southern European feel.

Logical, then, that the modern European menu has a distinctly Italian undertone.  They have a wood-fired pizza oven and offer both starter and main course sizes; thin and flaky with interesting toppings like aubergine or smoked mozzarella.  Rabbit makes a regular appearance on the menu, as do more unusual pastas and delicate seasonal fish specials.  The wine list is broad enough to be interesting without being overwhelming, and has some quirky, unusual choices.

I've eaten here twice this spring, first for a girls' lunch before the Chelsea Flower Show.  Second for a larger family lunch to celebrate my mother-in-law's 75th birthday.  Excellent meals, beautifully presented, with good service both times.

The drawback, as ever and especially in this part of London, is price.  When I first came to England, pub food was fish & chips, burgers and pies.  Sometimes the food was even good.  But you don't make margin on those sorts of simple meals.  You make it on people who do three courses.

Chilli salt squid with smoked chilli mayonnaise for £8.50, Jurassic Coast rose veal rump for £18.50, a couple of £4 sides, roasted peach with basil mousse for £7.  All consumed by the type of people who like to linger over a meal and tend to sink a bottle each, with probably a £12-20 margin on each.  All of which means a sophisticated, relaxed meal here will easily cost you £60 or £70 once you put in the tip, water and coffee.

And when you're spending that much, you have to ask yourself … should I be spending a little more and going to a proper restaurant?

A lot of this, of course, has to do with the ridiculous costs of doing business in London.  Our local pub, the Four Horseshoes, has food just as good as the Orange.  Minus the pizza oven and with only the most basic of wine lists.  Our bill on a recent visit: roughly half that of The Orange, with the same amounts of food and wine.

The Orange is an elegant, reliable model of the modern gastropub in one of London's most exclusive areas.  Fortunately, it's setting a model that country pubs like ours can follow.