Opera della Luna
Led by artistic director Jeff Clarke, it takes its name from Haydn's operatic setting of Goldoni's farce Il mondo della luna.
The company presents innovative, usually zany and irreverent, small-scale productions and adaptations of Gilbert and Sullivan, Offenbach and other comic opera and operetta, in English.
He soon began producing touring adaptations of Gilbert and Sullivan operas and well-known operettas, like The Merry Widow, Die Fledermaus and several Offenbach pieces.
His productions for that company included English-language adaptations of Love in a Village (which toured as far as Denver, Colorado), Boieldieu's The Caliph of Bagdad and Abu Hassan (two one-act operas presented together), Il mondo della luna and Robinson Crusoé.
[2] With the help of marketer and versatile theatre professional Graham Watson, Clarke established Opera della Luna (OdL) as a registered charity with a board of directors and a base of regular supporters.
Critic George Hall wrote that the production "is an evening of brilliance, both a tribute to and an affectionate send-up of [Pirates], done with verve, style, some excellent voices and a hefty quotient of camp.
With Richard Suart ... we know we're in for a treat.... Ian Belsey [and the rest of the cast] are all great fun and Jeff Clarke directs the whole at a cracking pace....
The first was The Ghosts of Ruddigore (1997), where a couple of nerds, Amanda Goodheart and Kevin Murgatroyd, have car trouble like Brad and Janet in the Rocky Horror Show.
As Clarke described the genesis of the production, he was in New York City over Christmas 1997 and visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which was showing a special exhibition of the work of Gianni Versace.
I wanted to find some visual way of showing this connection, so to have the sailors "flying" the scenery by pulling the ropes and tying them off would be a great trick.
Clarke plays another resident of his lodging house, an itinerant "variety" performer who assists and hinders the patter man's nightmarish rehearsal.
[15] Another review commented, "Sharp and witty, it oozed fun and inventiveness while satirising the class structure of English village life and marriage.
In 1997, when the Royal Opera House had to close for renovations, they presented a season at the Shaftesbury Theatre, including some lighter works, such as The Merry Widow, with a translation by Jeremy Sams.
Clarke recalled, "Shadow puppets for Valencienne and [Camille] in the pavilion required some restraint from Miss Knight and Mr [Carl] Sanderson, who were only too ready to make their assignation more graphic than Lehár intended.
"[2] In 2003, the Iford Arts Festival commissioned the company to create a chamber version of Offenbach's La belle Hélène, which OdL later toured.
There would be an extensive autumn tour from September to early November, and then the company would perform its annual Christmas pantomime at the Corn Exchange, Newbury.
"[2] OdL began to present Christmas pantomimes in 1995, including, Dick Whittington and his Cat, Aladdin, Sleeping Beauty, Puss in Boots, Cinderella, Robinson Crusoe and Robin Hood.
In Clarke's broad English adaptation, the story is moved to post-war Italy around the reign of Umberto II, infused with elements of organised crime, and political humour is added.
[4] Nicola Lisle, writing in the Oxford Mail praised its "suitably explosive and menacing treatment of the more sinister elements of the opera, [while grief and love are] handled movingly and sensitively.
Rupert Christiansen commented in The Telegraph: "I can't think of a performance of Orpheus in the Underworld that I've ever enjoyed as much as this rumbustious, unpretentious, and jolly version, executed with tremendous verve".
[33][34] A few years earlier, in Paris, Clarke had been delighted by a double bill of two hilarious one-act Offenbach operettas, Croquefer, ou Le dernier des paladins and The Isle of Tulipatan.
Because the work demands a larger production that OdL typically mounts, it joined forces with Ilford Arts and then played the piece at two other venues.
[41] For its first show upon reopening in 2021, OdL toured a double bill, titled Curtain Raisers, of Cox and Box by Sullivan and Offenbach's The Two Blind Beggars, with a translation by Clarke.
[23] A review of the company's 2009 adaptation of The Sorcerer in Bucks Free Press stated, "Opera Della Luna is innovative, imaginative and inventive.
[28]Gilbert and Sullivan expert Ian Bradley comments, "Opera della Luna has achieved the rare feat of bringing in a new audience for G&S without alienating the old one.
"[44] Typical of reactions to OdL's many appearances at the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival in Buxton is this Manchester Evening News review of the company's H.M.S.
It's a cleverly pared-down version to suit the mere eight-strong company, plus [its five-person orchestra] (and how haunting to hear Dear Little Buttercup as a violin solo by Rachel Davies).
He gestures, minces and trips around to great comic effect, splendidly aided and abetted by the others... Ian Belsey makes an imposing and funny Captain....
"[45]Reviewing the company's 2017 production of The Queen's Lace Handkerchief, Richard Bratby wrote in The Spectator, "Opera della Luna understands that, and proves – not for the first time – that the rarest pleasures can come with the lightest touch.
In recent years, they’ve given the UK première of a Johann Strauss operetta, a rare modern staging of the Edwardian West End smash The Arcadians, and an Offenbach double bill that was so raucously, scabrously funny that even writing about it has just made me choke on my tea.
