Even in the world of opera, fairytales don't always come true. The first performance of a composer's long-lost opera in his home town, 100 years after his death, deserves to be a revelation, particularly when that composer is Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, whose music is now almost totally overlooked. Alas, Surrey Opera's production reveals that Thelma, rediscovered by chance in the British Library in 2003, doesn't even come into the fascinating-but-flawed category. The instincts of the Edwardian opera companies that rejected the score in 1909 were right; whatever the strengths of some of the music, the work is shackled by the clunking rhymes and fustian archaisms of its libretto (almost certainly Coleridge-Taylor's own work).
- Until 10 February
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The plot, in which Christian redemption finally overcomes Dark Ages paganism, involves a love triangle, a magic amulet, water nymphs and a character called the King of the Necks. Wagner's Ring hovers in the background, and Wagner is also part of its musical makeup, though a less important part than Dvorˇák, Brahms, Sullivan and even Rimsky-Korsakov. Coleridge-Taylor is at his best in the colourful orchestral writing. By contrast, the vocal lines often seem forced, shackled by the leaden text; and the dramatic shape wavers. It's a work that would benefit enormously from some tactful cuts, especially in the central act.
It is understandable that Surrey Opera should have wanted to present Thelma complete. Director Christopher Cowell has done what he can to improve the text, and his economically naturalistic production keeps the action moving and the chorus well-marshalled. With Jonathan Butcher conducting, all the singers work hard: Joanna Weeks is Thelma and Alberto Sousa her lover Eric, with Håkan Vramsmo as the baddie, Carl, and Rhonda Browne as the faithful Gudrun. It remains a curio, though, not a reclaimed masterpiece.