THIRTY YEARS OF BAMPTON CLASSICAL OPERA

Many 18th century operas incorporate an on-stage storm which has always felt like tempting fate. We conjured up a magnificent storm, whipped up by the god Apollo, no less, in Gluck’s Philemon and Baucis in 2016, which we set in a spartan low-cost airport, but the funniest was probably that in Paisiello’s Barber of Seville. At Bampton the enclosing Deanery hedge was studded with a multitude of plastic ‘Seville’ oranges, and as Paisiello’s stirring storm music gradually grew in intensity, the backstage crew started throwing oranges from behind the hedge onto the stage.

Dr Bartolo’s two redcoat servants, Mr Sprightly and Mr Lively (played with terrific panache by David Murphy and Jonathan Sells, and who earlier had sung an outrageous snoring and sneezing duet), now wrapped up against the ‘weather’ in sou’westers and pac-a-macs rushed on to catch the cascading oranges in fire-buckets – the inspiration was the 1960s TV contest It’s a

Knockout. Nigel Hook’s gloriously crazy holiday-camp caravan was built with a number of boobytrapped features and so began cheerfully ‘misbehaving’ – washing line billowing, window curtains twitching, lights fizzing, flower box collapsing, TV aerial rocking – it may all sound innocuous but was hilarious. The scene caused unexpected problems at the Buxton Festival, however, where we found that the oranges gently rolled down the raked stage and into the unsuspecting orchestra pit. Fortunately the discovery was made before any orchestral players suffered headaches, and we replaced the oranges with a collection of hastily-purchased softer and less mobile teddy-bearsperhaps not as apt or as funny, but a typically surreal Bampton touch.