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BBC/Shine TV

‘Right thing to do’

‘Show will be stronger than ever’

Male sexual jealousy drives Shakespeare’s problem play before it is smoothed over by its 11th-hour happy ending. Yaël Farber’s production animates the psychological terror that King Leontes (Bertie Carvel) wreaks on his pregnant wife Hermione (Madeline Appiah), out of his unfounded suspicion that she has been unfaithful with his old friend, Polixenes (John Light). Carvel makes a convincingly deluded barefoot king, regarding himself as the vulnerable cuckold. His suspicion turns to solid belief to unleash punishment on Hermione.

In its first three sombre acts, the drama plays out as a thriller, with expressionist movement and lighting. A gigantic orb of a full moon hangs over the stage (Soutra Gilmour’s design is spare and striking as a whole), turning cool white or roiling red to reflect the action.

Farber recently staged two Shakespeare tragedies at the Almeida: a Macbeth four years ago which was full of slow and meditative dread, and an arresting King Lear last year. This feels like a third tragedy in some ways, lugubrious in mood and with a monochrome aesthetic in the first, darker half.

But there is a fuzziness to the storytelling. This modern-dress production is all smoke and shadows, unmoored from a specific time or place, so it is harder to contextualise its themes. More specifically, some scenes are vague, such as Antigonus’s pursuit by a bear which is dealt with symbolically – a static figure takes off the mask to reveal herself as Hermione. It is beautiful but unclear.

Tim Lutkin’s lighting design turns warm in the second half, with lovely live music (lone musicians waver around the set). The usually awkward change of mood, from dark to light, works smoothly here: the play glides into a second half with Autolycus (Trevor Fox) its light-fingered highlight.

But Farber seems at pains to add her own mythical layers: the figure of Time (also Fox) speak a choral ode from Brecht’s The Antigone of Sophocles instead of the Oracle of Apollo, and this is opaque in its meaning. The feast in Bohemia is inspired by the ancient Greek ritual of the Eleusinian Mysteries, so the programme explains, adding that, for Farber, Hermione and Perdita “wear the mask of Demeter and Persephone”. An interesting idea on the page, it is gnomic on stage.

There is more clarity around female strength and resistance, to counter Leontes’ tyranny. Aïcha Kossoko, playing noblewoman Paulina, is a powerful presence while Appiah, as Hermione, exudes pained dignity and courage alongside her bewilderment. When she testifies in court, she is a bereft mother with lactating patches on her dress after her newborn baby has been taken from her. It is an abject scene.

The production never stops looking beautiful, and bustles with a wealth of original concepts, but sometimes resembles a puzzling procession. It remains an unsolved problem play, the first half – shaped so artfully as a tragedy of explosive and irrational male rage – still not quite wedded to its second.

A murderess who goes mad or a madwoman who commits murder? Donizetti’s bel canto bloodbath has lost none of its power to intrigue as well as entertain in the 190 years since its Naples premiere. In Cecilia Stinton’s thoughtful new staging the heroine is a charmer, a little wacky perhaps, prone to the odd hallucination maybe, but in different circumstances you imagine she’d be fun to be around. It’s also clear from the sexual violence played out behind the backs of her testosterone-fuelled lover and brother as they sing a rollicking duet on the forestage that when this Lucia kills it will be in self-defence.

Opera Holland Park is ideally placed to host a traditional production. Neil Irish’s sets, subtly lit by Tim van ’t Hof, seem to grow out of the Jacobean walls of Holland House. The action is partly set inside a crumbling mansion, here pointedly in need of repair. The rest occurs in and around the lichen-encrusted cemetery where the soil is still fresh on the grave of Lucia’s mother. With the orchestra located in the middle of the action, Stinton uses a potentially tricksy space well, though the busy chorus of parlour maids, gardeners and wedding guests could be more imaginatively blocked at times, and the 19th-century Scottish dad dancing was perhaps a step too far.

Michael Papadopoulos’ way with Donizetti’s tuneful score is another asset. There’s real care and attention in the way he shapes phrases and encourages the City of London Sinfonia to breathe in time with the singers. The 35 players produce a satisfyingly weighty sound, especially in the lively party scenes and the turbulence of the Act III storm. The OHP chorus is similarly rock-solid.

Leading a fine cast is Jennifer France, a bright, flexible soprano whose unforced warmth wins the audience’s sympathy from the outset. Playful, even cheeky at first, her descent into the grave – quite literally – where she plasters her blood-stained wedding dress with earth, is both consistent and credible. Her hushed singing is a delight, her coloratura secure. Only the high F feels a stretch, and then only just.

Her Edgardo is Portuguese tenor José de Eça. His is a thoroughly Italianate sound, rich and ringing, though a couple of softer high notes fell slightly flat. The final death scene is, for once, convincing. Australian baritone Morgan Pearse sings Lucia’s hard-hearted brother Enrico with impressive heft and plenty of ping to the voice.

Among the supporting roles, Blaise Malaba is a genially resonant Raimondo and Joseph Buckmaster a sprightly toned Arturo. A shout out too for stylish mezzo Charlotte Badham who made an indelible mark as Lucia’s companion Alisa. Their touching, delicately sculpted relationship was one of the production’s unexpected pleasures.

Perhaps the most notorious of Ozzy Osbourne’s outrageous on-stage antics was biting the head off of a bat on stage. So as tributes for the late rocker poured in from around the globe, one stuck out as particularly surprising – from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta).

The 76-year-old Black Sabbath frontman’s death was announced Tuesday, with his family saying Osbourne – who suffered from various ailments, including a form of Parkinson’s disease – “was with his family and surrounded by love”.

Tributes soon poured in for Osbourne from musical world luminaries such as Elton John, Ronnie Wood and Rod Stewart … and Peta, the famously strident animal-protection group.

“Ozzy Osbourne was a legend and a provocateur, but Peta will remember the ‘Prince of Darkness’ most fondly for the gentle side he showed to animals – most recently cats, by using his fame to decry painful, crippling declawing mutilations,” Peta said on its website and social channels.

“Ozzy may have been the singer, but his wife, Sharon, and his daughter, Kelly, were of one voice when it meant protecting animals.

“Ozzy will be missed by animal advocates the world over.”

Osbourne had famously partnered with the organisation in 2020 to speak out against the declawing of cats, and lent his face to an ad campaign showing his bloodied hands with the tagline, “It’s an amputation. Not a manicure”.

“Amputating a cat’s toes is twisted and wrong. If your couch is more important to you than your cat’s health and happiness, you don’t deserve to have an animal! Get cats a scratching post – don’t mutilate them for life,” Osbourne was quoted as saying at the time.

Peta suggests that those looking to protect their pets to seek out “humane ways to prevent cats from scratching on furniture”.

As well as biting the head off a dead bat he believed to be a stage prop in 1982 while performing in Iowa – and later going to hospital for a rabies inoculation – Osbourne also claimed to bitten the heads off two doves during a record label meeting the year before, supposedly having brought them to the meeting to release as a sign of peace.