Lyric Solitude, English Touring Opera, Snape Maltings, review: deeply rewarding and highly recommended

Sombre and grave in tone as befits the tensely troubled mood of these times, English Touring Opera’s autumn season is presenting a selection of song cycles and short one-person operas, drawn from across the 20th-century repertory and performed in various permutations. They may not leave you full of the joys of spring, but you will certainly be impressed and moved by the high seriousness of the enterprise.

Britten’s genius is at its heart, and it beats most strongly in his magnificent settings of nine of the Holy Sonnets of John Donne – a work composed in 1945 shortly after the composer had been shattered by a visit to the recently liberated concentration camp of Belsen, where he and Yehudi Menuhin gave concerts to the survivors.

Death and its terrors is their theme, confronted head-on in music that embodies all the poems’ spiritual intensity, suppressed rage and abject grief. In close partnership with his wonderfully responsive and assured pianist Ian Tindale, the finely schooled young tenor Richard Dowling rose to their challenges with a rare sensitivity and commitment. “Since she whom I loved hath paid her last debt”, charged with one of the most rapturous melodies Britten ever wrote, left me with a lump in the throat.

Britten’s lighter side emerged in A Charm of Lullabies, five sweet songs of soothing and cajoling addressed to the cradle. They were delivered with characterful warmth by the mezzo-soprano Katie Stevenson, who pulled off an impressive double by switching with equal poise to Shostakovich’s fiercely angular approach to the Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva.

The venue for these concerts was Snape Maltings, a hall with a generously resonant acoustic that offers singers the temptation to let rip. Thomas Elwin surrendered to it in Tippett’s Boyhood’s End and The Heart’s Assurance – cycles written during the Second World War that suffer from their mawkish texts  – and there were moments in his otherwise excellent performance when reining in his robust and vibrant tenor might have paid dividends. Ian Tindale again coped brilliantly with the elaborate piano parts.

Each piece has been furnished with some simple element of visual dramatisation, often with the singer interacting in counterpoint to a barefoot dancer; in the case of Boyhood’s End, the literal mimicry of the text seemed intrusive and redundant; the subtler, less assertive movements that accompanied the Donne Sonnets were more enhancing. Imperfectly synchronised surtitles – doubly necessary in the absence of printed programmes – were projected on to screens; stronger lighting might have made the mood less churchy without destroying the properly austere atmosphere.

Another singer in the company has contracted Covid-19, forcing the cancellation of a third concert that promised further works by Britten and Shostakovich; the repertory also contains short operas by Poulenc and Argento. The ravages of the virus permitting, however, ETO hopes to take them all on the road over the next few weeks, and those of adventurous taste will find its rendering of these emotionally and musically rich programmes deeply rewarding.

Touring nationwide until Dec 6. Tickets and details: englishtouringopera.org.uk