No other composer is referred to in terms of his connection with his librettist. We may speak of the Da Ponte operas of Mozart but we no more refer to Da Ponte and Mozart than we do to Boito and Verdi. Important as collaborations are, the reality of the situation is simply that, without the music, the works would not survive. How many of W S Gilbert’s plays or writings are common currency today? This is not because they are unimportant but that the overwhelming impact of the recognised work is carried by the music.

Though Sullivan may never have arrived at the grand opera he so cherished, his compositions deserve a better hearing than they regularly get. A semi-staged performance of The Yeomen of the Guard in the Royal Albert Hall went some way towards this but ultimately stumbled where so many productions do in putting more emphasis on the semi-staging than the music.

Though the singing was throughout of a high quality, the movement on stage often left voices adrift. Andrew Kennedy’s stirling Fairfax was at its best in his two solo arias which were done straight to the audience. At other times his voice got lost. This was equally true of Lisa Milne’s Elsie Maynard. Beautifully phrased throughout, even she lost impact in the final ensemble as she was facing sideways and singing into another character.

Thankfully the voices were strong enough to carry for most of the time, and Toby Stafford-Allen’s young Shadbolt, and Felicity Palmer’s seasoned but charged Dame Carruthers showed what could be done.

Mark Stone’s equally young Jack Point produced impeccable diction and clarity but found the transition to tragic anti-hero beyond him.

The real difficulty was the semi-staging which constantly worked against the music. There is a brooding selfishness at the heart of the work, a melancholy which is quite different from any other of the Savoy operas. Fairfax sings only of death and imprisonment. Phoebe – a highly positive performance from Heather Shipp – starts and ends in tears. Nobody is a free agent and the Tower itself is a symbol of the constant sense of imprisonment which traps all whom we encounter.  Strutting Tower Warders and mugging actors have no place within this sense of entrapment.

I suspect that the radio audience had a very different impression from those of us in the hall, and it will be interesting to see the way it comes across on television later this week.

The BBC Concert Orchestra and Singers under Jane Glover did their best with what were essentially Mozartian forces in a hall which requires Wagner for impact. The best of the music was certainly the small ensemble numbers – the Temptation trio, the madrigal – where the combined voices and direct contact with the audience led to positive outcomes.

Strangely, the evening might have been better as a concert performance with newly written spoken narration.  There is also a good case for using a full symphony orchestra. I recently heard the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra play Pineapple Poll and the impact was stunning when Sullivan is given the weight of orchestration his compositions can easily take. It was good to be reminded how fine a work Yeomen is, but I still yearn for a fully performed reading which takes the work at face value and sees it for what it is. BH

 Proms Photographs copyright – Chris Chrisodoulou