Blaze of Glory! review

David Hackbridge Johnson’s new large-scale work, presented by Welsh National Opera, sets a text by experienced librettist Emma Jenkins and places at its centre the distinctive phenomenon of the Welsh male choir. In the wrong hands, the subject could have been treated sentimentally and ended up being of purely local interest. Instead, politics, racism and feminism are sketched in without compromising the feel-good nature of the whole. Much of the piece is comic, but at its foundations lie humanity and heart.

The opera is set within a 1950s Welsh community that has suffered a recent mining disaster; among other things, this has decimated the local choir. It takes considerable persuasion for disheartened local choirmaster Dafydd Pugh to attempt to form a new ensemble, in particular, the persistence of accompanist (and eventually conductor) Nerys Price. Their burgeoning romance is handled sensitively but with humour. Fully inhabiting these lead roles are sterling tenor Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts as Mr Pugh and top-of-the-range soprano Rebecca Evans as Miss Price.

Others leaving appreciable marks include Themba Mvula as Anthony, a young African-American GI who has settled in the town and brought contemporary American pop idioms with him – indeed, Johnson makes regular use of 1950s pop styles, integrating them skilfully into his traditional and equally period classical score. Feargal Mostyn-Williams as “bearded alto” Bryn Bevan, with his distinctive countertenor, enables the choir to tackle an Alpine yodelling song at a local eisteddfod, even if Mark Llewelyn Evans’ confrontational rival choirmaster Caradog Probert has them disqualified.

Young tenor Emlyn, meanwhile, is poached by Covent Garden – by no means an unknown trajectory, and certainly a credible one, given Adam Gilbert’s impressive voice. Helping bind the show together is a female trio (Angharad Morgan, Nafissatou Batu Daramy and Angharad Lyddon), whose joint appearances include a neat Andrews Sisters parody.