Uprising, Glyndebourne review - didactic community opera superbly performed

The score is effective, and rewarding to perform, but derivative. The libretto uses every cliché, or truism, about save-the-planet youth activism in the book; it’s didactic, not dramatic. Direction, design and lighting sometimes feel unfinished. Yet as a youth/community opera, Glyndebourne’s latest educational project hits the mark; the commitment of singers and players young and old, professional and amateur, makes the ends justify the means.

The only other Glyndebourne education project of this sort I’ve seen live, Nothing by David Bruce with a libretto by Glyn Maxwell, began, like this one, with a young person stepping out from the school group to protest: in Uprising, tree-loving Lola Green goes it alone to do a Greta Thunberg, while in the earlier stunner from Glyndebourne Youth Opera, Pierre Anthon sits in a plum tree because nothing has value for him. The difference is that in the amazing Janne Teller novel for young adults – I say it should be for everyone – on which Nothing is based, the impact on the other schoolchildren is unpredictable, scary, even tragic. Nothing is music-theatre that develops, challenges, shocks. Uprising is more successful as a staged cantata than as an opera (there will be Scottish concert performances at the end of March). All the main characters are types; in Lola’s family, dad and sister resist, but not for long, while mum pursues her career, with disastrous consequences. The first act jumps inorganically between superbly performed group scenes indebted to the Nixon/Klinghoffer era of John Adams - as was Flight, the first and deservedly successful collaboration between this composer/writer team, Jonathan Dove and April De Angelis - and Sondheimesque family ensembles with lively music and simplistic rhymes (pictured above: Ross Ramgobin as Clive Green, Madeleine Shaw as Angela Green, Ffion Edwards as Lola Green and late replacement Natasha Agarwal as Zoe Green). A potentially distressing scene where a doctor recommends electric shock treatment for the presumed-depressed Lola has inventive Stravinskyan shapes from Dove but doesn't work dramatically. We don’t get any sense of what changes the minds of Lola’s schoolmates, or how we get to the big and lively protest finale with its visceral stage drumming. About 20 minutes could be shed along the way.

Act Two’s forest scene, on the other hand, is memorable and even original. Mum’s employees, come to cut, hack, slash and burn the trees to make way for a new highway, temporarily vanish as the ambitious lady is dream-challenged by Quercus, the Oak King (pictured below, Shaw as Angela and Edwin Kaye as Quercus), and witnesses from his populace (birch, bracket fungus, weevil and root). Here Dove takes on Ravel's second half of L'enfant et les sortilèges, and succeeds on his own terms. Nevertheless the destruction proceeds to a massive climax, perfectly shaped by Dove. Chorus as river flooding because the forest is gone get fine music too. The finale is over-extended, and vaguely comical when species that have gone extinct are song-remembered – this feels like a learning-manual, not drama – but rather beautiful, winning a well-deserved standing ovation.

Diirector Sinéad O'Neill and movement director Mike Ashcroft are more successful with the group choreography than with individuals, whose actions can sometimes seem tentative, The designs by Ana Inés Jabares-Pita are minimal and, costume-wise, obvious but impactful: greys for adults and pre-converted schoolkids in Act One, colourful for the young environmentalists. It would have been nice to see photos of the real-life youth activists from around the world who support Lola online; we get their images in the programme. For the performers there can be nothing but praise. Dove gives both children from 33 Sussex schools and the Community Chorus a lot to learn and memorise; they deliver with gusto. Young soprano Ffion Edwards is fearless as Lola, her lyric soprano managing every challenge, and mezzo Madeleine Shaw carries equal conviction as misguided mum in every line. There's a nice parallel in casting bass Edwin Kaye as both pompous Mayor of the self-satisfied community, tuba satirically in tow, and Quercus, natural authority backed up by a richly harmonised brass ensemble.

Andrew Gourlay, an eloquent supporter of youth - his NYO concert in 2023 was unforgettable - conducts the Glyndebourne Sinfonia, a heady mix of professionals and players from 19 schools. Yes, it may sound like Adams at least half the time, but how exciting for the participants and a very different audience from the Glyndebourne usual, to hear such richness and power, in many cases for the first time.

• Uprising's third performance at Glyndebourne this afternoon (3 March; sold out)
• Concert performances in Scotland with Ellie Slorach conducting the Royal Scottish National Orchestra on 28 and 29 March