The week in classical: Marx in London!; The Barber of Seville; LSO/ Stutzmann; RPO/ Petrenko – review

Theatre Royal, Glasgow; Coliseum; Barbican; Royal Festival Hall, London
A day in the life of the father of communism is full of laughs in Scottish Opera’s new production of Jonathan Dove’s buoyant farce. Elsewhere, notable house debuts at ENO, a Bruckner double bill and Rachmaninov to remember

The exclamation mark in the title warns you. No collective strikes, rebellions, revolutions, except outside and over there – or when a chorus is needed. Instead, the closeup struggles of the individual: boils on the bottom, nooky with the housekeeper, another trip to the pawnbrokers. Marx in London!, first seen in Bonn in 2018, is Jonathan Dove’s 32nd opera, according to the composer’s own uncertain calculations. A skilful libretto by Charles Hart (Bend It Like Beckham, Phantom of the Opera) wriggles with internal rhymes, puns, jokes, to recreate a single crazed day in the life of one of the towering intellects of the 19th century: the German Karl Marx, during his time in political exile in London.

Scottish Opera’s new production, the UK premiere, opened at Glasgow’s Theatre Royal on Tuesday, conducted by David Parry, who also led the Bonn premiere. To list all the plot twists, witty musical references, the operatic tropes – from Wagnerian incest to Falstaffian concealment in a trunk – would be an act of deflation. The joy of this farcical work is its buoyancy. Just as you fear an episode is about to lose altitude, it rockets up again with a new surprise. Dove’s agile score likewise flickers rapidly between pumping minimalism to Psycho-style mock horror to full-blown romanticism. For any student of orchestration, he offers a model of what can be done, especially when piano, celeste, sampled harmonium and low brass and woodwind are added to standard forces.