Written by John Drummond and based on an idea by Claire Barton, An Enchantment of Nightingales brings rival eighteenth-century prima donnas to Dunedin Fringe. Starring mezzo-soprano Claire Barton as Francesca Cuzzoni and soprano Rebecca Ryan as Faustina Bordoni, this theatre piece features arias and duets from the likes of Orlandini, Handel, John Gay, and Bononcini. James Adams directs while John van Buskirk plays the harpsichord and leads an ensemble of three talented string players—Tessa Petersen, Ngaruaroha Martin, and David Murray.

Hanover Hall furnishes the gates of heaven for these dueling divas. During the seventy-five-minute performance, we learn about their storied careers and fierce rivalry. In his programme notes, Drummond describes the performance as a “music-theatre piece.” Generally, the production achieves the first aim but not the second.

Barton and Ryan are lovely, their rich voices echoing through the large hall. Barton, in particular, owns the space, agilely delivering the arias’ complicated vocal runs. The live music ensemble adds an excellent touch. However, the dialogue between the divas, interspersed between each musical interlude, suffers from an overly expositional style and occasional anachronisms—at one point, one of the divas declares: “You bet I sang it!” As a result, their relationship, and purported rivalry, remain very surface-level.

Taken from their original contexts, the songs lose much of their emotional resonance. While the music is virtuosic, the interactions between the divas are stilted. They often suffer from an unclear sense of space. On a balcony upstage, a projected painting harnesses Hanover Hall’s beautiful architecture to conjure the gates of heaven, but the divas spend the entire performance downstage on the floor. The set seems to evoke an ornate sitting room, but it left me wondering why there was a chaise lounge beneath the gates of heaven.

When they aren’t singing, the divas spend their time fanning themselves, lounging, meandering around the stage, eating grapes, and tossing gold coins or sheet music, but none of these props or stage business benefit the story or character development. Rather, they worsened the amorphous sense of space, making Barton and Ryan’s task harder as they attempted to inhabit this vague world.

Certainly, An Enchantment of Nightingales has a clever premise, but with the music removed from its original context, the storyline needs more to enthrall audiences than just a recitation of the lives of these two prima donnas. It might help to provide audiences with free programmes. While the $3 fee is understandable, the programme provided valuable context that I could only glean by leaning over and reading my neighbour’s copy. Although some opera aficionados might recognize all the music and historical context, much is probably lost on a general audience.

Music lovers will enjoy this performance—indeed the audience was plentiful—and it’s a unique entry to the Fringe schedule, but the libretto would benefit from further development.

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