Of all the movers and shakers in British musical life there’s none so dynamic as the boss of Grange Park Opera, Wasfi Kani, whose new country-house venue at West Horsley near Guildford has just opened with (inter alia) a punch-packing production of Janáček’s Jenůfa.
In barely a year Kani has built, from scratch, a 750-seat opera theatre that resembles a miniature La Scala, and filled it with a summer season.
That the theatre isn’t wholly finished hardly matters: it’s a fabulous achievement, and it worked for Jenůfa, which was superbly cast, with singers such as Nicky Spence (a force of nature on stage despite a Donald Trump wig) as Steva, and Susan Bullock as the Kostelnička.
