Coliseum
Oedipus – Roland Wood
Creon – Peter Hoare
Tiresias – Matthew Best
Jocasta – Susan Bickley
Stranger from Corinth, Haemon
– Anthony Gregory
Shepherd – Paul Sheehan
Messenger, Theseus –
Christopher Ainslie
Antigone – Julia Sporsén
Polynices – Jonathan McGovern
Eteocles – Matt Casey
Pierre Audi (director)
Tom Pye (set designs)
Christof Hetzer (costumes)
Jean Kalman (lighting)
Lysander Ashton (video
designs)
Chorus of the English
National Opera (chorus master: Dominic Peckham)
Orchestra of the English
National Opera
Edward Gardner (conductor)
There can be no doubting the
ambition to this, Julian Anderson’s first opera, with a libretto ‘by Frank
McGuinness after Sophocles’. Its three acts adapt not just one play from
Sophocles’s Theban trilogy, but all three. Starting in the past – as the
opening curtain informs us – the first act entitled ‘The Fall of Oedipus’, we
move to the future, ‘Antigone’, before concluding with the present, ‘The Death
of Oedipus’. Initially, I found myself sceptical about the reordering,
wondering what lay behind it other than a desire to be different; however, when
the third act came, I felt the sense – prior to reading these words from
Anderson, in an eloquent programme note – that the act was ‘all about endings …
the mysterious, timeless atmosphere of this sacred wood’ at Colonus lending ‘a
special and quite different mood … which would be impossible to place anywhere
but at the end’. There did indeed seem to be a finality arising from subject
matter and treatment, perhaps even from Sophocles having written it last.
McGuinness’s libretto is in
many respects highly skilful; it packs a great deal in, without necessarily
seeming to do so, not least in sometimes lengthy passages of narrative. There
is what we might consider to be real poetry in it, though sometimes there are
clichéd phrases – ‘done and dusted’, for instance – which seem in context
slightly to jar rather than carrying knowing weight. Perhaps, though, I simply
misunderstood, and the task of writing words intended to be sung, whilst at the
same time not knowing what the music will be, is not an easy one. I was not entirely convinced by the suddenness
of the ending, whether in terms of words or music. Antigone was seemingly cut
off in mid flow, shortly after the strangely anti-climactic death of her father:
that anti-climax more a product, I think, of the music’s tailing off than the
libretto. It was, however, clearly intended as such, Anderson claiming that
there ‘are no clear answers’ in Sophocles, McGuinness, or his own contribution.
Perhaps, again, more would become apparent upon a second hearing. At any rate, the
Lear-like quality to this scene came
across with considerable power, not only in terms of Antigone’s faithful love,
but also the haunting by death. I can imagine it being objected that this is as much drama 'about' drama as the thing itself, but in practice, the telescoping, the selection of particular points in time, and the enabling of those points to encompass more of the action, works well. In any case, the Theban plays are so much part of our collective consciousness, that we do not always have to start from the very beginning.
Anderson’s own contribution
proved, for me at least, more variable. His writing is, it hardly need be said,
highly accomplished, the composer’s virtuosic command of the orchestra never in
doubt. The first act in particular meanders. Perhaps one might claim that to be
the point; but whilst timings in the programme put it at the length of the
second and third acts combined, it seemed, if anything, longer still. Although
those latter acts are tauter, even there I found it difficult to discern an
individual voice. It is certainly not a ‘difficult’ work; a great deal of the
musical language is tonal in quality, not necessarily a problem, but is it
perhaps a problem that much of it sounds as if it might have been written by a
Stravinsky imitator not so very much less than a century ago? At any rate, the
contrast, however unfair, with the blazing originality of Œdipus Rex, is not a little glaring. Maybe composers feel that the
time for problematisation of opera is over; if so, on this evidence, it is not
entirely clear that they are right to do so.
That said, there are interesting
touches and, indeed, rather more than that. Microtonal sliding, for instance,
disrupts or at least questions the otherwise stultifying metrical regularity –
clearly a deliberate choice – in Creon’s Act II police state, as well as
responding to the narrative we hear introduced from outside. Tiresias’s
otherworldly strangeness registers not only in his gender-bending scenic
portrayal, but also in the alterity of his tuning. Indeed, in some respects,
his prophetic truth and its musical portrayal seem to haunt the third act all
the more, when he is not even present on stage; I have no reason to think that such
a comparison were intended, but I was put in mind of the overpowering presence
of Wotan in Götterdämmerung. At any
rate, Anderson’s portrayal of ‘everything – including Oedipus himself –
gradually becoming part of nature and leaving civilisation altogether’ is
impressively achieved. I had the sense that if the findings of the second and
third acts had been read back into a revised version of the first, a tauter,
more integrated, structure might well have emerged.
Edward Gardner seemed,
insofar as it is possible to tell with a work one does not know, to conduct a
splendidly authoritative performance, rhythms razor-sharp, layerings of colour
ever-discernible. The ENO Orchestra deserves the strongest of plaudits in that
respect too. Similarly the chorus, which plays an important role throughout,
whether seen, as in the first two acts, or unseen, as in the third, its
ambiguous offstage identity – does, for instance, Oedipus imagine the gods, or
are they all-too-divine? – a clear dramatic advantage. Dominic Peckham’s choral training
clearly paid off as well as Pierre Audi’s onstage blocking; there was a true
sense of identity and credibility, both corporate and, especially in the first
act, individual.
Audi’s staging does its job very
well. There is a proper sense of place to each of the three acts, even if the jackbooted
totalitarianism of Creon’s state arguably errs on the side of predictability.
(Perhaps, though, that is the fault of the work as much as the staging.)
Lighting from Jean Kalman sets off the relatively simple yet powerful work of the
design team (Tom Pye’s sets and Christof Hetzer’s costumes) to excellent
effect. Composer and librettist could hardly have asked for more for a
premiere.
The cast acquitted itself
with honour too. Despite having fallen victim to a throat infection,
Roland Wood offered a tirelessly committed performance as Oedipus, his acquisition
of wisdom genuinely affecting. Peter Hoare’s Creon was properly nasty, an
excellent foil for the humanity of Julia Sporsén’s Antigone. (Here I could not
help but think of Wagner’s analysis of the myth in Oper und Drama, Creon’s state falling victim to the anarchistic
love-curse of this progenitor of Brünnhilde.) Susan Bickley’s Jocasta was as
well sung and acted as expected, leaving one wishing that she had more to do.
Christopher Ainslie, having previously appeared as the Messenger, truly came
into his own as the third act Theseus, the purity of his counter-tenor voice as
startling in its liminality as his bronzed appearance, the latter a clever
stroke indeed from the production team. Matthew Best startled in quite very
different way as a deep-voiced transsexual Tiresias: insistent, impatient, and
defiantly ‘different’.
ENO, then, should be
congratulated upon its efforts. With the best will in the world, it would be
difficult to speak of this opera in the same breath as works by Benjamin
or Birtwistle.
By the same token, when one recalls in horror the latest offerings from Judith Weir and Mark-Anthony
Turnage – whatever happened to the composer of the
visceral Greek? – the contrast is
equally apparent. A new work requires excellence in staging and performance;
that it certainly received.
