Mitchell - The Headless Soldier (Belfast, 2023)

Conor Mitchell - The Headless Soldier

The Belfast Ensemble, 2023

Tom Deering, Conor Mitchell, Ed Lyon, Sarah Richmond, Christopher Cull, Shea McDonnell

Lyric Theatre, Belfast - 9th November 2023

They weren't giving too much away about the plot or subject matter of the new opera by Conor Mitchell and Mark Ravenhill on the Belfast Ensemble website or on the website of the Lyric Theatre where the world premiere was being performed as part of the Outburst Queer Arts Festival 2023, but you could rely on The Headless Soldier being controversial, provocative and bang-up-to-the-moment contemporary. Provocative and controversial and probably offending a number of people in the process, but never just for the sake of it, and at least for a good reason. Daring to confront what is not something spoken about in polite society is what has made Mitchell and the Belfast Ensemble perhaps the most vital company in the Northern Ireland arts scene at the moment.

As it turns out, it is precisely polite society and its unwillingness to speak about and confront issues that is the target of The Headless Soldier. Or one of its targets, for it tackles a number of issues, not in a random fashion, but in a manner that is interconnected in ways that you might not think immediately obvious. Indeed, it is not even a traditional opera with a beginning middle and end, but an opera triptych of three short pieces that each build upon each other thematically and musically to add up to something ...well, something quite frightening.

The outline description of the new opera was simply that it "looks beneath the perfect lives of Helen, her husband, Thomas and their haunted son, Zach – finding a hidden, much closer war." No further plot synopsis is provided and the idea of a plot turns out to not really be the whole story anyway. In the first part of the opera, 'Intolerance', Helen introduces herself on the way to becoming a new and better person. To address the painful stomach cramps she has been suffering she has cut out caffeine from her diet in favour of health drinks, pro-biotic yoghurt, acupuncture and regression therapy, and it's really working. Except it isn't. Her intolerance is not so much in her diet as something else deeper within her that is expressed in a few violent outbursts.

In the second part of The Headless Soldier, 'Fear & Misery', we meet Helen's husband Thomas who is trying to convince his wife of a move into a gated community, partly as evidence of belonging to a select social group, but there is also fear behind this desire. His fears seem to be of external forces and dangers and a sense of protectiveness of their son Zachary, but there is something deeper inside giving rise to his fears that a gated community won't protect him from. In 'War & Peace', Zachary is indeed troubled, drawing disturbing pictures of the headless soldier that haunts him in the dark. His parents blame it on the news, which is filled with images of war, but the tensions between his parents are also clearly contributing to his problems.

It sounds like a psychological study, but written by Mark Ravenhill and with Mitchell's music playing just as important a role in what the opera says, there are other levels explored here. War features prominently, the war within the family collectively as well as individuals, fighting battles with their worst impulses and fears, but these problematic attitudes are extended out into the society we live in where other types of war rage. As is often the case with the works of the Belfast Ensemble, this is so up-to-date and relevant that it feels like Ravenhill and Mitchell have been watching the 6 o'clock news this evening and put it all up on the stage as an opera by 7:30pm. It's that 'now', it's immediate and of the moment, even if such unerring accuracy and contemporary relevance is not so much eerily prescient as depressingly inevitable.

So while the middle-class aspirational family are up there on the stage waging war with their demons and each other, Conor Mitchell's direction shows other on-screen violence projected onto screens. It's incredible to think that they have managed to reflect the current Israel-Hamas war with news footage that is fresh from our TV screens, juxtaposing it with relentless Looney Tunes cartoon violence. The conventional wisdom would suggest that desensitisation to violence through on-screen experience is having an impact on the model modern family, but the impression is that Ravenhill and Mitchell are aiming for perhaps the exact opposite - that it's the deeper human fears and failings found in this type of family unit, passed down from generation to generation, that lead to the kind of pain, suffering, hate and death that we can see taking place on a global scale in wars around the world.

That's not a safe or comforting position to take, but then that's exactly what you expect artists like Ravenhill and Mitchell to do; not pander to their audience, but challenge them. Mitchell's music takes the same line of attack, a fascinating blend of harmony, melody and jarring dissonance that reflects the subject. Everything seems very pleasant and idealised on the surface of The Headless Soldier family, but there are little Michael Nyman-esque or John Adams-like flurries of racing panic to the Turn of the Screw-like underlying menace that would threaten to explode into Béla Bartók Duke Bluebeard's Castle horror were it not for the controlled chamber orchestration of the Belfast Ensemble orchestra. Conducted by Tom Deering however, they delivered all the necessary impact. If the final door of the castle is not opened in The Headless Soldier, the score leaves you with a sense that its contents remain locked inside and festering.

Such is the nature of the score in this respect that even two experienced opera singers like Ed Lyon and Sarah Richmond had to use microphone amplification, although that's probably as much to do with the acoustics of the Lyric Theatre not being ideal for opera. That said, Ed Lyon's mic didn't seem to operate on the first night when he took to the stage as Thomas in the second part of the opera, but his delivery was strong enough that it didn't have any noticeable impact other than being out of balance with Sarah Richmond. And with Richmond's powerful delivery, he had his work cut out there. Her solo monologue performance in part one of the opera was just delightful, delivering Ravenhill's deeply acerbic text - deeply in as much as it was simmering below the surface of genteel amiability - with wonderful inflection and timing that was matched by Mitchell's complementary score. Christopher Cull had considerable challenges too for maintaining that tension throughout the final part as the agonised and terrifying apparition of the blood-soaked headless soldier. There were challenging on-stage situations for Shea McDonnell to deal with, but he was equally as impressive as Zachary.

The final part of the opera triptych might not have revealed any answers or delivered the satisfying conclusion that a theatre audience might expect, but Mitchell and Ravenhill didn't write this piece to send you home in comfortable complacency. Compounding the horror seen through the eyes of a child subjected to a bombardment from all sides, turning it into nightmare dreams of a headless soldier, the nightmare is a live and waking one still lying below the surface and ready to erupt later with the next generation. It's not the most comforting of thoughts to leave the theatre with, but its not up to the creators to tie this up neatly or tell you what to think or do. If anything, what they are doing is pointing your darker side back at you, asking you to ask yourself what it is that is really wrong in the world today, and suggesting that you don't have to look too far to find the answers.

External links: The Belfast Ensemble, Lyric Theatre

Saint-Saëns - Henry VIII (Brussels, 2023)

Camille Saint-Saëns - Henry VIII

La Monnaie-De Munt, 2023

Alain Altinoglu, Olivier Py, Lionel Lhote, Marie-Adeline Henry, Nora Gubisch, Ed Lyon, Vincent Le Texier, Enguerrand de Hys, Werner van Mechelen, Jérôme Varnier, Claire Antoine, Alexander Marev, Carlos Martinez, Alexander Marev, Alessia Thais Beradi, Annelies Kerstens, Lieve Jacobs, Manon Poskin, Alain-Pierre Wingelinckx, Luis Aguilar, Byoungjin Lee, René Laryea

OperaVision - May 2023

There is no denying the lyrical beauty of the music of Camille Saint-Saëns and consequently it's always a joy to discover some of his lesser known operas, but I have to admit that I struggle to find relevance in his subjects or indeed find much in the way of true feeling or connection with the human condition in his treatments. To be fair, while Samson and Dalila remains an impressive and powerful work still worthy of continued revival, opportunities to actually see (rather than just hear recordings) of his other operas are still few and far between. Director Olivier Py, often a reliable and interesting director at La Monnaie in Brussels, certainly gives Henry VIII his best shot, but there is still a feeling that there is something vital lacking that would make a case for the work and other Saint-Saëns operas meriting a return to the main repertoire.

The challenges of adapting any period of the reign and activities of Henry VIII are you would imagine considerable. Even just choosing which of the wives as the focus for an opera, but the fate of Anne Boleyn would certainly have to be considered as a starting point, such is the impact that this marriage would have on subsequent English history. Donizetti wasn't too concerned with historical fact when he set to work on his series of operas about the English monarchs, but still managed to make them hugely entertaining, not least in his own version of the Anne Boleyn story. Whichever way you approach it, it's going to be a long one and so full of operatic incident and drama as to be almost irresistible.

Saint-Saens' approach in Henry VIII, while it inevitably is still operatically stylised, places more focus on Catherine's condition as a spurned wife, the significance of the dissolution of that marriage and the schism it caused with the church as the beginning of a reign of terror. Rather than one thing leading to another, there is instead a sense of a strange but compelling juxtaposition of love and terror that intentionally sit rather uncomfortably together. This is exemplified by the finale of Act I, where the king declares his love for the handmaid he has brought over from France at the same time as the execution of Buckingham is taking place outside. Anne Boleyn is not unexpectedly horrified at the strange (to say the least) by appetites of the English king, fearing for the Spanish ambassador Gomez who has already declared his love for Anne.

That certainly raises the stakes, but as a grand opéra it still has certain conventions that must be adhered to which can make it something of an acquired taste by today's standards. At the very least it does feel like the drama could have been tightened up a little more. Act II in particular feels a little bit overdone with Henry pressing his declarations of love still further on Anne while Gomez looks on helplessly. On the other hand, the menace is still there and the intriguing juxtaposition of declarations of love bearing more than a hint of danger that Anne is unwittingly flirting with since we know what lies ahead (or indeed a head) makes this something worth exploring. And indeed, this develops into a just as charged confrontation between the Queen Catherine and the pretender for her position, any confrontation between the two women always a sure situation for sparks to fly.

Olivier Py as ever is an interesting choice of director for the staging of this kind of rare opera at La Monnaie. Saint-Saëns in grand opéra mode presents a rich palette of dramatic scenes, musical set pieces, rousing choruses and ballet music, which Py dutifully addresses in his own way with his regular set designer Pierre-André Weitz. The stage is very dark and menacing, largely black and white with bold colours set against it, Anne notably in blood red. There is a blend of historical Tudor costume and 19th century period dress, since Py feels the work has more to do with the divisions of church and state in the French Third Republic of Saint-Saëns time than it does about English 16th century history. He makes good use of the dancers in the ballet sequences (and outside of them also), as well as his tableau arrangements (as in his Dialogues des Carmélites) to try to touch on other spiritual elements, bringing stylisations to the swirling undercurrents of violence and death as they are represented in the music, which wouldn't bear too much realism.

As much as I love Saint-Saëns and the French Romantic composers of this era, his music is fairly nondescript for the most part, reminding me Ambroise Thomas. Unmemorable maybe, even if conductor Alain Altinoglu praises the character and colouration of his writing, and a little bit academic, not really allowing you to feel any real emotional connection. But as far as the demands of the opera are concerned, the composer (and conductor) fulfil the remit, building the tension up to a high-pitched finale at the end of each of the four acts, each of the principals having several strong expressive arias. There is certainly an impact in the key scenes, such as Henry proclaiming himself head of the church in England to huge choral acclaim. Py serves such scenes well, not neglecting the ballet scenes either but making good use of this music to underline and contribute to the overall tone of the work in this production, as when for example he extends the final quartet with a silent dancer and Jane Seymour to further add to the sense of menace.

Grand opéra of this kind is a challenge but also a treat when you have good singers to deliver it. Soprano Marie-Adeline Henry takes the honours here with a superb, impressively sung Catherine of Aragon. In many ways she is the heart of the tragedy and main vehicle that establishes the tone of the opera, so it's vital that it is in good hands. Mezzo-soprano Nora Gubisch is also good as her 'lesser-equal', and Ed Lyon is still in fine voice as Don Gomez. Henry VIII is such a larger-than-life figure that it can be a challenge to show nuance or character, but there is indeed some human qualities invoked by Saint-Saëns's music and Lionel Lhote's performance. Definitely a cast worthy of the work and they do it justice. Py also treats Saint-Saëns' Henry VIII respectfully or at least appropriately, with fewer of his usual mannerisms, the extravagance of the stunning set designs commensurate with the scale and scope of the work. The spectacle, colour, movement and superb stage management brings out the contrasts, dynamic and lyricism in an opera than might not be great, but has certainly much to admire in it.

Links: La Monnaie-De Munt, OperaVision

Britten - The Turn of the Screw (Brussels, 2021)

Benjamin Britten - The Turn of the Screw (Brussels, 2021)

La Monnaie-De Munt, 2021

Ben Glassberg, Andrea Breth, Ed Lyon, Sally Matthews, Henri de Beauffort, Katharina Bierweiler, Carole Wilson, Julian Hubbard, Giselle Allen

La Monnaie Streaming/Opera Vision, April 2021

Britten's chamber opera The Turn of the Screw perfectly captures the mood and character of the chillingly sinister original Henry James story, but just as importantly it captures much of the psychological mystery and ambiguity within the ghostly tale. A director can enhance or emphasise certain elements of that ambiguity, but it shouldn't reveal too much. Britten's perfect score and the wonderful writing for the voice are more than enough to bring out the deeper character and suggestion that lies within it. 

Andrea Breth does that quite well in the 2021 La Monnaie production, placing the emphasis more on the expression of the horror deriving from the inner delusions of the impressionable governess, but it's not without suggesting that there is indeed something to her fears. The opera certainly hints at dark events, at the loss of childhood innocence and the corrupting influence of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel and the harmful legacy they have left over the children.

The first thing that strikes you in the opening scene of this production - as it perhaps should more than any obvious input or emphasis of the director - is the effect of the music and the mood it creates right from the outset. That has as much to do with Britten's score as with the meticulous performance of the La Monnaie orchestra under Ben Glassberg and by the singing of Sally Matthews as the Governess and Ed Lyon as the narrator. Both demonstrate a gorgeous tone with beautiful enunciation, but also delivering the content of the libretto with suggestion of the horror to unfold.

In setting, lighting and colouration, it's doesn't vary too much from convention and expectations, looking very much like every production of The Turn of the Screw looks. Dark, monochrome and austere, with cool lighting and plenty of shadow, but here director Andrea Breth allows several other spectral figures to appear on the stage. Even in the opening scene, Miss Jessel and a particularly demented looking Peter Quint already make an appearance, moving in and even taking over some of the narrator and the Governess's vocal lines, their influence over the whole tone of the work and what goes on in Bly already made evident.

It's also evident that Breth intends to extend that mood out and make visible some of the more hidden and suggestive undercurrents. Rather like the 2012-2016 Northern Ireland Opera production - back when we were fortunate to have an adventurous and ambitious artistic director of opera in Oliver Mears - this production uses panels, sliding doors and hidden rooms to open up the dark recesses of Bly or the Governess - take your pick: it's open for interpretation who is driving the psychosis that is rapidly escalating, or tightening like the turn of a screw.

It comes from a place "where things unspoken of can be', and Raimund Orfeo Voigt's sets shows the unspoken lying in wait everywhere to entrap. You can never remove the undercurrents of sexual repression of the Governess running up against the suggestion of sexual abuse of the children or some dark influence that they have been subjected to at the hands of Quint and Jessel, there is less of that made explicit in this production of the work. It's certainly hinted at, but if the emphasis in this production is principally within the mind of Governess, we can see that she doesn't have sufficient knowledge of such evil to imagine it playing out.

In some ways I even wonder if there is an angle there to be explored in The Turn of the Screw, and whether it is also important to retain adherence to the period in order to bring it out. There does seem to be a generational conflict in the changing times and attitudes, the older generation fearing the new, seeing it as decadent and corrupt, overturning traditional values. The Governess seems to be in-between, not comfortable with the past or the present, fearing for what lies ahead for the future generation. The loss of innocence that may already have happened and she feels powerless to intervene, or it may indeed be her misguided attempts at over-protectiveness that result in the tragic conclusion.

On a more general note, one of the policies I like about La Monnaie - aside from their adventurous programming and choice of directors - is how they retain a few strong performers on their books who are versatile and supremely capable in a number of varied roles and styles. Sally Matthews is just superb here as Governess, firm of voice, secure in range, but also capable of bringing real urgency and personality to a fairly complex character. Andrea Breth also fulfills perfectly the La Monnaie policy of modernising with purpose when it is appropriate to do so. Although this looks period in costume and set design - there are no mobile phones here - it uses modern techniques to extend the themes beyond the period, breaking down walls - quite literally - to work more closely with the music, not just the dramatic content of the libretto.

Musically too, the production is of an exceptionally high standard, as beautiful an account of this Britten work as you could hope for. Evidence of the quality of the performance is clear from the superb sound mixing that La Monnaie have captured for this streamed live recording. Every instrument can be heard, every little detail that adds to the character of the work, the voices rising clear above the orchestration with a natural theatrical sounding resonance. Aside from the already mentioned Ed Lyon and Sally Matthews then there is much to enjoy in the singing of Julian Hubbard as Quint and Giselle Allen - the quintessential Miss Jessel. Carole Wilson likewise is a fine Mrs Grose and there are good performances Henri de Beauffort and Katharina Bierweiler as Miles and Flora.

Links: La Monnaie-De Munt

Wagner - Tristan und Isolde (Brussels, 2019)

Richard Wagner - Tristan und Isolde (Brussels, 2019)

La Monnaie-De Munt, Brussels 2019

Alain Altinoglu, Ralf Pleger, Alexander Polzin, Bryan Register, Franz-Josef Selig, Ann Petersen, Andrew Foster-Williams, Nora Gubisch, Wiard Witholt, Ed Lyon

La Monnaie Streaming - May 2019

Say what you like about La Monnaie's strict policy on bold and sometimes bizarre modern productions, but they always look fantastic. And with Alain Altinoglu currently chief musical director, they sound fantastic too. That's good news for something like Tristan und Isolde, a work that operates on an abstract plane that inspires leaps of creativity without the necessity to adhere to any kind of real world naturalism. It certainly makes a leap in this production directed by film director Ralf Pleger with set designs by artist Alexander Polzin, who rise to the challenge that few other works can aspire to with a production that really does look and sound fantastic.

The exploration of the deep mysteries of love, death and human spirituality almost calls out for an art installation presentation and lately opera houses have been turning more and more to creators in the plastic arts (and even architects in some cases) to lend their hand to representations of the human and philosophical content of Wagner operas. Tristan und Isolde has seen interpretations from Bill Viola in Paris and Anish Kapoor at the ENO in London, and there's no doubt that a work that is one of the greatest achievements of the performing arts benefits from the imagination, creativity of this kind of cross-fertilisation with other art disciplines.

There's evidently no sign of anything like a ship then in Act I of La Monnaie's Tristan und Isolde. It least follows a similar abstract approach to Pierre Audi's 2016 production of the opera at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, with a cool green/blue colour scheme, the figures dressed in white ceremonial robes, the sky here decorated with huge icy stalactites that descend down to the stage between the figures and glow. There are a few other abstract props - Isolde appearing on the stage wearing a broken kite-like frame, but it's relatively simple in his adherence to mood, drawing the focus very firmly and effectively onto Isolde's icy fury at her captivity.

Ann Petersen carries the full drama of conflicted anger and mounting madness in that respect, the notion of death already present and associated with love in her recounting of Tristan's murder of her fiancé Morold and his supplanting himself fatally in that disturbed impressionable psyche at being held hostage in marriage to Marke. There's no need for love potions in this production to bring about the magical event of Tristan and Isolde's love, it's something that comes from within, implacably, following no logic or reason but a deep internal yearning and reaction to complex psychological disturbances, and it's enough that the music and singing carry the full weight of its conviction.

Act II is even more impressive in how it captures the complexity of those feelings that Tristan and Isolde feel for each other within a huge Alexander Polzin plaster sculpture that is surprisingly adaptable to the ebb and flow of moods and mounting desire. The sculpture takes the form of a thick mass of twisted truncated tree branches erupting out of the earth, with naked figures of dancers entwined within it. With shifts of light and use of shadows it conforms to the changing moods, primarily lust that ripples across the branches as the naked bodies weave and slide through it. Seen like this, you can't imagine Act II being done in any other way that expresses the sensations, emotions and spiritual content so perfectly.

Again, the apparent simplicity of the Act III backdrop reveals complex patterns of darkness, light and casting of shadows; black holes one minute, shafts of light the next or the suggestion of stars. The use of colour blending with the light offers infinite gradations of expression that aren't so much representational of Wagner's score as offering another dimension to its moods and sentiments. And yes, it is as abstract as that sounds, evoking a hallucinatory 'trip' according to director Ralf Pleger, where love is the drug, but should we not be looking for deeper commentary or interpretation in Tristan und Isolde?

Some directors like Dmitri Tcherniakov at Berlin in 2018 might be more interested in the dramaturgical and psychological than the spiritual and the ineffable, but that's not the case with Pleger and Polzin's vision of the work. The La Monnaie production is as enigmatic and open to personal interpretation as the work itself, operating on a level of pure sensation, caught up in the rapture of the world's greatest lovers; a love that is impossible to grasp without it completely overshadowing life, stretching beyond the boundaries of being, becoming an all-consuming self-contradictory destructive/transcendental force.

The musical and singing performances are supremely up to the greatness of the work and the stage production that has been developed for it. Ann Petersen perfectly meets the requirements of mood and character; urgent, anxious and soaringly rapturous, both human and aspiring to supra-human. Bryan Register is an impressive Tristan, unfaltering, likewise finding a perfect equilibrium between control and abandonment to the discovery of such depth of feeling and the transformative nature of that force. There are flawless performances too from Franz-Josef Selig's Marke, Andrew Foster-Williams's Kuwenal and Nora Gubisch's Brangäne.

Alain Altinoglu's conducting of the La Monnaie is also deeply impressive. I really don't think I've heard the work performed with such sensitivity and attention to detail of pace and mood, never letting the romantic surges overwhelm, but showing how they arise out of the internal and external drama, carrying the singers and the audience along, reminding you what a work of supreme beauty and genius Tristan und Isolde is. This is a spectacle and a performance befitting of one of the greatest artistic creations in any medium. Simply stunning.

Links: La Monnaie - MM Channel

Mozart - Die Zauberflöte (La Monnaie, 2018)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Die Zauberflöte


La Monnaie-De Munt, Brussels - 2018

Antonello Manacorda, Romeo Castellucci, Ed Lyon, Sabine Devieilhe, Sophie Karthäuser, Georg Nigl, Elina Galitskaya, Gábor Bretz, Dietrich Henschel, Tineke van Ingelgem, Angélique Noldus, Esther Kuiper

ARTE Concert - 27 September 2018

As if you couldn't already guess from the fact that it's Romeo Castellucci at La Monnaie, the opening pre-musical sequence alerts you pretty quickly to the fact that this is not going to be a 'traditional' Magic Flute by any means. A man walks onto the empty stage and throws a steel bar at a glowing glass neon tube until it breaks plunging the stage into darkness. Yeah, you think, it's The Magic Flute, we get it; light/darkness, enlightenment/obscurantism, a lot of ritual and symbolism. If you think Castellucci is going to be that obvious, you quickly realise that you're going to have to think again.

But yes, certainly Castellucci tends to find the big underlying contrasts or forces in conflict within an opera and brings them to the fore to the point where they are what the opera is all about. The actual stage directions and dramatic narrative are soon left behind as Castellucci usually starts to push those ideas even further into god knows where. (See his recent Moses und Aron or Tannhäuser). You might take for granted that Die Zauberflöte is all about masonic rituals with fairy tale characters and situations, but you're not going to see any of that in a Castellucci production. Doesn't that mean you lose something of the essential character of Mozart? Unquestionably yes, but can we trust Castellucci to give back something of equal worth?

Maybe not of equal worth, but there is something here in the La Monnaie production, no matter how obscure it gets, that approaches Mozart's work in a new way and provides a commentary on it as well as interacting and highlighting less familiar aspects of the work. There are perhaps no major new revelations and it might not all fit together in any way that is entirely comprehensible, but Castellucci does relate Mozart's Magic Flute to our experiences of the world today and that is bound to be more meaningful than any play on ancient masonic rituals, magic and obscure symbolism (not that Castellucci doesn't have even more obscure symbolism of his own).

So no, there's no serpent slain by Tamino and there's no traditional depiction of the three ladies. There's actually four here in the first Act and four boys too which totally screws up the numerology which is often considered to be important in the work. But is it really? By changing the numbers, Romeo Castellucci is able to steer the work in a new direction, one where symmetry and mirroring takes its place. There is certainly this contrasting of two sides of one human nature (an important aspect that Castellucci takes pains later to ensure is not neglected) in the divisions of the Königin/Sarastro, Tamino/Pamina, Papageno/Papagena, in male/female, in lightness/darkness, in rationalism/obscurantism, in good/evil.

It's also there in the division and structure of the opera itself and Castellucci contrasts the two Acts in a way that highlights aspects of the opera quite unlike anyone else has done before. Act I is all elegance, beauty, balance and symmetry in a uniform haze of brilliant white; by no means the obvious way to reflect this half of the opera, but if you like you can see it as a visual representation of Mozart's music itself. That's emphasised by the costumes which are period 18th century frock coats and powdered wigs. Papageno is indistinguishable from Tamino in identical elaborate costumes and there isn't a single scene, action or gesture that reflects the familiar course of the opera's dramatic action. You can be damned sure that there's going to be no actual magic flute or glockenspiel.

Instead figures move around in an elaborately choreographed display of symmetrical precision, with rotating patterns of white masked dancers, some topless with feather headdresses and fans like something out of the Crazy Horse in Paris. Architect Michael Hansmeyer's set designs however continue to accumulate detail, building up into an elaborate wedding cake or the stucco interior of some impossibly grand white cathedral. It is an extraordinary display, utterly beautiful, daring to ignore adherence to any traditional depiction of the drama in favour of just highlighting the elegance and beauty and symmetry in Mozart's music. It's something that is enhanced - or works both ways - with the nimble musical performance from the orchestra pit under Antonello Manacorda emphasising the melodic brilliance and effervescence with a wonderful lightness of touch.

As extraordinarily beautiful as it all looks, it's also a very cold and sterile way to approach Mozart and The Magic Flute, but of course that's only half the story. In direct contrast to elaborate representation of the music in Act I, Castellucci brings the work down to earth in Act II with a depiction of the human reality that can also be found in Die Zauberflöte which might otherwise be lost amidst all the comedy, symbolism and ritualism. Similar to his last production at La Monnaie, Orphée et Eurydice, Castellucci brings the experiences of real ordinary people in to highlight the underlying human reality of the questions of the trials endured by Tamino and Papageno. A group of six women talk about their personal experience of blindness and living in darkness, and a group of six men talk about surviving horrific burns in a 'trial of fire'.

In contrast to Act I the second half is depicted in mundane real-world terms in a warehouse environment, the glamorous fairy-tale white period costumes swapped for identical yellow-brown factory worker overalls and yellow-blond wigs. The performances are more dramatically realistic, you can at least sometimes tell characters apart from the labels on their back and there's even an actual flute! Inevitably there's a lot more than this in the production and as is often the case with Castellucci it goes off in all kinds of weird directions. Mirroring/contrasting the opening of the first Act, for example, the second part opens with lactating mothers pumping breast milk - for real - into it bottles that are subsequently emptied into another glass tube by the Queen of the Night, the action accompanied by some obscure text that presents a different perspective on the less than flattering idea of motherhood traditionally represented by Königin der Nacht in the opera.

In this way, Castellucci actually deconstructs Die Zauberflöte entirely, separating the work down into its component parts, none of which on their own are convincing or satisfactory but which when played through to the end do nonetheless still manage to capture the totality of what is in the opera. It's highly doubtful that the work needs to be deconstructed in this manner or even benefits from it in any way when it's all there already in the genius of Mozart's blending of all its elements, but it does highlight aspects that we (or other directors) might neglect though familiarity. The 'real-people's lives' human element while looking initially like a frustrating diversion, turns out to be very moving, so there is a case to be made for it.

Evidently as far as stage direction, concept and interpretation go this is not a Magic Flute for everyone and, despite its fidelity to the themes in the work and its underlying humanity, it can't be said that it respects Mozart's intentions. In terms of musical and singing performances however it's hard to fault. The orchestra highlight that compositional and melodic brilliance in the first half and seem to find the human warm in the opera in the second half. The casting is an outstanding collection of lyrical Mozartian voices with Ed Lyon as Tamino, Sabine Devieilhe a lighter than usual but eminently capable Königin der Nacht, Gábor Bretz a fine Sarastro, Sophie Karthäuser an impressive Pamina, Georg Nigl and Elena Galitskaya fulfilling the roles of Papageno and Papagena well, each of them at least brilliantly distinguishable from their voices if not always in appearance or role-playing.

Links: La Monnaie-DeMunt, ARTE Concert

Handel - Semele (Karlsruhe, 2017)

George Frideric Handel - Semele

Badisches Staatstheater, Karlsruhe - 2017

Christopher Moulds, Floris Visser, Jennifer France, Ed Lyon, Dilara Baştar, Katharine Tier, Terry Wey, Edward Gauntt, Hannah Bradbury, Yang Xu, Ilkin Alpay

Opera Platform - May 2017

If you consider it in simple dramatic terms, not a great deal happens in Semele. It's a tale of Jupiter up to his old tricks again, spiriting down to mingle with mortals and have his pick of whatever attractive lady takes his fancy, much to the displeasure of his long-suffering wife, Juno. Based on the classical legend from Ovid's Metamorphoses, there's a basic moral about Semele's pride in consorting with the gods and thinking herself their equal, but primarily it's a poetic subject, with any relatable human context submerged in flowery language and mythological matters of the gods.

The range of sentiments and the manner in which they are couched however provide perfect material for Handel to demonstrate what he could achieve at this stage in his career. Semele's subject matter and treatment would make it more suitable for the English oratorio format than the Italian opera form that the composer had by this stage abandoned. The story's distinct scenes offer a variety of musical responses that Handel undertakes with grace, wit and invention. Producing the non-religious subject of Semele as an oratorio for the Lent season of 1744 stirred up some resentment and controversy, but Handel was never one to let tradition overrule musical imperatives and his own desire progress and develop the music-drama form.

Despite Handel's wonderful variety of musical moods - and a few famous arias - Semele can still be a little dry in its subject matter, in its repetition of banal statements and its delivery of solemn declamations, so it undoubtedly helps if you can enliven a dramatic presentation and bring the gods a little more down-to-earth. The Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe production directed by Floris Visser does that in a very clever manner that updates the context of the story of Semele while at the same time retaining near complete fidelity towards character and purpose. Just as importantly, the production fully captures the essential spirit and charm of Handel's musical arrangements for the work. It's not profound, but it's certainly clever, charming and - with Handel's music behind it all - enchanting.

A lovely little dramatic play over the intro sets the scene quite perfectly in the Karlsruhe production. Here Jupiter is a philandering American President with an eye for the ladies (take your pick - most of the costume designs and Ed Lyon's appearance suggest JFK era, but the use of technology and a Monica Lewinsky reference in the closing scene give it a more timeless application). Recently inaugurated, it's not long before the first lady Juno catches the President carrying on with his secretary Semele (daughter of Cadmus, the King of Thebes, who no doubt has the influence to get her a post at the White House as an intern). Furious, the President's wife arranges for the threat to be neutralised by arranging a marriage for the young woman to Athamas, a promising young military officer.

Act I of the oratorio/opera then opens with the familiar setting of the unfortunate playing out of those wedding arrangements, the somewhat drawn-out wedding situation at least engaging the interest in seeing how this modern twist can be made to fit in with the mythological content and whether any real-world message can as a consequence cut through the old-fashioned trappings of antiquity. With numerous inventive responses - I imagine that a certain amount of credit for that must go to the creative and meaningful development of the dramaturgy by Klaus Bertisch - the Karlsruhe production does that very well and makes it thoroughly entertaining into the bargain.

To cite just a few examples, the wedding of Act I has a timeless feel, with character types and situations that are much more recognisable in this context. In place of the thunderbolts that herald Jupiter's intervention, we see instead the President directing a SWAT operation that provides just as much storm and drama without the hokey imagery of gods descending on clouds and chariots. Nor are there dragons with a "thousand fiery eyes" that guard Semele's hidden mountain retreat, but a video of an armaments test of new helicopter technology by Juno's PA Iris achieves much the same impact and effect.  

Aside from the clever technical solutions provided, Floris Visser also ensures that the characters also respond appropriately to this world view, without straying too far away from the essence of what the drama is striving to convey. Juno and Iris provide the most fun, knocking back a bottle of Jack Daniels as they plot revenge on Jupiter. Somnus, the God of Sleep who they engage/blackmail to help them storm Jupiter's hideaway, is a dozy porn-addicted computer geek who will hack the system in return for sexual favours. The magic mirror that Juno uses to appeals to Semele's vanity is a camera, and it's also at the hands of the press - flashbulbs replacing bolts of lightning - that Semele is undone and realises too late her mistake in consorting with the 'gods' who play by their own rules with little thought for the consequences it has for 'ordinary' people.

This all brings a welcome sense of fun and significance that is wholly appropriate for the work, but it doesn't neglect the greater variety of mood and emotions that Handel was able to develop outside the restrictions of the Italian opera format. There's tenderness in the situations of Athamas and Ino; there's a jaunty smugness to Juno and Iris at the success of their plotting and of course; there's considerable breadth of character to Semele and the experience she undergoes beyond the normal fluctuations between joy and despair. Visibly pregnant at the end of Act I, with a couple of fantasy dream sequences illustrating her illusions, her predicament is made rather more meaningful and clearer than their child mystically arising out of her ashes at the conclusion (the birth of Bacchus no doubt a boon for those two dipsos Juno and Iris).

Christopher Moulds conducts the score with the requisite attention to pacing, rhythm and mood, perhaps smoothing the edges out a little, but it's hard to determine that from a compressed audio stream. The singing too holds up its side of the deal that is required to make this production work so well, with engaging performances throughout. Jennifer France is a lively and assertive Semele, not just a floozy for the President, impressive in her characterisation of the role, which is sung wonderfully. Ed Lyon, more presidential than god-like, gives an engaging performance; Terry Wey's lovely alto countertenor brings a measure of sweetness and sympathy for Athamas; Katharine Tier and Hannah Bradbury make a great team and provide some of the most entertaining moments as Juno and Iris. The demands of the English diction are a challenge for Dilara Baştar and her Ino sounds overly harsh at first, but she comes into the role well.

Links: Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, Opera Platform

Wagner - Der fliegende Holländer (Royal Opera House, 2015 - Cinema Live)

Richard Wagner - Der fliegende Holländer
Royal Opera House, 2015

Andris Nelsons, Tim Albery, Bryn Terfel, Adrianne Pieczonka, Michael König, Peter Rose, Ed Lyon, Catherine Wyn-Rogers

Royal Opera House, Live Cinema Season - 24 February 2015

Wagner's operas are notoriously difficult to stage. Leaving aside the unique issues associated with putting on a Ring cycle, even the one-act version of Der fliegende Holländer presents its own challenges. And they are not just technical considerations. Although there might not appear to be much room for a director to manoeuvre a particular reading or concept into an account of ghost ships sailing on the seas, you'd be surprised at how the underlying themes can and have been developed. But do they really get to the heart of what Wagner intended to put across?

Tim Alberry's production for the Royal Opera House's production doesn't attempt anything too ambitious, unless you think that getting right back to the essentials of the work is ambitious, and I suppose when you're talking about Wagner, that might well be true. As tempting as it is to see Wagner himself at the centre of Der fliegende Holländer (his exile, his money problems, his belief in love and sacrifice) and as tempting as it is to apply these issues to modern-day concerns (globalisation, commerce, imperialism, asylum-seeking) - the most important thing about the work is the work itself. And I think even Wagner was aware of that in the first opera where he successfully found his own individual voice.

The Royal Opera House production, without getting too literal, period or traditional in terms of stage directions, makes a good case for Der fliegende Holländer working best when you simply let Wagner take over, when you let the orchestration and the singing carry the full weight and import of the score. The set and the staging don't work against this, nor do they attempt to enhance the impact or effects that can be achieved by the revolutionary score alone. The production design simply provides the necessary platform for all the mood, all the force, all the yearning, all the drama that is in the score itself to be expressed to its fullest extent. Even viewing the performance on screen in a live broadcast - I can only imagine what it must have felt like live - this was a spine-tingling production that just seemed to set Wagner's first true masterwork wide open.

And in the process, the ROH production reveals that spine-tingling is exactly what Der fliegende Holländer ought to be. That might not be revelatory, but the impact that Wagner is aiming for can sometimes get lost in the concept. There's no need to think too hard about it. It's a ghost story, a legend, a story of huge romantic passions. It's certainly informed by Wagner's own personal experiences, his own sensibility and beliefs, as well as by his extraordinary ability to translate those ideas into musical terms. The rush and the roar of those wild seas, the sweeping overwhelming passions, is all there in the music and expressed in Wagner's new approach to the flow of through composition in the music and in the singing. The impact is all the more effective in the one-act version, and the ROH production sustains that enveloping mood extraordinarily well in the staging, but even more so in the all-important musical performance.

The music is the largely left to work its own magic in the overture, and that's spine-tinglingly good on its own - but when it works hand-in-hand with the production, it's all the more effective. The main set - which only changes significantly for Act II's scene in the sewing factory - is a long bowed hull of a ship, with thick ropes and dripping water pooling at the front of the stage. It's chilling enough on its own and effective to support the haunting melodies that have been established in the overture and the Steersman's lament, but the musical motif announcing the arrival of the Dutchman's ship drops the temperature further. All it needs is a huge shadow to cross the set to match the enormity of the ship and the enormity of the intent and passions that lie within it. The set, along with Andris Nelson's wondrous management of the ROH orchestra, gives this impression of vast, mythological forces, and the trick of any production of Der fliegende Holländer as a music-drama is to harness those forces and get them across in human terms.

That's mainly a challenge for the singers, and I've rarely heard one that has been as consistently good across every single role - not forgetting the vital impact of the chorus either. Bryn Terfel certainly carried the world-weary demeanour of the Dutchman well, but the other facets of his personality were also well-characterised. A sense of hope struggling against near-desperation gives him a dangerous allure in his scenes with Daland, but his uncertainty and vulnerability in relation to love and the possibility of Senta failing him is all there too. It's there as much in the singing as the acting performance, and if there are one or two places where the full intensity isn't sustained (Tyrfel had withdrawn from an earlier performance, so might not have been on full form here), it's no less a strong, near-definitive performance.

Just how good the opera can be is shown when you have a Dutchman like this matched against a Senta like Adrianne Pieczonka. Not for a second does her performance waver from her character's dangerous obsession, but the depth of that obsession also extends to the depths of Senta's feelings for this lost man, making it warm and supremely human. It requires none of the shock impact of a grandstanding sacrificial death, the loss of the Dutchman's trust is enough to destroy her here. You really get a sense of that in her performance, which is outstanding on every level. If Michael König's Erik lacked a similar depth, it's only on account of his character's nature being dwarfed by those of Senta and the Dutchman. Peter Rose, announced as suffering a cold, nonetheless sang beautifully and lyrically with great sensitivity as Daland. Ed Lyon made a great impression as a luxuriously warm Steersman, and Catherine Wyn-Rogers was a fine Mary.

The singing was clearly in capable hands, but everything needs to work along with it and revival Daniel Dooner clearly had a good handle on Tim Albery's original stage directions, bringing it together to work as a whole. The importance of the chorus cannot be underestimated, particularly for the intensity they bring to the confrontation between the sailors, their wives and the Dutchman's crew and the Royal Opera Chorus brought this out with rising intensity. The man who really had to bring it all together was Andris Nelsons, and really with every side playing to the top of their game on a such a work as Der fliegende Holländer, that's a huge responsibility. It was more than just a question of marshalling the pace, rhythm and energy of Wagner's score however, and more than just working to the strengths of the singers. Nelsons also captured that spine-tingling edge to Wagner's mythological storytelling, and that indeed was revelatory of where the true greatness and character of the work lies.

Lens - Shell Shock (La Monnaie, 2014 - Webcast)

Nicholas Lens - Shell Shock

La Monnaie - De Munt, 2014

Koen Kessels, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Claron McFadden, Sara Fulgoni, Gerald Thompson, Ed Lyon, Mark S. Doss, Gabriel Kuti, Eastman, Aimilios Arapoglou, Damien Jalet, Jason Kittelberger, Kazutomi Kozuki, Elias Lazaridis, Johnny Lloyd, Nemo Oeghoede, Shintaro Oue, Guro Nagelhus Schia, Ira Mandela Siobhan, Theo Lally, Gabriel Crozier

La Monnaie Web streaming - November 2014

La Monnaie in Brussels are in my view just about the most consistently impressive opera company in Europe at the moment and at the forefront of presenting opera as a cutting edge artform. Part of the reason for their success is their willingness to involve theatre directors and artists from outside the opera world, who often bring a new and refreshing perspective on the meaning and presentation of very familiar works, but the musical interpretation and the quality of the performers engaged is of a very high standard too. Their commitment to ensuring that opera remains a vital musical and dramatic force is also evident in their commissioning of exciting new creations every season. This year Shell Shock proved to be one of the most impressive new works I've seen for a very long time.

Characteristically, the strength of the work and the key to its success is in how La Monnaie have assembled a strong and imaginative creative team from a variety of disciplines.  As some of these collaborators have little or no previous experience of opera, they often have few preconceptions about what opera ought to be. For this work, commissioned to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Great War, the Belgian composer Nicholas Lens (born in Ypres where the memory of the war remains fresh) was been paired with the Australian singer/songwriter and author Nick Cave, while the direction and staging of the work was placed in the hands of Belgian-Moroccan dance choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. The result is Shell Shock: A Requiem of War, A Dance Oratorio in Twelve Canti.

Evidently then, Shell Shock is not an opera in the traditional sense. It's part choral oratorio, it's part requiem mass, it's a ballet, it's a song cycle, but opera is a good enough description in how it encompasses and blends together these various musical and dramatic art disciplines. Made up of twelve separate cantos that describe the experience of the war from a variety of viewpoints (Canto of the Colonial Soldier, Canto of the Nurse, Canto of the Deserters, Canto of the Orphans etc.), there is however a strong thematic and even a narrative line that runs through the work, connecting the experiences. Even though there is little narrative dialogue within the canto format, the experiences being typically that of a single person or a group of people in a choral piece, there is nonetheless a vital dialogue established with the other elements. Not only is there a strong connection between the words and the music - as you would expect at the very least - but they form an meaningful dialogue and interact very much with the performers and dancers on the set, and with the various other theatrical stage devices, including the unconventional use of props, and projections.

This is an true operatic collaboration then in every sense of the word, where equal weight is given to each of the disciplines and they are informed, heightened and enhanced by their interaction with one another. Musically, Nicholas Lens draws on a variety of styles to match the content, some of it sounding like Vaughan-Williams in less pastoral more wartime music and, inevitably, closer to Britten's War Requiem. There is also a John Adams-like modern rhythmic quality in how the music is attuned to the sung English text, but without the minimalistic repetition. If it's difficult to pin down, the music nonetheless has a consistency and dramatic quality that works perfectly with the tone established by Nick Cave's texts. Unpretentiously called lyrics, they are indeed songs, Cave working to his strengths as a storyteller, expressing all the anger, exasperation, fear and horror of the conditions experienced by the soldiers, the nurses and the families of those caught up in nightmarish situations.

The connection between the words and the music is a strong combination that makes Shell Shock viable and deeply affecting as a concert piece in its own right, but Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's choreographed dances, movements and tableaux-like settings for the scenes really take the work to another level. The dances and movements manage to be strikingly beautiful without for a second glorifying the slaughter, without fitting the horror and confusion of the circumstances into any false sense of dramatic action, and without idealising the senselessness of the sacrifice. "War is reprehensible, not the man", is a line from the lengthy Canto of the Deserters section, but the theme is expanded on elsewhere, with lyrical and musical motifs referring to an Angel of Death and Kratos the God of War drawing together common experiences into a larger narrative.

Cherkaoui's dances, with Eastman leading the troupe, are also strikingly illustrative of these themes. It's a ballet of war where soldiers twitch with shell shock or contort as their bodies are disjointed, mutilated and torn apart by bullet fire and crawl over sandbags to form their own pile of corpse sandbags. The use of common objects found on the battlefield is employed imaginatively elsewhere, guns, bayonets and even stretchers flowing with the dancers into configurations that illustrate the stories and give expression beyond the literal. Bed sheets, for example, are used to capture charging soldiers, their faces and hands pressed against the canvas screen in a silent scream at the point of death. In combination with the music and the lyrics, it manages to be visually striking, expressive and horrific scene at the same time. Eugenio Szwarcer's projections and the stage lighting also come together with all the other elements to create further tableaux vivantes, or tableaux mortes if you can put it that way.

The singers are assigned various roles according to the Colonial Soldiers, Deserters, Survivors and Fallen of the Canti, some of them recurring throughout the opera as a whole. Essentially however, they are unnamed in the respect that each of them can fulfill multiple common designations within this war, and are identified only according to their singing role. The casting of a soprano (Claron McFadden), a mezzo-soprano (Sara Fulgoni), a countertenor (Gerald Thompson), a tenor (Ed Lyon) and a bass (Mark S. Doss) is clearly meant to be representative of the whole range of experiences covered here, but the choice of singers for those roles is also just about perfect. That's no coincidence either, several of these singers having worked with Lens before (Claron McFadden notably on Love Is The Only Master I'll Serve), but it's just another example of how La Monnaie strive for perfection on every level while stretching the capabilities of everyone to their limits. The results of this approach are evident to anyone viewing this remarkable work.

Links: La Monnaie, ARTE Concert

Rameau - Hippolyte et Aricie (Glyndebourne 2013 - Blu-ray)

Jean-Philippe Rameau - Hippolyte et Aricie

Glyndebourne 2013

William Christie, Jonathan Kent, Ed Lyon, Christiane Karg, Sarah Connolly, Stéphane Degout, Katherine Watson, François Lis, Julie Pasturaud, Samuel Boden, Aimery Lefèvre, Loic Felix, Ana Quintans, Emmanuelle de Negri, Mathias Vidal, Callum Thorpe, Charlotte Beament, Timothy Dickinson

Opus Arte - Blu-ray

On previous experience of this early work of French Baroque opera at a production in Paris a few years ago, Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie can often feel like a rather dry classical text adapted to the lyric stage by an experienced composer already well-renowned for his academic approach to the musical form. With William Christie leading the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment however in this rather more lively production for Glyndebourne, it's evident that the elegant rhythms and melodies of the work can actually be sensitive, expressive, witty, thoughtful and movingly tragic. The scenes in Hippolyte et Aricie moreover also offer opportunities for great spectacle, another vital component of Baroque opera and Glyndebourne is traditionally good at that. The 2013 production does indeed offer considerable spectacle, and if its relevance is not always clear it is at least in tune with the tone and the spirit of the work and the musical interpretation.

Questions about the relevance of Jonathan Kent's staging are sure to arise however in the Prologue. In Hippolyte et Aricie, it's a typically Baroque one that has opposing deities in dispute with one another in a way that is to have a profound affect on ordinary mortals (and some semi-deities) over the course of the subsequent drama. Quite why this takes place inside a giant fridge is hard to fathom and likely to come as a bit of a shock to the bewildered viewer, but there's no question that it fully lives up to the requirement to provide wonderful spectacle. It looks marvellous and is certainly inventive as cauliflower clouds hover over the stage, a lemon slice becomes the sun, and broccoli stalks descend to turn into trees. It's at least appropriate to characterise the icy detachment of the goddess Diana by confining her to the ice-box, while a fiery Cupid, whose influence is to cause such havoc to Diana's followers and worshippers, hatches out of an egg - but what on earth are the gods doing in a fridge in the first place?

Well, in addition to being a classical text, Hippolyte et Aricie is - as this production emphasises in its own very stylised way - very much a domestic drama, a point emphasised when the Three Fates warn Theseus at the end of Act II that he will escape from the Underworld only to find Hell at home. Hell as it happens is depicted cleverly and imaginatively here in Paul Brown's amazing designs as existing at the back of the very same fridge where the gods reside, and if you've ever ventured behind your own kitchen, you'll know how accurate an analogy that is. The Fates' prediction of "domestic Hell" proves to be true for the son of Neptune, who returns to find that his wife Phaedre, believing Theseus dead (usually a requirement for access to the Underworld), has fallen in love with his son Hippolytus. Mythological it might be and inspired by the actions and whims of the immortals, but Cupid has indeed brought disharmony into the formerly very secure, cool and detached "innocent" world of Diana's followers and their blood sacrifices. The fall-out is very real and domestic, Phaedre bemoaning that she is "unable to kill this detestable love" for her stepson.

What's missing of course is harmony between the Gods and, thereby, between ordinary mortals. Neptune appeals to Pluto for the release of Theseus from the Underworld in Act II saying that "the well-being of the universe depends on your common harmony", but the balance has been disturbed by Cupid's intervention, inspiring Hippolytus to love Aricia, in the process incurring Phaedre's jealousy and suppressed feelings for Hippolytus. As an opera, in its structure and in its musical arrangements as well as in its subject, Hippolyte et Aricie also operates very much on this notion of harmony and the balancing of elements, and Rameau - as academic a composer as he might be - makes the case not only structurally and harmonically, but with a sensibility for the beauty of such imperfect human sentiments in the sphere of what makes them aspire to be gods.

William Christie fully explores all the melodic and harmonic richness of what Rameau expresses so brilliantly in the musical arrangements, but also balances this with the requirements of the singing. Spectacle ("le merveilleux") and entertainment ("divertissement") are other factors that count towards this balance and harmony of all the elements, and that's all there too in the gorgeous but dramatically pointless ballet interludes and in the big and smaller details of the production design. The fridge in the Prologue is followed by a more traditional scene in the forests for the followers of Diana that nonetheless reflects the horrors (hanging deer, corpses dragged across the stage, copious blood) of the sacrifices. The Hell behind the fridge meanwhile has dancing flies, infernal devices in the shape of power units, with all sorts of horrible gunk and creatures caught up in the extractor grille.

As well as being visually inventive and thematically attuned to the work, the sets also demonstrate good storytelling technique that is accessible and allows the audience to better engage with a work that what could otherwise appear rather dry and fusty. Some elements however work better than others, so while it's meaningful to have the home of Theseus and Phaedre look like a tastefully-decorated suburban semi-detached (shown in cutaway cross-section in a manner reminiscent of Katie Mitchell's designs for Written on Skin), you miss out on the traditonal spectacle of Neptune's grand entrance by reflecting it through a living-room fish tank. The later acts might not always find imagery as strong the fire and ice of the earlier acts - Act V taking place in a mortuary - but there is some attempt to retain a dramatic narrative in the ballet sequences, and the singing performances too are strong enough to take up the lack of drive in the latter half of the work. 

Several of the best performers seen in the Paris production reprise their roles here to even more dazzling effect, while those that have been changed are often just as fine if not better in the roles. That means we not only have the excellent Stéphane Degout as Theseus, but we also have the simply stunning Sarah Connolly again in the role of Phaedre. In addition to being merely a formidable presence, as she was in Paris, Christie's arrangements and Connolly's performance also manages to elicit some sympathy for her character's predicament. As Hippolytus, Ed Lyons is perfect for the intentions of this production, his voice delicate but also strong enough to be capable of matching and standing up to Connolly/Phaedra. If he was weaker, this wouldn't work half as well. Christiane Karg however just didn't work for me as Aricia. It can be somewhat of a bland role, but Karg didn't really have anything to enliven it here. Ana Quintans was a bright Cupid however, François Lis majestic as Pluto, Neptune and Jupiter, and Katherine Watson an icily aloof Diana.

On Blu-ray, this Hippolyte et Aricie looks and sounds every bit as spectacular as the production itself, with a bold colourful video transfer of the performance and crystal clear sound mixes in LPCM 2.0 and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1. Aside from the Cast Gallery, there's only one extra feature on the disc, a fifteen-minute making of that covers all aspects of the production, interviewing Christie and Kent, but takes a particular interest into Paul Brown's unusual costume and set designs. The disc is BD50, region-free, with subtitles in English, French, German and Korean.