Given the present state of things in the Middle East, it might not have been the perfect time for The Royal Opera to stage a Handel oratorio about Israelites massacring their enemies with the help of a divine host. By luck or judgement, however, director Oliver Mears has side-stepped this by moving the action of the composer’s last oratorio, Jephtha, far from the time and place of the Bible, to somewhere between the English Civil War and Handel’s own time. The Israelites have turned into Puritans, while their Ammonite oppressors (whom we only glimpse occasionally) are the dissolute gentry as pictured in William Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress.
Much as he did for Mears’ Rigoletto, set designer Simon Lima Holdsworth has drawn heavily on the visual arts: as well as a tableau vivant of one of the Hogarth series, we get a vision of William Blake’s The Song of Los which converts spectacularly into the corona of a solar eclipse. Much of the staging consists of massive moving walls with biblical text boldly etched into them, inspired by contemporary American artist Richard Serra. With distinctive lighting by Fabiana Piccioli, it’s a staging that’s highly stylish visually, in spite of puritan austerity being the predominant feel.
The story is somewhere along the lines of Abraham and Isaac or Iphigenia in Aulis: Jephtha has obtained divine assistance by promising to sacrifice to God the first living being he sees on his return from victorious battle – which, inevitably, turns out to be his beloved daughter Iphis (named by the librettist Thomas Morell in a nod to the Greek legend). All is cast into confusion until a deus ex machina happy(ish) ending. Mears has many ideas for individual moments in the drama, ranging from effective (Iphis being dressed for execution is an eerie echo of her being arrayed for her wedding just a short while earlier; the torches which are about to light her pyre are blown out by a divine wind as the Angel of the Lord appears) to clunky (much writhing around on the floor when characters are upset). Some are just out of line with the music, as when Hamor claims his beloved as his prize for victory in a clearly traumatised state, his hands still bloody.
For sheer beauty of voice, you couldn’t have asked for better soloists. In the title role of the Israelite hero, Allan Clayton provided his usual warmth, enfolding one in a comfort blanket of sound. As his brother Zebul, Brindley Sherratt gave a silk-smooth bass. Jennifer France was perhaps the pick of them all as Iphis, with sweetness of tone all the way up to the glittering top of her register. Alice Coote matched Clayton for warmth as his wife, Storgé; countertenor Cameron Shahbazi, as Iphis' lover Hamor, impressed with sinuous phrasing and timbre, just as he did in the recent Picture a day like this. All of these singers gave splendid demonstrations of the ebb and flow of Handelian phrasing and of the change of expression between repeats of their da capo arias. The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House and Royal Opera Chorus also produced consistently beautiful sounds.
But stylish sets and beautiful sound aren’t enough to create drama. Only on a few occasions did the orchestra drive the performance; at best they were providing a firm bedrock and at worst they were dragging. All of the male characters were just a little too wholesome; it was hard to feel a sense of the urgency and magnitude of events, even in crucial moments like Jephtha’s “What mean these doubtful fancies of the brain?”, the recitative in which the fatal vow is made and Storgé’s “Scenes of horror, scenes of woe”, where the horror was visible on Coote’s face but didn’t come through musically. Coote’s Act 2 “Let other creatures die” was the first time where I felt a dramatic frisson. Stage movement often painted pictures rather than transmitting drama, most notably at the close of Act 1 where Clayton and the chorus brandish their knives in a way that feels more choreographic than bellicose.
This production will satisfy Handel aficionados for its basic attractiveness and the sheer quality of its cast, but it’s hard to see this as a successful conversion of an oratorio into a dramatic work. Unlike last year’s Alcina, I doubt that it will make any converts to the Handelian cause.
