The Return of Ulysses review – tenderness and thuggery plus a touch of the Pythons

“Monteverdi’s Flying Circus” was the affectionate nickname given to an ENO production of The Coronation of Poppea, but with its specially adapted tent and suitably trimmed score, this new Longborough festival opera version of the composer’s Il Ritorno d’Ulisse merits that label too.

There’s no flying trapeze, yet this is still a daring venture with a terrific cast, though given that director Polly Graham emphasises Homer’s violence and gore, it’s not exactly all the fun of the circus. Underlining that myths should be for all time, with contemporary resonance, Ulisse is not the conquering hero returning to his Greek island home, but a war-scarred soldier returning to an American, gun-toting Ithaca.

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Tom Randle’s Ulisse conveys all the vulnerability of the man, his neurotic fingering of the zip of his fatigue jacket as telling as his head-in-hand despair. The horror of the appalling suitors who proposition his long-suffering wife, Penelope (Lucia Cervoni), is all too real given the thuggery and vocal heft of Benedict Nelson’s Anfinomo, Matthew Buswell’s Antindo and Sophie Goldrick’s Pisandro. Their get-up brings an element of comic edge, while the clowning belongs to Iro, he of the mohican haircut, jeered at as “Captain Pot-Belly” – because of the haze of pot around him, he has no gut. Oliver Brignall milks this role for all its worth. Llio Evans similarly vamps her Melanto. Ben Johnson’s Eumete is impressive, with Andrew Irwin an impassioned Telemaco.

Randle balances the awkward transition between the intrinsic nobility of Ulisse and his disguise as the old beggar, and is at his most musically convincing in the moments of tenderness, and when bursting with the sense of empowerment given him by the goddess Minerva, the latter fiercely sung by Claire Wild.

Directing La Serenissima from the harpsichord, Robert Howarth keeps a tight rein, the instrumental playing carrying clearly, even if there is also sometimes the suspicion of voices being ramped up to push the modern feel. It is in the very simplicity of Ulisse and Penelope’s final reunion – touching, but of course no touching – that Monteverdi seems to get the last word.