Aix-en-Provence festival 2012, Seven magazine review

Despite its less-than-appealing title, George Benjamin’s important new opera Written on Skin is full of beautiful and haunting things. Anyone queasy at the prospect of the world’s first tattooing opera will be relieved to find that “skin” here alludes to medieval parchment, and that one of the three principal characters is an illuminator of manuscripts.

As it turns out, some genteel tattooing would be nothing compared to the violent denouement – involving a little light cannibalism, which may indeed be a first in opera – but the scenario certainly inspires Benjamin’s most vivid music to date, in a score embracing everything from sensuousness to explosive ferocity.

Premiered at the Aix-en-Provence Festival last weekend as part of a five-cornered commission that will see it come to Covent Garden next March, Written on Skin is Benjamin’s first full opera but his second music-theatre piece. Like the first, the Pied Piper-inspired Into the Little Hill (2006), it sets a text by the playwright Martin Crimp, who bases his libretto on the gruesome 12th-century Occitan legend of the troubadour Guillem de Cabestany.

In the postmodern twist Crimp and Benjamin give it, three contemporary angels bring the trio of medieval figures back to life. We see how a powerful landowner (called the Protector) commissions an artist (the Boy) to celebrate the achievements of his family, and how the Boy’s meticulous work attracts the admiration of the Protector’s young wife, Agnès.

He awakens the repressed passion of Agnès, who asserts herself as an independent woman rather than a possession of the Protector. But soon she unsuspectingly finds herself eating the Boy’s heart, served up by her murderous husband. She throws herself to her death.

Crimp’s libretto is cleverly constructed in 15 scenes, perhaps too cleverly, at times, for there is something self-conscious about the protagonists’ use of the third person in their recounting of events. This, too, encourages the director Katie Mitchell to add her own layers of interpretation, not always helpful in such a finely wrought new work.

Her staging, though, is beautiful to look at. Vicki Mortimer’s multi-roomed, double-storey set is divided into “then” and “now”, lit in contrasting yellow and white by Jon Clark. The angels inhabit a space that resembles an archaeologists’ laboratory, but one room is never entered by anyone: doubtless all very meaningful, and in keeping with the slightly “distanced” effect of the piece.

Indeed, despite its English libretto the whole thing feels rather French, but then Benjamin, as well as being one of the leading British composers of our day, could aptly be described at the finest French composer since his teacher Messiaen; his colouristic imagination clearly comes from that tradition. Using a large orchestra sparingly and unleashing it only in the interludes, he conjures up glistening, mysterious sounds and never drowns his singers.

Conducting the premiere himself, Benjamin was rewarded with wonderful playing from the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and an outstanding cast. Weaving high, melismatic lines, the soprano Barbara Hannigan and countertenor Bejun Mehta capture the strange intensity of the piece, and Christopher Purves uses his warm, clear baritone to disturbing effect as an increasingly ogre-like Protector. Doubling on angelic duty, Mehta is joined by Rebecca Jo Loeb and Allan Clayton.

Another of Aix’s seven operatic offerings is also heading to Britain: in a new Les Arts Florissants production, Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Biblical tragedy David et Jonathas will make August’s Edinburgh Festival its next stop. Dealing with events surrounding the battle between the Israelites and Philistines but focusing on the close friendship of David and Jonathan, the work is ripe for updating and Gideon Davey’s costumes suggest the post-Ottoman period, perhaps the lead-up to the founding of the state of Israel.

Yet Andreas Homoki’s staging, which casts the poignant relationship of David and Jonathan in a homoerotic light, is simplicity itself. Paul Zoller’s set is a wooden box with panels that expand and contract like camera shutters, allowing the short scenes to flow fluently. Although musical inspiration sags slightly in the middle, Charpentier’s 1688 score is rich and delicate, and it finds a sympathetic showcase here.

Pascal Charbonneau uses his high, limpid tenor to lyrical effect as David, and there are vivid performances from Ana Quintans as Jonathan and Neal Davies as Saul. Conducting with trademark flair, William Christie presides over another important French Baroque revival.

Aix Festival, to July 27; www.festival-aix.com/en

This review also appears in SEVEN, free with the Sunday Telegraph

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