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Britten: The Church Parables, Aldeburgh Festival, review
The rare combination of Britten's three 'parable' operas at the Aldeburgh Festival was only intermittently rewarding, says Rupert Christiansen.
As part of the Aldeburgh Festival’s celebration of Britten’s centenary, his three one-act “parable” operas are being performed in Orford Church (Suffolk) as a trilogy - an infrequent yoking, and one that I found only intermittently rewarding.
Composed in the mid-Sixties, during what now seems like a relatively fallow period in his 40-year professional career, these are less than immediately enchanting. Scored for male voices and small instrumental ensemble, they reflect an interest in the exoticism of Noh theatre and gamelan, as well as medieval liturgical drama: the result is an idiom impregnated in hieratic ritual and gesture which keeps the audience at an emotional distance.
All three would work better if they were shorter and sharper at the edges: Britten’s normal instinct for pacing seems temporarily to have failed him here.
Curlew River, earliest of the three, is the slowest and most solemn: Mahogany Opera’s production, directed by Frederic Wake-Walker, makes no apology for this and the atmosphere at times becomes so reverently po-faced that one wants to make a rude noise. Although some of the meticulously choreographed tableaux look beautiful in the gloaming of a summer’s night, the fierce simplicity of the tale gets obscured by flummery and faux religiosity.
Close one’s eyes and one heard superb instrumental playing, directed by Roger Vignoles - as well as elegant singing by James Gilchrist as the Madwoman in search of her lost son and Rodney Earl Clarke as the Ferryman who helps her.
But despite some exquisitely delicate instrumentation, one feels Britten is feeling his way to a destination that he only confidently reaches in The Burning Fiery Furnace, based on the biblical story of arrogant Nebuchadnezzar and his persecution of the Jews.
This is a much more robust and energised affair: Britten’s eyes light up at the prospect of Babylonian excess, and Wake-Walker’s delightfully imaginative staging hits the spot here, with just the right sprinkling of black humour and witty stylisation.
The Prodigal Son (played second here, though composed last) seems third-rate in comparison. A re-tread through Britten’s stock of stylistic markers, it runs along predictable grooves and never builds any impetus or conviction.
More excellent singing from Gilchrist, John McMunn and a terrific chorus again provided compensation, but overall this is hard going for even the most hardened Britten fan - made more penitential by cramped nave seating which even Ryanair would have baulked at.
To June 21; www.aldeburgh.co.uk 01728 687 110