Gloriana, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, review

The Royal Opera's production of Britten's Gloriana sets it in a village hall, with mixed results, says Rupert Christiansen.

Regal eagle: The Royal Opera's 'Gloriana'
Regal eagle: The Royal Opera's 'Gloriana'

Phyllida Lloyd’s 1993 Opera North production of Britten’s Gloriana seemed definitive. Forty years after its Coronation première, this portrait of the last years of Elizabeth I remained out of focus, until Lloyd scrubbed the historical flummery clean, delineated the drama incisively and framed a crowning performance by Josephine Barstow as the Virgin Queen.

But Richard Jones has continued to excavate. What he finds is something more complex and still fuzzy: a reflection of the post-war mythology of Merrie England – the England we had been fighting for – in which Good Queen Bess’ reign is prized as our heroic heyday.

The setting for his production is therefore not a royal court but a village hall, in which a middle-class community has come together to present a pageant to an audience presided over by the new Queen Elizabeth.

A Union Jack adorns the proscenium, National Servicemen help to change the sets, adorable prep-school boys in short grey trousers hold up placards and costumes are rummaged out of the dressing-up box.

Ultz’s designs are charged with the garish colours of Olivier’s Henry V and Ladybird books, a riot of pseudo-Tudor. This is very much Britten’s world too, the cosily cohesive and innocent world of Aldeburgh where music-making was truly amateur, rather than the exclusive domain of posh folk or professionals.

As with his great WNO production of Meistersinger, Jones paints the picture with a delicate brush and an affectionate humour which also allows deeper emotion to shine through: his staging of the apotheosis in which reality dissolves into a hallucinatory newsreel is both moving and surprising.

Paul Daniel conducts considerately, and there are notably strong contributions from the lower voices of Mark Stone (Mountjoy), Clive Bayley (Raleigh), Brindley Sherratt (Ballad Singer) and Jeremy Carpenter (Cecil).

But further up the performance lacks intensity. Crucially, Toby Spence, recovering from serious illness, is running at about 90 per cent of full capacity as the spoilt brat Earl of Essex and his infatuation with the old queen doesn’t register convincingly.

She is played by Susan Bullock – such a conscientious and intelligent musician, but not one with either the vocal authority or the personal charisma to make Elizabeth seem any more awesome or tragic than a bossy, ratty suburban housewife. And if this is precisely what Jones wanted to suggest, then he is selling both the opera and history short.

Until July 6. Tickets: 020 7304 4000; roh.org.uk