It’s no spoiler to reveal that Lea, the character in Søren Nils Eichberg’s new opera played by soprano Sky Ingram, is not human. But perhaps it ought to be. The Royal Opera, who commissioned this 85-minute work from Eichberg and librettist Hannah Dübgen, is selling it as a “robot opera”. Before Lea first sings, she is unwrapped from plastic sheeting by her boyfriend, Alex – a symbolic act, as poor, clueless Alex spends much of the opera wondering why she’s a little too perfect. The audience knows the truth long before Alex’s best friend, a sinister scientist named Michael, reveals it over a game of pool, potting the black at the crucial moment.
Thaddeus Strassberger’s staging is a world away from his recent I Due Foscari on the main stage here. Dark but punctuated by neon, it is sometimes witty, and features blood, vomit, violence and an awful lot of shagging. The opera tries to be a gritty thriller, but instead seems to be prodding at a vague moral question. What Glare really wants to be is Blade Runner. “What do you dream of at night, Lea?” Alex finally asks her, when she’s no longer in any position to respond. It’s all you can do not to shout back: “Electric sheep.”
The vocal lines can be overemphatic and drawn out, but the instrumental music – mixing electronics with live playing by Chroma, conducted by Geoffrey Paterson – is deftly coloured, sometimes suggesting skittering circuitry or, during a scene set at a trendy art exhibition, bringing the lowest instruments together in a heavy dubstep bass. The singers – Ingram, Clare Presland, Amar Muchhala and Ashley Riches – do a great job, especially Presland as the scheming Christina. (How can you not root for someone who has bumped into her ex’s hot new girlfriend while coming back from the shops with a nine-pack of Andrex?) After seeing Glare, I know I’d like to hear more of Eichberg’s instrumental music – and that I would not like to play Riches at pool. But I still don’t know what its creators want their opera to say.
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