King Roger review: Rich, strange and seductive

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This was published 7 years ago

King Roger review: Rich, strange and seductive

By Peter McCallum
Updated

King Roger
Opera Australia
Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House, January 20

★★★★½

This superb production is a rare chance to see something rich and strange.

Seductive: Saimir Pirgu as Shepherd in Opera Australia's <i>King Roger</i>.

Seductive: Saimir Pirgu as Shepherd in Opera Australia's King Roger.Credit: Keith Saunders

This masterwork from Karol Szymanowski, the greatest Polish composer since Chopin, combines a strong sense of dramatic gesture with the sensuality cultivated by such contemporaries as Ravel and exotic African and Middle-Eastern scales and melodic patterns to create a story of personal and cultural awakening and transformation.

In Kasper Holten's co-production for Opera Australia with the Royal Opera House – revived for this Australian premier of the work by Amy Lane – a giant revolving bust of Roger's head dominates the first act as his people demand punishment for a religious heretic: a shepherd who preaches sensuality and beauty.

Saimir Pirgu and Lorina Gore are part of a cast of compelling strength in <i>King Roger</i>.

Saimir Pirgu and Lorina Gore are part of a cast of compelling strength in King Roger.Credit: Keith Saunders

The second act moves literally inside the head as he wrestles with lithe demons in a sensuous dance, while the third is in a crumbling ancient ruin from which, after symbolic purging in a book-burning sacrifice, Roger emerges transformed.

Although allegorically the work narrates Szymanowski's discovery of his own sexuality, it is also about the transformative impact of beauty on cultural orthodoxy.

In fact, Szymanowski died in 1937, just before Europe and his own homeland were catastrophically snatched away from the idealised transformation the work seems to promise.

In this production, it achieves dramatic impact through arresting choral set pieces, magnificently projected by the Opera Australia chorus, spectacular yet cogent staging that is strikingly lit by Jon Clark and video designer Luke Halls, and a cast of compelling strength. Michael Honeyman captures the conflicted psychology of Roger in singing of leavened complexity, opening out with commanding force in the third act.

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Lorina Gore as Roxana in Opera Australia's <i>King Roger</i>.

Lorina Gore as Roxana in Opera Australia's King Roger.Credit: Keith Saunders

As his wife, Lorina Gore sang the work's one comparatively well known number, Roxana's Song, with sinewy line, alluring colour and thrilling power in moments of strength. As the Shepherd, Saimir Pirgu's voice had luminous lightness, a quality he maintained throughout his range and at all volumes.

As mediator between Roger's rigid kingly realm and the sensuousness of the Shepherd, James Egglestone had a voice of eloquent focus as Edrisi. Dominica Matthews was a fearsomely stern Deaconess and Gennadi Dubinsky an equivocating Archbishop.

In addition to the radiance of the choral writing, the work relies upon subtle exoticism from the orchestra, which the players, under Andrea Molino nurtured with tonal finesse and moments of iridescence, despite the challenges of the Sydney Opera House pit.

Of the dance which so disturbed the repressed Roger in the second act, whose music mixes sardonic modernism and folk-colours, choreographer Cathy Marston created movements of sinewy writhing darkness.

Like King Roger, the audience that gave the work a standing ovation at the close were, in the end, completely seduced by its beauty.

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