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It is a good thing the Royal Opera did not choose to present an updated staging of Handel’s Jephtha. In the current political climate, a production that shows the Israelites going to war against an enemy that is threatening to “crush the race of Israel” might seem too close to the bone.
As Handel never intended his oratorios to be staged at all, that is just one part of the challenge. The Royal Opera is committed to presenting a Handel work each year and, after last season’s Theodora, the oratorios, with their strong, clear narratives, are evidently going to have a place alongside the operas.
For Jephtha, director Oliver Mears has chosen a setting far from the biblical lands of the Middle East. In place of crusading Israelites and evil Ammonites, he gives us a century-crossing clash of Puritans on one side and Georgian revellers on the other, in which the partygoers of the Baroque era are having such a raucous, fun time that the audience is likely to be rooting for them.
As soon becomes clear, the production’s laudable message is that extremism leads inevitably to a tragic outcome. Jephtha himself, a tub-thumping evangelist who lectures the Puritans from a pulpit, is finally turned on by his people and condemned to solitary suffering.
Unfortunately, there is a disconnect between all this and the unquestioning, religious morality of Jephtha’s text and music. Why does Hamor return from war singing a radiantly happy aria when he apparently has a serious case of PTSD? Why does Iphis tell us she is content with her lot as an eternal virgin, only to throw off her nun’s habit and rush away in the countertenor’s arms?
All the force of this production, and indeed the strength of the work, is invested in Jephtha himself, a man racked by mental agony and one of Handel’s most compelling portrayals. After his highly charged Peter Grimes last year, Allan Clayton must almost have cast himself in the role. He sings impressively well, encompassing early music agility and a deal of heroic power, and his ability to bring the character intensely alive provides the essential fulcrum on which everything else depends.
He is fervently supported by Alice Coote as his mother Storgè, though her aggressive use of chest voice has become a problem. Cameron Shahbazi makes a sweet-voiced Hamor, but sweetness is in shorter supply from Jennifer France’s sharp-edged soprano in the role of his beloved Iphis. Brindley Sherratt, so imposing in Wagner, sounded out of sorts as Zebul. Young Ivo Clark did well as the first of the cast’s two treble angels.
The static images of oratorio are treated to some striking stage pictures courtesy of designer Simon Lima Holdsworth, with the romp in the Georgian camp coming straight out of Hogarth. The period Baroque style is more of a problem for a standard opera orchestra, despite well-judged compromises on the part of conductor Laurence Cummings, and the much-enlarged chorus was constantly, and irritatingly, a fraction out with the pit.
In the end, it is a toss-up whether this staging brings us any closer to Handel than a concert performance by a crack period ensemble, however much the questions it poses need to be asked.
★★★☆☆
To November 24, roh.org.uk
