Masque of Might, the centrepiece of Opera North’s Green Season, is billed as “an eco-entertainment”, and it’s every bit as improbable a hybrid as that descriptor might suggest. Devised by Sir David Pountney, it presses more than 40 pieces of Purcell’s music for stage, court and church into service for a collage-like examination of timely themes: the rise of the strongman leader, the wilful destruction of the natural world, and how the alarming progress of either might be halted.
Taking its cue from the semi-operatic forms of musical theatre in which Purcell and his predecessors worked, Pountney’s Masque makes a broad, allegorical gesture at plot – the ascent and subsequent destruction of the planet-killing despot Diktat – but its governing force is variety: of tone, style and musical form. Comedy jostles tragedy, sacred anthem abuts earthy coloratura, and dance, choreographed with verve by Denni Sayers, is woven throughout. Designs by Marie-Jeanne Lecca (costumes) and Leslie Travers (sets) conjure a lavish baroque-meets-brutal hodgepodge of recycled objects and textiles, embracing both the production’s genre-hopping sense of mischief and the Green Season’s sustainable principles.
A cast of seven plays twice as many parts. Andri Björn Róbertsson’s honeyed bass gains depth with each of three appearances, and tenor Xavier Hetherington brings bright, pliable tone to his quartet of pivotal bit-parts. As the sycophantic henchmen Tousel Blond and Ginger Strumpet, countertenors James Laing and James Hall are a murderously comic double-act, while Matthew Brook is a patrician Sceptic, and bass Callum Thorpe is on blistering form as the malevolent Diktat. Yet it’s Anna Dennis’s shapeshifting Elena who becomes the heart of this production: as earth mother, dissident or Green Party candidate, her iridescent soprano and fragile, wide-eyed presence are as compelling a voice for climate action as the projected footage of felled trees and oil fires.
Conductor Harry Bicket steers the Orchestra of Opera North through a stylish account of a score stuffed almost over-generously with lesser known Purcellian gems, and there is plenty for the company’s excellent chorus to sink their teeth into as well: their monumental Soul of the World, from Ode for St Cecilia’s Day, is one of several selections whose text fits uncannily well into its new context.
Pountney has clearly had enormous fun devising his eco-entertainment, but while the chaos is endearing, it risks muddling the serious points the piece is presumably trying to make. Unsettling questions about corruption and complicity are posed but not fully confronted, and some scenes seem contrived purely as a vehicle for the, admittedly glorious, music. As an inventive piece of truly “recycled” musical theatre, Masque of Might undoubtedly scores a success – but more as a platform for Purcell than for the planet.
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