Samson et Dalila review, Royal Opera House London: Meticulously choreographed production has many bewitching moments

Some operas readily lend themselves to topical treatment, but Camille Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila (Samson and Delilah) requires very careful handling – as the editorial spiel in the programme nervously hints. Richard Jones’s production will “eschew both traditional Orientalism and contemporary conflict”, so, no cosy exoticism, and no whiff, please, of Jew-versus-Arab strife.

Must this Hebrew Samson and his fateful Philistine paramour be kept in a box marked “Myth”, with their motivations interpreted in timelessly psychological terms? Why not? As a professor of biblical studies aptly points out in a curtain-raiser essay, the lesson this story teaches about the perils of love “reveals less about women than about the men who created it, and their anxieties about women”.

Jones’s version must stand in a line of Samsons and Delilahs as portrayed by artists including Rubens, Van Dyck, and Dore, and with gusto by Hollywood. Saint-Saëns’s work has got into the general musical bloodstream thanks to two things: Dalila’s signature aria “Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix”, and the Philistines’ triumphal Bacchanale before they are squashed under the collapsing temple.