Le Roi de Lahore review – rare staging of Massenet’s sumptuous grand opera

Part residential summer school, part refreshingly unstuffy country-house opera, Dorset Opera festival regularly includes a rarity among its annual offerings. This year that curio is Le Roi de Lahore, the third of Massenet’s operas to be performed in Paris and the work that established his international reputation. It was widely performed across Europe within a few years of its premiere in 1877, before disappearing almost completely from the repertoire in the 20th century and the Dorset production, directed by Ella Marchment, was thought to be the first British staging since it was performed at Covent Garden in 1879.

Though the libretto is specific in setting the action in Lahore, as Marchment observes, the opera really inhabits a “fictional fantasyland”. At its dramatic core is a love triangle spiced with incest; the king Alim is secretly in love with Sitā, who has taken a vow of chastity, while she in turn is lusted after by her uncle, the king’s minister Scindia, who also has designs on the crown. Alim is killed by Scindia, but allowed by the god Indra to return to life as a commoner, with the proviso that he will die again when Sitā does. Forced to marry Scindia, Sitā kills herself, whereupon Alim dies too.

Le Roi de Lahore is conceived very much in the mould of a French grand opera, complete with a large chorus and a ballet in the third act, set in “Indra’s paradise”. The Dorset production dispenses with the dancing, but within its more or less permanent set, designed by Rufus Martin with just enough touches of faux orientalism to conjure a sense of the exotic, it does a very fine job of suggesting an opera conceived on the most sumptuous scale.

Fantasy it may be, but the passions it deals in are real enough. Musically it’s all very impressive too, with superb contributions from both the Dorset Opera festival chorus and orchestra, conducted by Jeremy Carnall, in a score that sometimes harks back to Meyerbeer, but also includes the odd touch of Wagner. The central performances are taken by Amar Muchhala as Alim, Seljan Nasibli as Sitā, and Michael Anthony McGee as Scindia. Muchhala and Nasibli make a very convincing couple, fearlessly coping with what is sometimes very high-lying vocal writing, while McGee does well to give what could easily be a cartoonish baritone baddy a little more depth and credibility. In every respect, it’s a show that does full justice to a forgotten opera, which perhaps deserves a bit more attention than it currently receives.