Whatever the reason for Wayne McGregor’s surprise exit from Dutch National Opera’s Opera Forward Festival four weeks before opening night, the result – a hastily reworked double-bill of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex and Samy Moussa’s new oratorio, Antigone – should be judged on its own merits. It is outstanding.
With little choice for the replacement creative team but to rely on the bare essentials of classical drama – and Vicki Mortimer’s monumentally stark design – directors Mart van Berckel (Oedipus Rex) and Nanine Linning (Antigone) have wisely stuck to the basics, and to stunning effect, deftly drawing together the threads of these two Theban tragedies with eloquent, disciplined choral work and powerful choreography, as they untangle the roots of a timeless conflict.
Stravinksy’s Oedipus Rex, so often weighed down in performance with its own portent, is here given a lightness of touch from the start. The appearance of a female narrator (Nazmiye Oral) speaking in everyday Dutch, puts a new spin on the inescapable masculinity of the piece, which is sung in Latin. DNO’s men’s chorus are magnificent as the citizens of Thebes, forcefully demanding deliverance from the plague. Mart van Berckel brilliantly exploits the physical dynamics between a demanding crowd and a self-assured Oedipus, just as Stravinsky’s thrilling score plays the voice of the individual against the voice of the masses.
Sean Panikkar is perfectly cast as an Oedipus whose vocal command from the outset – even over the spine-tingling volume of the chorus – is absolute. His crystalline voice betrayed no cast of self-doubt until the details of the infamous prophesy began to assert themselves when lux facta est, all is made clear. And well may the men’s chorus sing “Gloria, gloria!” at the arrival of Dame Sarah Connolly as Jocasta, setting the crown on this already majestic production. Imposing, but never imperious, Connolly imbued Jocasta with all the muscular authority and sexual confidence vital for survival in hyper-masculine Thebes; consequently, her downfall felt seismic.
The appearance on stage of Oedipus’s daughter, in dancer Quian Liu, and the women’s chorus from Antigone, creates a clever transition between these two stories and, after a short pause, the curtain rises on a Thebes that has passed from the shocking glare of violent tragedy to its cold shadow-side – grief and the grinding maw of retribution.
Sung in Ancient Greek, Canadian composer Samy Moussa’s libretto draws on several ancient sources and gives the narrative entirely to the women’s chorus, with individual characters as dancers. Displaying a voracious orchestral imagination, Moussa’s sound world is gorgeously eclectic, its full, impassioned range from cinematic grandeur to bone-bare intimacy and desolation.
The Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton of Erik Nielsen, responded whole-heartedly. A French horn is familiar in the lexicon of operatic heroism, but pair it with a harpsichord and heroism atomises. Sustained lines in the choral writing are achingly beautiful and at the same time like the insertion of a long, slim blade. The mesmerising Quian Liu danced the anguished central solo of the title role to lush, gravitational cadences reminiscent of Samuel Barber, while the cruelty of Creon’s regime – and death itself – is chillingly rendered in a series of extended orchestral techniques: bowed cymbals, the dry blowing of pitchless wind instruments and a string section bowing on the tailpiece. As the corpses pile one on top of another, the message is as clear as it is unbearable. War and politics are always personal in the end. This is an Antigone for all time.
Nanine Linning didn’t think she was going to choreograph this piece a month ago, which makes it all the more astounding that her eloquent choices create not just a compelling narrative in Antigone but a coherent relationship with Oedipus Rex too. The women’s chorus move as one in a series of understated, dignified gestures, as a body of grief. A muscular, exhilarating fight between Polynices and Eteocles (Dingkai Bai and Fabio Rinieri on opening night) begins the piece and provides the context for the ongoing war, while Quian Liu’s central solo with its extended développés is Antigone trying to climb free from the grave that has been waiting for her since her father’s birth. Linning’s choreography is all about extension and reach – the span of one body against the pull of time and fate.
Bold, imaginative co-commissioning is becoming a habit at Sophie de Lint’s DNO, with the Opera Forward Festival propelling new and exciting work firmly into the international repertoire. Last year’s hit, Alexander Raskatov’s Animal Farm, has just finished its run at the Wiener Staatsoper. That this opening night in Amsterdam could lose its big-name director and still triumph so emphatically shows that DNO’s instinct for drama on the stage is as unshakeable as it is exhilarating.
