Caligula, at ENO, Seven magazine review

Successful new operas are so rare that they deserve special fanfare. Detlev Glanert, though, is among the most experienced composers alive, renowned not as an iconoclast but for well-crafted works that singers want to sing and audiences want to see: Caligula, which has just had its UK premiere at the Coliseum, is his 11th opera.

First seen in Frankfurt in 2006, Caligula finds Glanert working very much within German tradition, and his ability to mix beauty and violence marks him out as the inheritor of an expressionistic tradition reaching back to Richard Strauss. Indeed, the lunar references in Strauss’s Salome are magnified here in evocations of moonlight that run throughout the libretto and music, ethereally scored and handled with complete command by the conductor Ryan Wigglesworth.

Though the depravities of Herod pale next to Caligula’s reign of terror (ignited by the death of his sister and lover, Drusilla) this new opera examines despotism with introspective seriousness.

Forget Gore Vidal’s sensational film script; the opera is drawn from Camus’ existential play, and Amanda Holden’s poised new English version of the libretto adds greatly to the tone of the evening.

Benedict Andrews’s production brings the work up to date, setting the action on a grandstand (designed by Ralph Myers) and exploring the ugly allure that stadiums hold for the politically immature. He draws strong performances from the entire cast, not least an unstinting Peter Coleman-Wright in the title role.

Christopher Ainslie makes an outstanding ENO debut in the high-lying countertenor part of the creepily acquiescent slave Helicon, and Yvonne Howard is compelling as Caesonia, the tyrant’s masochistic wife.

ENO, to Jun 14. www.eno.org

This review also appeared in SEVEN magazine, free with the Sunday Telegraph.

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