Joshua, Grand Theatre, Leeds, review

David Fanning finds Opera North’s attempt at Handel's oratorio an uneasy compromise.

Joshua at Grand Theatre, Leeds
Joshua at Grand Theatre, Leeds Credit: Photo: Robert Workman

How do you solve a problem like Handel’s oratorios? You can leave them to choral societies in concert halls, but only at the cost of minimal audience involvement with the drama. Or you can transplant them to the opera house, at which point a whole host of issues arises.

Opera North’s attempt feels like an uneasy compromise. Some numbers are performed score in hand, as when the singers are arranged as though for the Last Supper and pick up what look like menus. And while some aspects of the Old Testament story of Joshua (as in the Battle of Jericho) lend themselves to visuals, it lacks the dilemmas and dichotomies that are the stuff of opera.

Director Charles Edwards does try to add dramatic texture. Near the end, Othniel enters bloodied and bowed, just as his betrothed Achsah is hailing his return from battle unscathed (''Oh, had I Jubal’s Lyre’’). And her father, the old warrior Caleb, expires during the final Hallelujahs. Earlier on, Othniel and Achsah enjoy a ''dalliance’’ rather more adult-certificate than the music suggests.

But such moments have a tokenistic feel. Joshua is a story of paranoia and self-congratulation on a grand scale, designed to resonate with mid-18th-century English sensibilities. This production understandably updates the action to post-1948 Israel. But to make it all matter we needed something far more edgy — maybe even as potentially offensive as back-projections of the Holocaust at the beginning and the Intifada at the end.

The performance itself started on the wrong foot, with ensemble problems in the opening chorus. Stephen Layton is known as a fine choral conductor; but it sounded as though voices and orchestra were following different beats. Things improved in Act 3, and may right themselves later in the run, but on the opening night the rocky rhythmic foundation betrayed a lack of confidence.

Though Daniel Norman survives the title role’s severe demands on agility, his pinched tenor is not easy on the ear. Fflur Wyn’s soprano is more secure, but again too limited in timbre for Achsah. Fortunately, Henry Waddington’s well-focused bass makes Caleb’s arias something to look forward to. Above all, the Othniel of young countertenor Jake Arditti displays show-stealing riches of vocal colour and stage presence.