Curlew River – review

As well as bringing Britten's best known opera to the town in which it is set for the first time, the Aldeburgh festival is also returning three of his most singular music-theatre works to the Suffolk church for which they were conceived. The church parables – Curlew River, The Burning Fiery Furnace and The Prodigal Son – were premiered in St Bartholomew's in Orford, at the festivals in 1964, 1966 and 1968 respectively, and it's there that Mahogany Opera's new stagings, directed by Frederic Wake-Walker, have been unveiled.

It's hard to imagine what the impact of Curlew River must have been when it was seen for the first time in that cramped, confined nave. Dramatically and especially musically, it was worlds away from anything Britten had composed before. The raw-edged economy of the instrumental writing and the directness of the plainsong-haunted vocal lines still seem strikingly original, but the pared-down ritual of the drama, with its roots in Japanese Noh, is compromised here by Wake-Walker's determination to emphasise that oriental element with self-consciously stylised movements and frozen gestures, fatally skewing the extraordinary fusion of east and west that gives the piece its unique flavour.

The result deprives Curlew River of its quiet wonder and mystery, and the performance, directed from the keyboard of a chamber organ by Roger Vignoles, also lacks the suppleness it needs. The best of the singing, from Lukas Jakobski as the Abbot who summons the audience to watch his monks enact the drama, is imposingly fine, but it can't help tenor James Gilchrist's performance, as the Madwoman searching for her lost son, that he has been dressed up to look like a cross between Miss Havisham and Madame Arcati.