In 2009, the Aldeburgh festival inaugurated a new flexible performing space, the Britten Studio, with the premiere of The Corridor, a specially commissioned theatre piece by Harrison Birtwistle that was a dramatic expansion of the moment in the story of Orpheus and Euridice, and their journey back from the Underworld, when he turns to look at her and in doing so loses her for ever. Then, it was preceded by a sequence of Dowland songs, but now Birtwistle has composed a companion piece – he calls them both scenas – to create an evening-long double bill, and the premiere of that opened this year’s festival.
Like its predecessor, The Cure has a libretto by David Harsent, based on a fragment of Greek myth – the episode in the story of Jason and Medea when her magical potions are used to rejuvenate his father, Aeson, so that he can join their celebrations of the return of the Golden Fleece. As in The Corridor, though, the retelling is loaded with ambivalence. Where Euridice reveals that she is not entirely sure she would have wanted to return to the world of the living, Aeson is likewise by no means thrilled to be a young man again, and to have to repeat the whole frustration of ageing.
But it’s a less straightforward, less familiar story than that of Orpheus, a harder one to turn into a cogent piece of theatre, and first impressions are that The Cure does not have the dramatic clarity and impact of The Corridor. Birtwistle’s music (using the same ensemble of two winds, harp and string trio, and members of the London Sinfonietta, superbly conducted by Geoffrey Paterson) is perhaps more lyrical, more linear than before, but his vocal writing makes the text hard to grasp, and the constant switching between Jason and Aeson becomes formulaic.
Although it runs out of steam towards the end of The Cure, Martin Duncan’s production, with simply effective designs by Alison Chitty, is beautifully nuanced, and the two singers are exceptional. Elizabeth Atherton is both a wonderfully realistic Euridice and a fine Medea; whether she needs the slightly overdone witch makeup as the latter is debatable, but she sings both roles consummately. Mark Padmore is the self-obsessed Orpheus and has to work hard constantly switching roles (and wigs) as Jason and Aeson. He does it very well, but cannot achieve the same dramatic focus he creates in the earlier piece.
- At Britten Studio, Snape, Suffolk, 15 June. Box office: 01728 687110. At Linbury Studio, London, 18-27 June. Box office 020-7304 4000.
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