Handel’s Saul and Prom 11: Bock & Harnick’s Fiddler on the Roof: Opera reviews
IT IS refreshing nowadays to hear an overture with no stage business to distract from the music.
This doesn’t mean, however, that Australian director Barrie Kosky intends to treat Saul with the reverence some may think due to Handel’s 1739 oratorio. As the curtain rises, we are plunged into a world of riotous excess.
A long table is piled with a cornucopia of fruit, flowers and dead animals, plus a jubilant crowd of Israelites in gorgeous 18th century frocks and wigs.
Their joy is directed at the conquering hero David, returning after having slain Goliath. The giant’s gory head joins the other exhibits on the table. Very soon, though, it is clear that joy is the last emotion the Israelites’ King Saul shares with his subjects.
The oratorio evolves from a Biblical saga to a study in madness, as Christopher Purves’s Saul morphs from childish envy of the youthful warrior to murderous hatred. Purves is a towering, intensely physical presence as a gurning, chest-beating King.
The calming sound of David’s harp holds only momentary relief before Saul erupts in rage at whoever is restraining him. Kosky’s staging, designs by Katrin Lea Tag and lighting by Joachim Klein, fizzes with brilliant effects.
At one point, Purves is wedged into a crevice and submerged by creeping hands resembling a nest of rats. There are a few uneasy moments for the sensitive, such as Saul’s weird encounter with John Graham-Hall’s hermaphrodite Witch of Endor, or the snog between Saul’s son, Jonathan, and David, but overall Kosky has succeeded in enhancing the oratorio by his imaginative staging.
It may be relevant that the work, with libretto by Charles Jennens, was premiered in 1739, when Handel was recovering from a breakdown in health, possibly a stroke. The casting is faultless. Soprano Lucy Crowe is at her most glorious as Saul’s sharp-tongued daughter Merab.
Sophie Bevan contrasts as a sugar and spice Michal, the daughter who eagerly marries David after he is scorned by Merab. Paul Appleby is proficient in the under-written role of Saul’s son Jonathan.
I find the voice of counter-tenor Iestyn Davies less thrilling than when I first heard him a few years back, now that it has a darker edge, but he makes a believable and valiant David.
The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under conductor Ivor Bolton gives an assured account of the score. Grange Park Opera’s production of Fiddler On The Roof gets a welcome semi-staged Prom performance.
Bryn Terfel takes the role of Tevye, the milkman with a direct line to Jehovah, who is beset by five daughters kicking over the traces of tradition. Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s musical, first produced in 1964, retains its warmth and humour. It has pathos, too, with its tale of the expulsion of a Jewish settlement from the Ukraine in pre-revolutionary Russia.
The BBC Concert Orchestra under conductor David Charles Abell brings zest to the familiar songs, and Lucy Burge choreographs the vigorous dance sequences which bring out the racial and religious tensions in the community.
Apart from Terfel, and Anthony Flaum as Motel the tailor, the performers are mainly from theatre rather than opera. The original staging by Antony McDonald at Grange Park was microphone free, but it has been miked for the Albert Hall, which rather distorts the sound. It’s a pity that the Albert Hall cannot find a less obtrusive system.
VERDICT:4/5
Handel’s Saul at the Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Nr Lewes, East Sussex (Tickets: 01273 815000/ glyndebourne.com; £50-£225)
BBC Proms 2015 Prom 11: Bock & Harnick’s Fiddler on the Roof at the Royal Albert Hall, London SW7 (Proms tickets: 0845 401 5040/ bbc.co.uk/proms)
