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Sofia Larsson as Sāvitri, with Adam Temple-Smith as Satyavan.
‘Catches the mix of determination and vulnerability’ … Sofia Larsson as Sāvitri, with Adam Temple-Smith as Satyavan. Photograph: Clive Barda/ArenaPAL/British Youth Opera
‘Catches the mix of determination and vulnerability’ … Sofia Larsson as Sāvitri, with Adam Temple-Smith as Satyavan. Photograph: Clive Barda/ArenaPAL/British Youth Opera

Riders to the Sea/Sāvitri review – British Youth Opera's convincing and effective double bill

This article is more than 8 years old

Peacock Theatre, London
Two British tales of power and death were sung with searing concentration and wonderfully contained restraint

At first sight there’s little common ground between the two one-acters in British Youth Opera’s double-bill, other than the close friendship between their composers. Vaughan Williams’ Riders to the Sea is a mercilessly bleak setting of a play by JM Synge, a portrait of a fishing community off the west coast of Ireland, utterly dependent on the sea yet terrified of its power to destroy their lives, while Holst’s Sāvitri is a spare tale, taken from an episode in the Mahabharata, and presented and scored with the maximum economy of means.

Both operas, though, deal with death and opposite attitudes to it. In Riders, there is Maurya’s final, stoic acceptance that yet another of her male relatives has been drowned, and there is nothing more the sea can do can harm her, while in Holst’s work Sāvitri refuses to accept that Death (the third character in the drama) should take her husband Satyavān, and challenges him to take her too.

Neither is totally straightforward to stage convincingly, but BYO’s production, by Rodula Gaitanou, designed by Simon Bejer, manages very effectively. Riders to Sea gets spare semi-naturalism: everyday objects – a chair, a broom – hanging in the air, and the husband and sons Maurya has already lost sitting in a mute circle onstage, while Sāvitri is less precise, with flowery prints for the husband and wife, and Death got up as an Indian prince on a throne amid a carpet of flowers.

The Vaughan Williams is sung with searing concentration and wonderfully contained restraint, especially by Claire Barnett-Jones as the tragic Maurya and Josephine Goddard and Harriet Eyley as her daughters, though it would have been good to catch more of their words. Sāvitri really needs a weightier mezzo in the central role than Sofia Larsson (memories of Janet Baker in it are hard to erase) but she catches the mix of determination and vulnerability perfectly. Matt Buswell is implacable as Death, and Adam Temple-Smith a touching, affectionate Satyavān. Geoffrey Patteron conducts expertly, sculpting the seascapes of Riders and the vanishingly spare colours of Savitri with equal care. It’s a really worthwhile evening.

Further performances Friday and Saturday. Box office: 020-7863 8222.

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