I went to this at English National Opera on Wednesday and combined it with a mini-blogmeet with the lovely Simon from A Piece of Monologue. It's a lovely feeling when someone comes up and says "Hello are you...?" and I was very pleased to meet Simon. (BTW, I don't normally drink out of bottles, but figured it was easier than negotiating for a plastic cup. As another BTW I figured that having nearly three litres of gin doing nothing at home - I'm still on a bottle I got in DutyFree at Christmas/New Year 01/02 - and hipflasks not being very expensive...I discovered at work that the taking of hipflasks to venues is not unusual behaviour...!)
Jephtha is actually a Handelian Oratorio, although it was staged 'as opera' by ENO. I don't know the piece, but I figured that that doesn't really matter. In Handel's time the point was to churn out formulaic new works to entertain an audience with new characters and stories, and the audience knew that Mr Handel would deliver the goods. The Handel formula happens to work.
I had a problem with the staging of the first act, with far too much going on that I didn't really follow - oh I yearn for surtitles: there was a libretto printed in the programme but not much use in a darkened auditorium. There seemed to be a lot of swishing of the curtain and back and forth between a couple of sets, and a lot of moving around and people sat on chairs with their back to the audience. But as it progressed it became a lot clearer, very enjoyable, and really quite moving. I think the stand-out aria was Waft her angels through the skies, which, coincidentally, a Danish tenor sung in the Cardiff Singer of the World televised on Thursday (and thus, performed on Wednesday). The tenor in this production was Mark Padmore, who really isn't my style. Simon was quite correct in sselecting Sarah Tynan for praise, and reminded me that she had been the Woodbird in Siegfried, where I had much enjoyed her.
I can't say that I'm rushing to buy this on CD, and I wouldn't be especially anxious to hear it again, but, assuming that ENO will revive it in the future, Iwould probably go a gain, and would recommend it for a good, if not necessarily great evening out. Although I suspect it will be better with surtitles.
Musically, a consistently pleasant score, with some very good choruses and one or two decent arias. Not top drawer Handel but definitely likeable.
Comments