Triumph no.2: Berenice at the ROH
Berenice
Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House
Circle standing D24, £7
29 March 2019
ROH page
If you ask me the new Linbury is off on the right foot. As with The Monstrous Child the production values of this modernized Berenice are through the roof, and they’re matched step for step in every element of the performance, from the libretto’s wit to the staging’s vision to the cast’s ebullience and musicality. I was happy as larry.
Director Adele Thomas camps this unsuspecting Baroque opera up to they eyeballs, inspiring individual turns from all involved to create a delightfully diverse cogent whole. And let’s briefly pause to note what might be a first for the Royal Opera: an all-female creative team (excluding, ahem, Handel and his original librettist Antonio Salvi).
Selma Dimitrijevic’s fabulously silly new libretto is arch and funny. Hannah Clark’s designs are full-on acid-punk Baroque, an idea while not blisteringly original never better executed. D.M. Wood’s stark and punchy lighting highlights and heightens Clark’s work, elevating any historical accuracy to a demonic excess.
Movement director Emma Woods and the cast are all on the same page, animating their extravagant setting like a balloon filled to bursting. They and the continuo group (placed in media res on the stage) bound about as only young performers do, their energy expertly channelled towards Thomas’s ideal. Particular acclaim must go to Patrick Terry as Arsace, arcobating astonishingly while maintaining a beautifully nourished countertenor.
All the singers are delightful, but the true plaudits belong to Claire Booth. I don’t believe I’ve ever before heard her in Baroque, and feel somewhat abashed at my conviction that she was pegged through and through as a contemporary music singer; here she shows herself a Baroque nonpareil. She sings the piece as a single arc, drawing from a deep well of nuance of tone and ornamentation, only letting the full light of her voice shine through at the opera’s apex. While fully cognate with the production’s ditsy silliness, the calibre of Booth’s performance elevates the endeavour from fun to the seriousness of true camp.
The raw voices of the rest of the cast vary somewhat in power and quality but they are all buoyed in the newly generous Linbury, leaving us free only to listen carefully to the tightly spat out words and to marvel at the tireless precision with which they follow Wood’s choreography. In the pit Laurence Cummings and the London Handel Orchestra are somewhat more laid back, yielding some elegant playing if marred by the odd accidental error – although special praise should go to the oboe player for his beautiful obbligato.
This Berenice couldn’t have happened on the main stage; it would have had to have different singers, a different libretto, different lighting – even the extravagant costumes could not have had the same effect. The all-round excellence of this Berenice, in production and performance, to my mind confirms the Linbury as the unqualified success of the ROH’s Open Up project. What a boon.
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