An angel stands out from the crowd
Jephtha Iford Arts Festival, Wiltshire
Handel’s biographer Jonathan Keates calls Jephtha “the crown of Handel’s unique achievement” – his final masterpiece before blindness descended, as sternly dramatised in the magnificent chorus “How dark, o Lord, are thy decrees”.
It’s certainly a massive work, embodying all the sonic and moral grandeur of oratorio, focused on both the public struggle of the Israelites against the Ammonites and the private anguish of Jephtha, forced to kill his daughter following a rash promise to God that his victory in war will be followed by a sacrifice of the first human being he encounters on his return. So it’s not an easy choice for Iford, the jewel of a summer festival held in a garden near Bath that uses a small cloistered courtyard as its stage.
The solution proposed by Timothy Nelson in his plucky production – heavily influenced, I would guess, by Peter Sellars’s Glyndebourne version of another Handel oratorio, Theodora – is to envisage the Israelites as a cell of modern beleaguered fanatics huddled in an underground chapel or crypt that serves as their HQ. Their God is a fiercely martial one, and as they wave their hands around in supplication or adoration, they don’t emerge as a very likeable or sympathetic bunch.
The concept has the virtue of coherence, even if it sets up terrorist resonances that Handel would hardly have approved or recognised, and the cast acts with commitment. Cuts mean that the pace is swift, and the drama has nothing static about it. Christopher Bucknall and his baroque ensemble Contraband help to keep things moving with their lively playing.
But the singing falls short of the sublime: as Iford’s level of physical intimacy exposes, Handel’s arias are technically very challenging, and a choir of 11 (including the soloists) can’t do justice to the massive injunctions and majestic assertions that give this music its power. The result is an admirable team effort, but not one that uplifts or awes.
Christopher Turner is more successful with the declamatory than the lyrical aspects of Jephtha’s music, while Lucy Page never quite finds her tonal centre as his daughter. The other soloists are of a good standard, but the evening’s best singing – poised, sweet and true – comes from Charlotte Le Thrope as the Angel whose lastminute intervention saves the day.