A labour of love that’s sternly impressive – but not very much fun
Phaedra Royal Opera House’s Linbury Theatre
The posthumous reputation of Hans Werner Henze, who died in 2012, remains uncertain. He was the most revered modern opera composer in Europe during the Sixties and Seventies, subsequently reviled, neglected and rediscovered, and his market value remains volatile. Boulevard Solitude, his first major work, has been successfully revived and may well weather future revolutions in taste, but the viability of The Prince of Homburg, Elegy for Young Lovers and The Bassarids – once considered achievements of major importance – is anybody’s guess.
I always hope that Covent Garden will take a punt on Henze’s fairy-tale romance L’upupa, an enchanting inspiration of his old age, but instead the management has opted for the short chamber piece Phaedra. It’s no fun at all.
Two acts each last about half an hour. In the first, the librettist Christoph Lehnert broadly follows the story told by Euripides and Racine – Phaedra’s incestuous passion for her stepson Hippolytus, the wrath of the gods and its tragic aftermath. In the second act, drawing on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Hippolytus is resurrected and fought over by Phaedra’s ghost and the goddesses Artemis and Aphrodite, before becoming King of the Forest. The Minotaur is a largely silent but watchful presence throughout.
Henze illustrates this bleak fable with music of primitivist energy and austerity, composed in an idiom that recalls the expressionist intensities of Schönberg and leans heavily on brass and percussion overlaid with fierce, angular vocal lines that make great demands on the singers. The effect is sternly impressive but relentless and uningratiating, the only balm being a final rhapsodic ensemble that seems like a homage to Richard Strauss.
The Royal Opera casts the piece from its Jette Parker Young Artists programme. Hongni Wu as Phaedra and Filipe Manu as Hippolytus give
richly promising performances and rise to the challenges, but as a transgendered Artemis, Patrick Terry sounded uncomfortable with a counter-tenor role that also requires him to sing baritonally and speak as well. Jacquelyn Stucker and Michael Mofidian have little to do as Aphrodite and the Minotaur.
Noa Naamat’s simple production could have done more to clarify the differing scenic locations; Edmund Whitehead conducts the Southbank Sinfonia in a lucid, forceful account of the score that possibly could have benefited from more light and shade.
Much talent and hard work had evidently been invested in the show. But did anybody on either side of the stage enjoy it very much?