Why was nobody singing their heart out for Handel’s crowning triumph?
Prom 55 Jephtha Royal Albert Hall ★★★★★
Handel’s final significant creation, composed as his eyesight failed him, the oratorio Jephtha is generally ranked very highly in the canon – “the crown” of his “unique achievement in music”, thinks the scholar Jonathan Keates.
It retells a story found in the Old Testament Book of Judges, similar to the Greek myth of Agamemnon and Iphigenia: Jephthah [sic], a general, vows to God that if he is granted victory in battle he will sacrifice the first person he meets on his return.
This turns out to be his daughter. In the Bible, it is left ambiguous as to whether or not he does the terrible deed; in Handel’s oratorio, an angel conveniently descends to commute the girl’s sentence to life as a nun.
For all the queasiness its subject matter provokes, Jephtha can seem a work of high drama and human poignancy, with its central act climaxing in the chorus’s terrifyingly fatalistic assertion that “Whatever is is right” – a creed often interpreted as Handel’s grim acceptance of his encroaching blindness – followed by one of his most heart-tugging melodies in the aria “Waft her, angels”.
Yet its potential emotional impact
was not sparked in this superficially attractive and competent performance: there was no urgency to the narrative and too many of the arias in the expansive first act seemed inconsequentially pretty rather than psychologically meaningful. Oratorio doesn’t need to be staged theatrically to hit home, but it does have to be sung as more than a chain of numbers; here it wasn’t.
Although Richard Egarr’s tempi were generally fast and energising, he seemed to glide across the score’s surface, and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra never sounded deeply engaged. The chorus sounded a bit woolly in the awkward Albert Hall acoustic, but it came alive for those crucial cries of “Whatever is is right”. Hilary Summers, the stately alto, and Jeanine De Bique, the diamantine soprano, sang agreeably as Jephtha’s wife and daughter, and Tim Mead, the counter-tenor, and Cody Quattlebaum (bass) gave virile and forthright performances as the daughter’s suitor and Jephtha’s brother.
Aside from a tussle with the coloratura runs, tenor Allan Clayton, in the title role, was in fine voice, bringing ideal softness, sweetness and smoothness to “Waft her, angels”. But nobody on the platform was singing their heart out, and it’s that sort of commitment that Jephtha requires.