Still an operatic sensation

Saul

Glyndebourne

Crowned with dazzling reviews and stomping ovations, Glyndebourne’s production of Handel’s oratorio Saul was the summer’s operatic sensation, but critics are innately sceptical beasts, so I was lured back for this revival, freshly cast for the autumn tour, to see whether it stands up as the marvel we all thought it was.

The answer, emphatically, is that it does. Handel’s genius, working at white heat through the biblical story of Saul’s insane envy of the young upstart David, has met its match in the director Barrie Kosky, who has knocked the religiose stuffing out of the oratorio baggage and released a powerful human drama.

As the astonishing coup de théâtre of the opening tableau demonstrates, Kosky is a flamboyant showman with a relish for Georgian camp. Yet his staging is equally imaginative in its more delicate touches – the embrace between David and Jonathan, for instance, or the final image of Saul and the Witch of Endor, two naked old men walking towards their deaths.

Such imagery is always germane to the plot and libretto, and Kosky’s insertions of sudden silences and momentary spoken exclamations is beautifully judged to remove any sense of four-squareness from the underlying rhythm. Yes, liberties have been taken, but they are the spiritual liberties that give theatrical life.

The chorus was perhaps a little below its best (was there a cold going round the sopranos?) and I felt Anna Devin and Sarah Tynan (both sweet and true vocally) could have done more to differentiate the personalities of Michal and Merab. But nobody will feel short-changed by the tour’s line-up, conducted with muscular energy by Laurence Cummings.

Stuart Jackson was nicely creepy as the epicene jester, and Christopher Ainslie and Benjamin Hulett both sang with expressive eloquence and manly poise as David and Jonathan.

Dominating the tragedy, however, was Henry Waddington’s Saul. Always a characterful singer, he became here a noble tragedian, giving disturbing pathos to the demented King. Until Oct 31, then touring. Tickets: 01273 815000; glyndebourne.com