Simon Shibambu as Toante in Handel’s Oreste
Wilton’s Music Hall, London
By Tom Stewart
Is it true that with no guts comes no glory? Where this production of Handel’s Oreste was concerned, the answer was both yes and no, depending on how you define the guts. As the volume of blood splattered across the graffiti-daubed stage grew, the less and less director Gerard Jones’ ‘post-social’ interpretation seemed risky or inventive. The stars of this year’s offering were undoubtedly the singers from the Royal Opera’s Jette Parker Young Artists Programme, who at their best rendered the glib directional misfires that surrounded them unimportant.
The brutish Tonante (Simon Shibambu) led Ifigenia (Jennifer Davis) and Filotete (Gyula Nagy) in a cultish killing collective that, as Euripedian improbability would have it, has the unrecognisable Oreste (Angela Simkin) in its sights. Her chic gold nail polish a world away from the provincial depravity she discovers on arrival, Oreste’s wife Ermione (Vlada Brokovo) then turns up with her friend Pilade (Thomas Atkins), placing everyone in easy reach of Tonante’s Saw-esque arsenal. But the gore had only just begun – nearly three hours later, the audience was desensitized to the point of indifference.
And what about the graffiti that covered the entire set? Was it illuminating and exciting or just a lazy attempt to locate the characters on the wrong side of the tracks? ‘Post-social’ sounds like an attempt to re-brand the deeply uncool ‘post-apocalyptic’, so my money’s on the latter. I wondered whether some of the responsibility for the hackneyed horror tropes and industrial dystopia might have lain with Handel himself. Oreste is a ‘pasticcio’ opera, cobbled together out of odds and ends taken from other pieces. The music isn’t his most dramatically compelling, and perhaps with a bit more personality might have been a more supportive showcase.
Nevertheless, Brokovo’s shimmering coloratura had a steely accuracy and resolve that made it clear that Ermione considered herself a cut above the rest. Atkins brought assurance to Pilade’s slightly pale heroics with his bright, colourful tenor, shaping even the highest of his phrases sympathetically. With his scabrous baritone and long greasy hair, Nagy was convincing as the sexually entitled troglodyte Filotete, every inch the snivelling beta-male acolyte Shambu’s bullish Tonante demanded.
The way Simkin nervously opened and closed her mouth whenever she wasn’t singing initially seemed a slightly ham-fisted way of conveying an Oreste riddled with neuroses, but gradually revealed his music to be a window onto otherwise inexpressible torment. Her account, like that of Davis, was secure and full of conviction. James Hendry led players from the Southbank Sinfonia in an energetic rendition of the score that, a few moments of slightly hairy tuning aside, confirmed this performance’s strengths lay very much in its musicians. 
Enjoyed this review.
Gerard Jones should familiarise himself with the law of diminishing returns: when ‘shock’ becomes the rule rather than the exception, it loses its impact.
Many directors seem unaware that television brings blood, gore, drugs and incest into our homes every day. Or perhaps they think the family sits dutifully by the wireless every evening, listening to the BBC Home Service. In either case, the sense of outrage lives more in their minds than in ours.
It’s the stock riposte of the directing wild child that people like me don’t understand or can’t handle what they’ve done.
I’d counter that it is they who don’t understand or can’t handle what Handel (or Barlocci) has done?
Jones’s staging closes with Ermione raising a hammer above the skull of husband Oreste – retribution for his incestuous ‘marriage’. This, minutes after ‘Ah, mia cara’. Go figure.
The director also does his best to water down, or distract from, two of the work’s best numbers, Mi lagnerò, tacendo (Ifigenia’s polythene apron and gloves) and Del fasto di quell’alma (orgy of bloodlust around Pilade).
And poor Filotete, who spent most of the opera’s three hours gurning like Blakey from On The Buses.
You’d expect singers on the ROH Young Artists Programme to be of a high calibre, and they are, although on occasion it felt like they were trying to fill a space like Covent Garden rather than a smaller venue like Wilton’s. You don’t need an F1 McLaren to drive to the paper shop.
I don’t require performance art to be staged in its original intended setting: the best directors make their names through innovation, while remaining sensitive to the works in their care.
But the moment the director seeks the limelight – relegating the work itself to the periphery – is when the trouble starts.