Glorious Gershwin

Porgy and Bess
Royal Festival Hall

Artaxerxes
Linbury Studio

I wasn’t greatly looking forward to the celebration of Thomas Arne’s 300th birthday at the Linbury Studio, in the form of his most successful opera, Artaxerxes. It sets a text by the dread Metastasio, one that had already served Gluck (his first opera) and J.C. Bach, among others. Arne translated it, sometimes to inadvertently comic effect, and then made it into an opera vying in length with those of his hero Handel. When the Theatre Royal was burnt down in 1808 the parts were all destroyed, but the arias and duets had been published.

For this production the conductor Ian Page wrote the most secco recitatives possible, and Duncan Druce furnished the finale of the opera. There were scanty settings, some peripatetic scenery, and grand, elaborate unisex costumes, everyone looking as if they were waiting for Velázquez to paint them. The soloists were mainly an impressive team. The plot concerns the son of Xerxes, the latter having been murdered by his commander-in-chief Artabanes. Love and power, as usual in Metastasio, are intertwined among six characters, and the plot is tiresome and impossible to remember. What makes the work less heavy-going than most of Handel’s operas is the comparative brevity of most of the arias, and many of them are beautiful, as Haydn found to his surprise when he visited London. They are also broadly apt to the emotional situation in which they occur.

The stars were Artaxerxes himself, the warm, expressive tenor Christopher Ainslie; and his friend Arbaces, the son of the villain, the equally warm mezzo Caitlin Hulcup. The Linbury Studio is unkind to the audience but excellent for singers, who never have to force their tone, and when required can pare it down to magical effect. Ian Page’s sympathetic conducting made for a lively evening, though on the first night the brass weren’t in luck.

In last week’s Wexford review, we said that Martin Cullen was Fine Gael’s culture minister; he is, of course, Fianna Fáil’s. Apologies.