Buried treasure | 3 November 2016

Wexford is to opera-goers what casinos are to gamblers. The uncertainty, the hope, the exhilaration — they’re all a crucial part of a festival that annually rolls the dice, plucking three obscure, often all but unknown, operas from the repertoire and giving them a staging. Dealing the cards is David Agler, the artistic director whose canny choices ensure that not only the house but also the audience always wins. Add to the mix Wexford’s ear for an up-and-coming star (Juan Diego Flórez, Mirella Freni, Joseph Calleja and Daniela Barcellona have all made their mark here), and you can understand the festival’s uniquely addictive quality.

It’s somewhere between the Bacchanale, the appearance of Satan and the eruption of the volcano that kills the entire cast that it becomes clear that Félicien David’s Herculanum isn’t kidding around. You’d struggle to find anything grander than this particular grand opera — a four-act fantasy of scheming imperial seductresses and pious Christian martyrs. Here director Stephen Medcalf trades the Roman empire for empire-line fashions, relocating the action to Naples at the turn of the 19th century. It’s a transposition that makes little sense of the work’s religious conflict, but since that’s all just a ruse for a B-movie-style romp it hardly matters.

David’s 1859 opera is currently enjoying something of a renaissance thanks to a new performing edition and a superb recording from Hervé Niquet and the Brussels Philharmonic. But if this staging teaches us anything it’s that Herculanum is an epic that lives best in ear and imagination. The flimsy dramatic scaffolding supporting the opera’s weighty scenario can be ignored on disc in a way that it just can’t be on stage, allowing the focus to fall where it should — on the rich and surprisingly supple score.