WNO’s production of Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron is an overwhelming experience – but make sure you close your eyes

On paper, Moses und Aron might seem intractable and abstract: a 12-tone score setting a libretto that meditates on God, faith, the essential inadequacy of language to express the ineffable, and a great deal more. Put it in the theatre, as Welsh National Opera has done as the first part of its ‘Faith’ mini-season, and it’s an overwhelming experience, compelling because of, rather than in spite of, its subject matter and musical methods.

And just over 80 years after Schoenberg stopped work on it (he left it incomplete, having written only a fragmentary text for the third act), its themes are as pertinent as ever. Political parallels with a people longing for quick fix, tangible solutions to their woes don’t need to be spelt out; but, after a week in which the opera world seemed intent on tearing itself apart because of the manner in which ideas regarding a singer’s on-stage persona were translated into words, there were also additional ironies. One of these, however, was the unfortunate fact that Rainer Trost, due to sing Aron, who gives voice to his brother Moses’s ideas, was rendered voiceless by illness. His understudy, Mark Le Brocq, jumped in at the last minute to save the day, singing heroically and brilliantly realising the character — in Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito’s updated production — as a tracksuited, greasy-haired but wily and charismatic speaker. As Moses, John Tomlinson is a towering but vulnerable presence, booming out his Sprechgesang with authority, while also capturing the character’s impotence. Richard Wiegold’s Priest leads an excellent secondary cast.

But Moses und Aron is as much about the people as their prophets, and no praise can be high enough for the vast WNO Chorus, singing and speaking their intricate, multiple parts with total command and overwhelming power, each individual helping to create a fiercely realistic, threatening and fickle mob (the directors must also take a great deal of credit here).