Jephtha, Royal Opera House, review: Should be about Handel’s music – not simplistic modern parallels

Handel’s Jephtha is based on an Old Testament tale of Israelite triumphalism, as the virtuous underdogs rise up against their Ammonite oppressors. Jephtha has a dubious reputation, but in their hour of need the Israelites ask him to lead a resistance, and he defeats the enemy.

Victory celebrations are clouded by a fateful twist: Jephtha has vowed, if he wins, to sacrifice to God the first person he encounters after the battle, and that person is his daughter Iphis.

But Handel’s audiences liked happy endings, so a get-out was devised: the surprise announcement by an angel that the girl can be spared, if she agrees to spend the rest of her life as a virgin votary in the temple.

Given the present situation in the Middle East, one can’t blame director Oliver Mears and his team for seeking to milk the plot for contemporary relevance. For Mears, this is a story about religious fanaticism, about annihilating your neighbours and their religion, but that’s both simplistic and false.

It’s also beside the point, because this work is an oratorio, not an opera: designed for concert performance, its raison d’être lies entirely in the music. There’s no hint of an ideological clash in the libretto, and the characterisation is perfunctory. This was Handel’s majestic final masterpiece, composed as he was losing his sight; his magic with solo melodies, duets, and choruses was still bright, as was his gift for communicating dramatic emotion through music.

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A wise staging would have simply let the music speak, but Mears’ staging seems at times to be designed to upstage the music, as when Jennifer France’s Iphis is all but raped by her paramour Hamor (counter-tenor Cameron Shahbazi) during a long duet about whether Hamor should go and fight. There are too many moments when it isn’t clear who we are supposed to be watching, and why; there’s too much unfocused fire and thunder.

Yet there are good reasons to see this show: Jennifer France for her exquisite incarnation of an ingénue self-transformed into a tragic victim on a funeral pyre, and Allan Clayton for his commanding Jephtha, whose descent into madness becomes a tour de force. And a big hand to 13-year-old Ivo Clark as the Angel for negotiating a difficult, high solo with perfect intonation – a remarkable feat for a treble.

Simon Lima Holdsworth’s massive sets powerfully evoke the ancient world, and the lighting designs by Fabiana Piccioli are strange and wonderful. It’s not clear why the chorus should be costumed as 19^th century American Quakers, but with Laurence Cummings in the pit, they play an absolute blinder. Go see, go listen.

To 24 November