King Idomeneo… Was It Worth It?

(This post is part of the filling-in-the-blanks exercise from my account of the last three months).

Much to my weighty and considerable shame, I’d never seen any of Birmingham Opera Company’s productions before this (I had seen them doing odds ‘n’ ends at things such as Artsfest and the like, but never any of their own extravagant extravaganzas). They specialise in context-slidey affairs, with unusual venues and unusual set-ups. There was a fuss about them possibly losing their public funding, but happily they prevailed; Mozart’s ‘Idomeneo’ (herecalled ‘King Idomeneo… Was It Worth It?’) was their first big lark since then. It was magnificent.

Our trip to see it was on Friday the 22nd of August. We hopped on the coach (that they’d kindly laid on) outside Brum Town Hall, and were whisked to The Sherbourne Building in Ladywood – a rubber factory, once upon a time. A mourning rite for the king was taking place on the canal as we arrived (missed by most punters, I think). After wandering over to where we were meant to be, yellow horse-shaped stickers were slapped onto us – Trojan POWs must be identified, after all (“We need to keep your kind together”, said the fella a-slapping). Dancers and a griot killed a bit of time before we were led into the antechamber of the building. A man was dragged kicking and screaming into the main room by soldiers; we were rapidly herded in after them, into a holding pen surrounded by trees, shipping containers, a butcher’s table and huge hills of dirt.

The factory, then, had uses beyond the standard ‘an unusual venue used to make you look at this traditional artform a bit differently’ lark – it was a space in which they were able to create an immersive environment (for most of the performance we were pretty much free to move around the created landscape) for the audience. Of this I approve.

The performances were amazing. I have to admit to being a touch baffled by all the Maoist imagery – Paul Nihon’s portrayal of Idomeneo was completely convincing but just seemed far too nice and fair to be the authoritarian leader hinted at by some elements of the production. Anna Dennis conveyed the emotionally broken Ilia fantastically, and the scenes between her and her love Idamante (Mark Wilde) were really effective at the extreme close range we happened to find ourselves standing for most of them. Keel Watson’s Neptune was appropriately stentorian too, but the it was the baddies that really took it. Andrew Clarke’s High Priest oozed malice from his platform far above us, and Donna Bateman’s gold-and-sequins-clad Elektra was the absolute embodiment of tarty spite. The (non-professional) choir was also magnificent, giving life to the mass hysteria/popular backlash against Idomeneo’s hard decision that lay at the centre of this reading of the opera.

Brilliant, brilliant stuff. It finished three months ago so I can’t really recommend that you go to it, but if Birmingham Opera Company can continue to put on productions that are anywhere near even close to being as good as this then we should all love them forever.

(Should you wish to read more, have a look at the CIB collective memory).