by Edward Bhesania
Playing out within the frames of Alex Eales’s giant hinged triptych, James MacMillan’s latest operatic collaboration with poet Michael Symmons Roberts is a contemporary retelling of the Old Testament story of the hospitality of Abraham and Sarah - a childless elderly couple who take in three angels on their way to unleashing God’s judgement upon the sinful nearby towns of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Though operating entirely as a single entity - whether in burnished close-harmony or flourishing Renaissance-style polyphony - the present-day trio (Andrew Tortise, Eamon Mulhall and Adam Green) creates deep-rooted unease through the uncertainty of its objectives. Are these ‘Triplets’ really archangels carrying out God’s work, or fundamentalists bent on destroying their enemies? The trio’s furtive glances and their ritualistic changing from manual workers’ clothes into suits (concealing gun holsters) before leaving for their ‘mission’ suggests one thing - the atrocities they claim to want to halt in the neighbouring towns suggest another.
The trio’s fervent, penetrating intensity is matched by the string players of the Britten Sinfonia - a highly motivated army of generals under the lucid direction of Clark Rundell.
Amid all the searing drama it’s easy to overlook the figures of Abraham and Sarah. Director Katie Mitchell (who also worked on MacMillan’s recent The Sacrifice for Welsh National Opera) succeeds in beautifully and delicately conveying their mutual respect, while Grant Doyle sings Abraham with a pure, uncomplicated richness one could happily listen to all night and Janis Kelly perceptively reflects the burden of Sarah’s longstanding sterility seemingly as much by what is thought as what is sung. Equally powerful in narrative and in musical terms, this work seems to have hit the ground running.
