James MacMillan's new one-act libretto is subtly haunting and quietly powerful
Rating: * * * *
Drawn loosely from a story in Genesis and perhaps also inspired by Britten’s church parables, Clemency is a new one-act opera by the Catholic composer James MacMillan, working for the third time with the librettist Michael Symmons Roberts and director Katie Mitchell. Subtly haunting and quietly powerful, it is a parable of God’s will in the world, its precise significance left opaque.
Abraham and Sarah are presented as a middle-aged childless couple living in honest poverty – as so often in Mitchell’s work, the resonance suggest the Balkans during the wars of the 1990s. Three unknown young men, dressed in military fatigues, appear at their door. Abraham and Sarah show them hospitality, for which they are grateful.
They tell Sarah that, although she is past the age of child-bearing, she will bear a son. Abraham and Sarah are sceptical of the men’s right to speak for God, but the men explain that they have come to wreak divine vengeance on the “twin towns” nearby. Angels or terrorists (or both), they change into dark suits, produce weaponry and prepare to fulfil their mission.
Abraham cannot believe the stories they tell of the wickedness which pervades the towns. He begs for clemency. Find “50 acts of selflessness” among the inhabitants, he says, and relent. The men agree, and Abraham continues to bargain – find 40, 30, 10 and spare them, he implores.
But they will not meet Abraham’s final plea that one good deed will bring salvation. Sarah is left contemplating the birth of a longed-for son, but wonders what sort of world he will inherit. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord. The pace is slow but sure, the idiom harmonically intense, the mood bleak, solemn and impassioned, often evoking threnodic Orthodox chant.
Otherwise, there are no fancy effects or percussive extravagances, the sense of spiritual austerity being underpinned by an orchestra of strings alone. The Britten Sinfonia plays with total assurance under Clark Rundell. Mitchell and her designer Alex Eales set the drama on a stage divided into a gold-framed triptych of three rooms.
Grant Doyle and Janis Kelly as Abraham and Sarah and Eamonn Mulhall, Andrew Tortise and baritone Adam Green as the mysterious visitors make up an ideal cast.
This is an opera which leaves a lasting effect, and I want to hear it again soon.
Original review link here
