Clemency at the Linbury Studio, ROH
In the strange book of Genesis, it is one of the stranger moments, particularly for its brevity. Abraham’s aged wife Sarah finds out from three messengers from God that she will miraculously bear a child. With little time to absorb this wondrous news, the angels also have something less inspiring to say: they are en route to Sodom and Gomorrah and intend to destroy both cities, sparing none of their inhabitants.
It is fertile ground for this, James MacMillan’s third collaboration with the writer Michael Symmons Roberts and the director Katie Mitchell. It is also their second work, after the Linbury staging of Parthenogenesis in 2009, to explore biblical questions in a modern context, using the Brittenesque format of chamber opera, or even staged parable.
Clemency certainly provides plenty of dramatic heat. “Think of us as travellers,” sing the three angels, here known as the Triplets. “But you look like murderers,” snaps back Grant Doyle’s grizzled Abraham, while Janis Kelly’s wary, weary Sarah gets a knife ready for her unknown guests — just in case — as well as a quickly tossed salad. When the three visitors reveal their murderous plans (using evidence of atrocities from their cameraphones), they don gangstersuits and snap guns out of their briefcases. Are they really divine, or just self-appointed vigilantes?
The question is a subtle one, though MacMillan’s souped-up score and Roberts’s sometimes opaque and under-enunciated text takes it into odd territory. His current musical style, familiar to those who both loved and loathed his St John Passion, is to alternate moments of seraphic beauty — in this case the Triplets, who sing in close-harmony unison — with jagged vocal lines, sudden crunchy chords (Clemency is set for strings only, here the excellent Britten Sinfonia under Clark Rundell) and wailing melismas.
It’s a formula that can drive Mitchell’s contemporary setting, beautifully evoked in Alex Eales’s three-panelled set, towards something more contrived. And in 50 packed minutes it feels like the balance between scene-setting and action has gone askew. But the performances are hugely committed and the show is thrillingly tight. You certainly won’t be bored.
