Last year it was helicopters, dancing camels and a flying string quartet for Stockhausen's Mittwoch aus Licht. This year Birmingham Opera Company – slogan "not what you expect from opera" – has stayed firmly grounded: a six-poled big top pitched in the landscaped splendour of Cannon Hill Park, donated to the city in the 19th century by an heiress in hope that it "may prove to be a source of healthful recreation to the people of Birmingham".
Inside the tent, looking anything but healthful, sealed white body bags lie on the cold ground. It's almost dark and hard to get your bearings. In the absence of seats, and assuming these bulky bags are stuffed with foam, it's tempting to sit down. In the nick of time, a bare arm bursts from one, a leg from another. At once bodies and bags vanish into the gloom. Without pause, the 750 of us who make up the audience are ushered to the focus of the action.
A journalist (you know him by his belted mac, wild eyes and three-day stubble) is hunched under the glare of spotlights. A temporary stage festooned with presidential-style banners of a smiling contender – a queasy cross between Putin and Obama – reminds us that we are on the campaign trail. Perversely, by now the quiet prelude to Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina, Dawn on the Moscow River, is sounding from the orchestra – elevated on a platform and conducted by the unflappable Stuart Stratford. Elegiac woodwind sing out mournfully across the almost drowsy string figuration.
Then a police van covered in graffiti drives into the tent, uniformed officers carrying riot shields spilling into the crowd. Suddenly – and this is why we are here, captive in every sense at yet another of Graham Vick's bold community operas – these "policemen" and scores more men are singing their hearts out: massed voices trained and untrained, young and old, black, white, fit, fat, lame, yearning for life, children, country at an ear-splitting fortissimo.
In truth it was impossible to know precisely what they were lamenting, but that hardly mattered: the intensity was thrillingly clear. Anyway the opera itself, sprawling, often confusing and infrequently staged, has never deserved the adjective pellucid. Mussorgsky laboured over Khovanshchina for years, scene by scene, not always in the right order. It was orchestrated by his friend Rimsky-Korsakov, and again – essentially the version heard here – by Shostakovich as well as Stravinsky. As with Mussorgsky's other operatic masterpiece, Boris Godunov, there are no smiles. It begins with doom and ends with a massed suicide, tenderly handled by Vick in a gripping finale.
Max Hoehn's new English version, renamed Khovanskygate: A National Enquiry, seethes with urban slang. Tsar Peter the Great (who never appears) is threatened by the rebellious Khovanskys, father and son, sharp-suited rightwingers in the American mould. The war between old values and new promises, religious conservatism versus western values, has grown bloody. The contemporary echoes are only too evident. The Russian people variously cheer and mourn in several grand choruses that make this, unexpectedly, an ideal choice for BOC.
Nearly 500 people – 80 musicians from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, actors, dancers, an enormous chorus and the CBSO Children's Chorus – have worked with a professionalism which, after seeing so many of these BOC productions, I have come to believe only Graham Vick could muster. The international, multicultural, multi-everything cast was expertly chosen.
Many have worked with Vick in Birmingham before. That teamwork paid off. The American baritone Eric Greene, an exciting Billy Bigelow in Opera North's Carousel, had cool authority as Khovansky, with Joseph Guyton, whose eclectic credits include the final of The X Factor in Germany, convincing as his sleazy, slick son. Keel Watson was made for the role of Dosifei, Leader of the True Believers, his crowd-rallying sermons lying at exactly the right part of his voice. The fast-rising British contralto Claudia Huckle was brave and intelligent as the strange, schismatic Marfa. Robert Winslade Anderson, Paul Nilon, Stephanie Corley and Hannah Mason all gave strong support. Stratford held together a convincing musical performance. The CBSO brass, especially, excelled. But Khovanskygate was a night for the chorus and the people of Birmingham. The cheers were ecstatic.
You can put "gate" after anything. Try Eastergate. It's a wonder we've escaped it so far, given the annual controversy over alleged anti-Semitism in Bach's St John Passion in America and Germany, where protests outside performances are not unknown. The main objection is the way the Jewish "mob" is portrayed. Each year someone puts the case against Bach, who is merely following the Gospel account. Yet even the Jewish Chronicle has come down on his side. John Eliot Gardiner's recent book on Bach, Music in the Castle of Heaven, also contributes good sense to the debate. These complex issues, interesting though they are, had no place in the moving performance by the Britten Sinfonia and Voices and soloists at the Barbican on Good Friday, the day it was first performed in 1724.
Nicholas Mulroy is now an Evangelist of choice, dramatic yet never over-involved, engaged reporter rather than partisan witness. Matthew Brook's Christus had the right detached dignity. Eamonn Dougan, who also directs the scrupulous Britten Sinfonia Voices, shone as Pilate. Julia Doyle, soprano, never fails. The Britten Sinfonia is accustomed to playing without a conductor, usually led by its spirited director, Jacqueline Shave. The large hall seemed to present problems at first. There was uncertainty of ensemble in the opening chorus, Herr, unser Herrscher, and some of the slower passages threatened to lose momentum.
These momentary weaknesses cast only a slight shadow on an otherwise lithe and expressive account. The classy Britten Voices were as disembodied in their buoyant "Wohin?" interjections as they were earthy and furious in the angry crowd scenes. As for the countertenor Iestyn Davies, no one better contemplates the sorrow of Christ's death as expressed in the aria Es ist vollbracht ("It is accomplished"). With Richard Tunnicliffe's celestial viola da gamba weaving its endless, silvery accompaniment, time stood still. Or you wished for once it could.
Star ratings (out of 5)
Khovanskygate ****
St John Passion/ Britten Sinfonia ****
