Stephen Langridge’s staging, too, left me wondering what had happened to the imagination in opera production. Innumerable nonrealistic, nightmarish effects are technically available these days, yet here we were with a simple semi-circular arena to stand for the labyrinth, and an open stage with a line of light (the distant breaking waves, presumably) to represent the shore.
A bare-chested John Tomlinson and his adversary Johan Reuter (Theseus) might roar, and utter their graceless lines with all the savagery at their disposal, but the result is unpersuasive. Tomlinson is a great Wagnerian, but here his performance, combined with earthbound stage designs, does little to arouse awe or wonder.
The exception to this bleak impression lay in the highly poetic and memorable libretto by David Harsent. For me, this world premiere was, above all else, Harsent’s evening.
There were a few other compensations. The Snake Priestess (Andrew Watts) represented a potent idea, and the chorus overseeing the slaughter down in the labyrinth at least looked impressive. But these were small rewards for over three hours of aural pain.
This DVD may increase tourism to Crete, but it’s unlikely to ratchet up sales for the baleful music of Harrison Birtwistle. And most of the younger opera composers have turned their backs on this kind of dissonant modernism, opting instead for a variety of other, more accessible styles.
In the same way that bleak Bauhaus is by no means the last word in architecture, so too is this kind of user-unfriendly music surely doomed to become a footnote, albeit a rather long one, in musical history books. Maybe the sentimental pop musicians so berated by Birtwistle had a point after all.
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