“Who wants to hear Samson et Dalila?” asked George Bernard Shaw in a masterfully scathing review of Saint-Saëns’ opera in its 1893 UK premiere. “I respectfully suggest, nobody.” Samson et Dalila’s fortunes since suggest an alternative answer. But the piece remains an odd hybrid of opera and oratorio, held together by the best of its music and the talents of the two principal singers.
On the headline-act front, the Royal Opera’s first revival of Richard Jones’s 2022 production is a triumph. South Korean tenor SeokJong Baek returns as Samson, the role with which he made his acclaimed Covent Garden debut. Where dramatic chemistry with Elīna Garanča, the 2022 Dalila, was evidently in short supply, this revival boasts a role debut from the ever-astonishing young mezzo Aigul Akhmetshina. Fresh from a winning streak of Carmens, Akhmetshina exudes dramatic self-possession and physical ease, her seductive intensity the ideal foil for the tortured awkwardness of Baek’s hero.
Musically, Baek retains the deluxe baritonal plush of his former voice-type, topped here with an apparently effortless 25-carat gleam in his upper register and a capacity for intimate pianissimos that dripped with pathos. Akhmetshina’s Dalila was as irresistible as she should be, switching from sweetness and light to dangerous, covered fury as the situation demanded, her tone simultaneously ultra-controlled and apparently free, her musical lines long and liquid. Neither offered much by way of French diction, but when voices combine as if made to measure and are as dramatically persuasive as this, who cares? Their performances alone make this revival worth seeing.
Then there was everything else. The expressive range of these two exceptional performers risks leaving the rest of the cast (no thanks to Saint-Saëns) sounding rather bland. Ossian Huskinson was best of the rest as Dalila’s unctuous, satin-shirted kinsman Abimélech. William Thomas (Samson’s Rabbi) and Łukasz Goliński (reprising his 2022 turn as the high priest of Dagon) were solid but struggled to make an impact in some of the duller moments of Saint-Saëns’ score.
Under Alexander Soddy, the orchestra was polished. There were some wonderfully voluptuous wind solos and the strings periodically dug deep, though the Act 3 storm never exceeded mild peril. The chorus was exquisitely blended in its unaccompanied offstage turns and fearless in its mid-energy line dance to the famous Bacchanale.
Jones’s production pits “piety” against “materialism” as the programme book explains. But also colour-pops for the Philistines (whose religious cult comes with branding) against modesty-drab for the Israelites. There are striking stage pictures aplenty. The set’s main architecture spins; a hideous, gambling-themed icon makes a cameo appearance; uniformed Philistine henchmen dance, cackle and leer. Unfortunately none of it overcomes the opera’s basic tendency towards dramatic stasis.
• Until 3 June.
