Rian Evans 

Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria review – a tightly focused performance

Audiences are transported back in time for Monteverdi's opera, performed with breathtaking musical intensity, writes Rian Evans
  
  

Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria
Penelope's appalling suitors … Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria at Iford Manor Photograph: pr

Experiencing opera at Iford is always an intimately involving affair, but early Italian opera suits the cloistered space so well that the audience feels transported back through the centuries.

Just as effortlessly, director Justin Way and his designer Kimm Kovac achieve a timeless quality for their vision of Monteverdi's opera, setting it a century ago with the connotations of all-out war, and invoking both the sense of Penelope's despair at the loss of her Ulysses, and the hope implicit in her rock-like constancy. Rowan Hellier's fine mezzo embodies the dignity of this suffering in a tightly focused performance, while Jonathan McGovern's burnished baritone embraces both the heroism of Ulysses and the emotional torture of this culminating episode of his odyssey.

References to the epic nature of Homer's tale and its universality are part of the strength of this retelling. The floor recalls ancient sea-charts, with a globe set in the manner of a ship's compass at its centre; mirror-cladding the cloister's low walls adds a contemporary note, with reflections off the silver gown of the goddess Minerva contributing a pervading aura. Willowy Elizabeth Cragg gives her real presence. Monteverdi's score is telescoped neatly into two parts, with Christopher Cowell's translation capturing the nature of Penelope's appalling suitors, in particular the bumbling parasite Irus (Christopher Turner) to balance the air of tragedy.

Underpinning the whole with his trademark precision and profoundly musical instinct is Christian Curnyn's conducting. The combination of his harpsichord and baroque harp is discreetly varied throughout, bringing a boundless, rhythmic energy and breathtaking intensity. Nowhere is the essential simplicity of Way's approach more effective than in the rapture of Ulysses's and Penelope's final duet. As the guiding hand of Minerva extinguishes each candle, one by one, Curnyn matches the gradual dimming of light, chord for magic chord.

 

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