In general, I thought this production of King Priam was pretty damn good. It didn’t take a genius to realise that the singing itself was superb, with special credit to Charne Rochford for his outstanding performance as Achilles and Camilla Roberts for her unbelievably moving presentation of Andromache. Admittedly the score of the entire opera is very peculiar and took a little getting used to, but a very nice chap sitting next to me explained that it was intended to pay homage to the modernist tradition of undermining existing norms in order to suggest the chaos and emptiness of human life in the wake of the first and second world wars. Once I could sort of see where it was all coming from, I settled into it. The chorus sung by a group of slave girls was particularly excellent, and, in hindsight, so was the opening chant, which echoed Achilles’ later war cry.

Fine things must also be said about the costumes, which were beautifully elaborate and believable with their plumes, tassels and billowing skirts. The set was well-designed and the director clearly made good use of space and dramatic lighting. Visually, it was excellent to watch and hear, from the sweet soprano arias to the battle scenes featuring Priam, Hector and Paris.

To be honest, though, my immediate reaction to the whole thing was that it was probably quite similar to a tragedy that would have been performed in Greek theatre two thousand five hundred ago, with relatively tuneless chanting, elaborate masks and headdresses to signify goddess or warrior or king, slightly off-topic soliloquys from minor characters, and a cruel yet pitiable protagonist. Priam isn’t an easy character to like – he spends most of the third act whining about how he has no son left when actually the audience are told several times that there are two still living, and he refuses to say goodbye to his wife when Troy falls but is happy to make out with his daughter-in-law.

A lot of the messages however were fairly old-fashioned and, despite the modern attempt at staging and costume, not to mention the bizarre twentieth score, the libretto was full of lines such as “a woman’s place is in the home, you whore”, and “a man is only a man if he is courageous on the battlefield”. Understandable to the extent that the opera is retelling a story in which these values are central, but still, it’s not easy to swallow that sort of thing when there is simply no hint of self-awareness.

Overall, however the performance was excellent, filled with tension, anguish, fabulous singing and beautiful interactions from the cast.