English National Opera’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs - the effect is enthralling

<First published on line in the Financial Times on April 28, 2023>

Many layers of grief and poignancy surround English National Opera’s new production of Henryk Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, which may prove to be the company’s last at the London Coliseum. Written in 1976, the Polish composer’s third symphony consists of three movements and is constructed around three songs: two sung by a mother for her dead child, one by a child separated from their parent. A single soprano sings those songs, but the slow-moving orchestra makes the emotion feel far larger than that of any one individual.

The war in Ukraine — and other recent killings — makes the music seem immediately relevant. And this production comes only a week after the London premieres of two other operas about the traumatic after-effects of killings: Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence at the Royal Opera House and Jeanine Tesori’s Blue at ENO.

Although it’s unusual for opera companies to stage symphonies, even vocal ones, it’s by no means rare for dance companies to do so. By a curious accident of planning, this ENO production — directed and designed by Isabella Bywater and conducted by Lidiya Yankovskaya — comes six months after another important London staging that drew on the same Górecki symphony: Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite’s Light of Passage for the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden. Pite’s creation, widely acclaimed, has been nominated for awards.

Even so, it’s Bywater’s staging that draws us far deeper into the music by dramatising the lone singer amid larger cosmic vistas and, more specifically, imagery of anonymous soldiers, corpses and mourners. The stage area is a triangle, open to us on one side, with two curtained walls. On these, videos by Roberto Vitalini show us a galaxy of stars, seas at night and other vast contexts within which one human situation becomes central.

Although the action is slow, the effect is enthralling. Jon Driscoll’s lighting achieves a subdued theatre of marvels as American soprano Nicole Chevalier, as the mourning mother, ascends into the air without any visible wires, all beautifully timed to the music. In the second movement, the triangular walls become ropes of mist through which a few unknown soldiers — each an individual but none with a face — enact separate narratives of pathos. All are wrapped in shrouds by the movement’s end.

During the music’s final section, Chevalier becomes an angel, again ascending. When wide wings are fitted to her shoulders, centre stage, they come like a message of her own death, gently transcending the misery she and others have known. The production, greatly affecting, abounds in such subtle changes of tone.

The opening-night performance was preceded by a rousing speech by Stuart Murphy, soon to depart as chief executive of English National Opera and the London Coliseum. Naming names from Nicholas Serota, chair of Arts Council England, to Michael Gove, secretary of state for levelling up, Murphy called on them to restore ENO’s funding and declared: “History is watching you!”

This followed an equally memorable speech at a Barbican concert a few days earlier by Simon Rattle. The conductor referred to cuts by Arts Council England and the BBC as “devastating for our sector” and said they revealed a deep ignorance about the infrastructure of music in the UK. “We’re in a fight, and we need to ensure that classical music remains part of the beating heart of our country — of our country and of our culture.”

@Financial Times, 2023