Opera Holland Park (OHP) has commissioned Jonathan Dove, working with his regular librettist Alasdair Middleton, to write an opera based on the Itch novels by Simon Mayo. When I first heard about this I thought “good on OHP for promoting new opera but what a strange choice”. I now eat my words – it is brilliant. The story is gripping, it has an important and totally of-the-minute theme, the performers are superb and the set is both clever and right for the story to be told. And, best of all Dove’s music, is wonderful – in previous works like Flight and Mansfield Park, his facility for telling stories in simple but beautiful music was evident, but here in Itch it is combined with a undercurrent of emotion that makes it all the more powerful.
Itchingham Lofte (Itch) is a teenager who is fascinated by the periodic table. He is aiming to collect a sample of each element and it is not going too well. But with the help of his mysterious friend, the beachcomber known as Cake, he eventually acquires a rock that turns out to be a previously undiscovered element that offers the prospect of limitless clean power. Itch and his sister Jack are then forced to embark on an escape adventure as two different gangs seek to steal the rock from them. However, Itch decides that the rock presents more dangers than benefits and risks his life to put things right.
OHP has assembled a stellar cast to perform this premiere. Adam Temple-Smith as Itch gives a rock star performance in the title role. He has a powerful tenor voice and the gift of clear diction, hugely valuable in the somewhat strange environment of the OHP stage, partly open to the weather (and the local birdlife). And in the final scenes, he grows the character from naïve schoolboy to something approaching tragic hero. Natasha Agarwal, with her youthful soprano voice, is his streetwise sister Jack and is every inch a worthy companion – pity she disappears from the action just before the denouement. Luxury casting indeed to have Rebecca Bottone singing two roles, Itch’s mother and the evil CEO of the organisation that wants the rock and is willing to use extreme measures to acquire it. In the latter role, the ‘ultra-soprano’ range of Dove’s writing is brilliantly realised by Bottone – think Queen of the Night in a power suit. And Cake might be Papageno – except that his role is ultimately a tragic one. Some of the finest moments of a great night came as marvellous counter-tenor, James Laing, began to illuminate for us the central dilemma posed by the opera – can new discoveries be used for the general good while saving the planet? No room to praise the other singers individually but all made significant contributions – both musically and dramatically – to this bravura exercise in musical story-telling.
The tiny orchestra, meticulously led by Jessica Cottis, produced a variety of sound and a depth of feeling that is rare in festival productions – again it is invidious to single out players but the sound of the harp and celeste together (Elizabeth Bass and Berrak Dyer) was simply magical. I am not a fan of the layout of the OHP stage, with the orchestra uncomfortably sandwiched between two performing platforms. However, in this production, conceived by the redoubtable Stephen Barlow, the stunning set design, with the rear part of the back stage composed of blocks that could be lit to represent parts of the periodic table, overcame that drawback. And I have to say that, despite the easy-to-predict climax, its faint echoes of the ‘trial scenes’ of The Magic Flute, of the final moments of Traviata and even of the conclusion of Gotterdammerung, served to enhance the power of the evening for me. This is a brilliant piece of work and one that deserves to be seen more widely. Given Dove’s reputation as a crowd pleaser, I hope future productions come soon.