Exterior shot of the Opera House, Buxton
The Opera House, Buxton, in Derbyshire, is a little jewel-box of a building. Designed by Frank Matcham, the architect of so many famous Edwardian theatres, it is like a gorgeous miniature London Coliseum: grand in tone, but on an almost dolls' house scale.
I was there for Daniel Slater's production of Handel's Samson, conducted by Harry Christophers. It is a terrific show: to remind you of the material we are dealing with, Samson the Israelite is taken captive by the Philistines in Gaza and tortured. Finally, he destroys the temple, killing himself and a great number of Philistines in the process - one of the original acts of suicide bombing, you might say. The production went for the obvious contemporary parallels unflinchingly but without crassness; meanwhile the lead performances from Tom Randle, a really good actor, and Rebecca de Pont Davies, were extremely compelling.
And there were no surtitles, and it was wonderful. I know that communicating words is miles easier in a tiny opera house with a very lightly scored piece than it is in a large house with a more densely scored work. Even so, I must have caught less than 50 per cent of the words in Samson (a work I didn't know at all). And that wasn't a problem. There is so much going on in an opera, so many ways in which you are being told the story, from the music to the design and the way characters interact, that you are never going to experience any one element fully - nor, perhaps, should you. Watching the Royal Opera House's fine production of The Rake's Progress last week, for instance, I found my gaze far too drawn to the screen spooling out Auden's words when I would have done better to focus on Robert Lepage's exquisite production. These words were meant to be heard as part of a total theatrical experience; as it was, I read them, consuming them in their entirety as if reading them in a book.
Anyway, I can see this is a losing battle. There is a vicious circle: singers are not being trained to articulate words clearly, so punters complain, so surtitles are installed in opera houses, so there is less compunction for singers to articulate words clearly, so surtitles become more and more necessary - and on it goes. I wouldn't be surprised if the Opera House, Buxton were to install surtitles in due course. If you enjoy English language opera without them, your time is running out.
