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A Remarkable Service
Saint-Saëns' 'Samson and Delilah'
at Grange Park Opera,
reviewed by RODERIC DUNNETT
Given its patent musical qualities, and even dramatic potency, it's perhaps surprising that Camille Saint-Saëns' opera Samson et Dalila ('Samson and Delilah') rarely gets outings in the UK. (Not even the enterprising Dorset Opera has got to Samson yet.)
It is relatively easy to stage, and from what Grange Park's latest production, by director Patrick Mason and designer Francis O'Connor, demonstrates it has a kind of immediacy that reminds one of Handel's biblical oratorios — Saul or, on the same subject as this one, the three-act Samson.
It's also one of those former nearly-rans that Grange Park under Wasfi Kani has been so effective at reviving: Tchaikovsky's The Enchantress, Chabrier's Le roi malgré lui, Offenbach's Bluebeard, and perhaps most brilliant of all, a baroque thriller, Cavalli's Eliogabalo...
Copyright © 27 June 2015
Roderic Dunnett,
Coventry UK
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