Jonathan Dove is not merely the most prolific but also one of the most skilled of the UK’s contemporary opera composers. In its first performance in this country, his most recent stage work is presented by English National Opera in a new version at their rehearsal studios in London’s West Hampstead. The Day After shares its librettist, April De Angelis, with Dove’s biggest international success, Flight.
It’s a tale within a tale. A group of survivors of a worldwide catastrophe are scavenging for what little food they can find – a few grains of rice a less appealing prospect than the dead cat one of them triumphantly produces from her bag.
Yet such pressing concerns are exchanged – somewhat artificially – for a self-performed dramatisation of the catastrophe that has reduced their immediate environment to a blackened bomb crater, starkly realised in Camilla Clarke’s darkly atmospheric set, to which Tom Mannings’ evocative lighting applies sinister hues indicating ecological devastation.
The group go on to enact Ovid’s version of the story of Phaeton, son of the sun god Phoebus, whose wilful chariot ride across the heavens leads to widespread disaster and his own demise – via a thunderbolt aimed by his father to prevent the Earth’s further destruction.
Each of the unnamed individuals in the prologue takes part in this parable with contemporary resonance, with tenor William Morgan’s daredevil Phaeton and bass Robert Winslade Anderson’s circumspect Phoebus the central figures in a cautionary tale played out on a cosmic scale.
The piece lasts for 75 minutes, with Phaeton’s disastrous ride providing an obvious visual and musical climax. Though Jamie Manton’s lean production cannot stretch to spectacle, his solution here and throughout carries impressive conviction in its harnessing of simplicity to imagination.
The interlude itself is too long, and as so often with Dove’s work, one feels that quite small cuts of repetitive passages would tighten things up. At other points reminiscences of various styles – Weill, Britten and, most frequently, minimalism – dilute the score’s individuality.
That said, everything works beautifully – the vocal writing and the scoring for a punchy, 16-piece, brass-heavy ensemble confidently conducted by James Henshaw, ENO’s regular chorus master, who therefore hands over that task for this performance to Chris Hopkins.
Indeed, it is the choral element, new to this version of a piece premiered by Holland Opera in 2015, and originally conceived for just five singers, that stands out most of all. It is immaculately conceived, and the tone and attack of ENO’s chorus as they hurl themselves at it are magnificent.
There are strong individual performances from all the principals, too. Both in presence and vocal weight, Anderson’s Phoebus offers godlike grandeur. In writing that veers in the direction of Heldentenor demands, Morgan is consistently bold and bracing. Mezzo Rachael Lloyd’s concerned Woman/Mother, soprano Claire Mitcher’s touching Young Woman and mezzo Susanna Tudor-Thomas’s wary Old Woman all excel.
• At Lilian Baylis House, London, until 31 May. Box office: 020-7845 9300.
