Classical Preview: Handel’s Saul is reborn for the nuclear age

Today we think of Handel as the composer of oratorios and orchestral music, though his reputation had been entirely built in the theatre when he came to live in England, and over the next 30 years he was to take a leading role in the management of London companies, adding on average a new opera every year.

He handed down 41 completed scores, and as only a handful remain in the repertoire we owe a debt of gratitude to Buxton Festival Opera who over the years have staged 10 in new productions,

So it seems rather bizarre that this year they are turning his oratorio, Saul, into a staged work presented by Olivia Fuchs, a director who is not unaccustomed to controversy.

Retaining Handel’s original intention of relating the Biblical story of Saul and David, Fuchs has placed the action in the United States at the end of the Second World War where Saul is the President and David is the pilot who unleashed the atomic bomb on Japan to bring victory to his people.

Saul is here taken by bass-baritone, Jonathan Best, a familiar face at Opera North, Robert Murray as Jonathan, while Anne Marie Gibbons sings the part of David.

Does it work as an opera, and should such updating take place when the composer is not here to prevent such changes? With the guardian of the Baroque era, Harry Christophers, and his period Orchestra of the Sixteen involved, it certainly has all of the musical ingredients in place.

Handel’s Saul, Buxton Opera House, July 17, 21 & 24, 7.15pm, 0845 127 2190.