Published: 27 October, 2011
by SEBASTIAN TAYLOR

THE English National Opera needs to be re-branded as ENO the Bold.

Despite the cuts, its autumn season has given us the London premiere of an Auschwitz opera and a racy new Marriage of Figaro on a revolving stage.

And now it’s giving us a very modern treatment of Rameau’s 250-year-old opera Castor & Pollux.

The music is high Baroque.

But, unlike Handel’s music at the time, it’s virtually devoid of memorable song-lines in arias, duets and ensembles.

Rather, wall-to-wall recitatives relate the complex mythol­ogical story about the twin brothers, their to-ings and fro-ings from Hades, tangles with Jupiter, lots of love, some verging on the homo-erotic, and two sisters lusting after the brothers.

So it’s not for those wanting their operas to have great songs, tunes and melodies.

But it is a real feast for early music and Baroque enthusiasts, inveterate opera-goers, and Francophiles.

That’s because Rameau’s orchestral music is so stunning and it’s the orchestra that holds centre-stage in the ENO’s co-production with the Komische Oper, Berlin, directed by Barrie Kosky, taking charge of the Berlin opera house next year.

Cleverly, the orchestra pit is raised to a level just below the stage so that all the players are fully visible and so that Rameau’s driving music, conducted brilliantly by Christian Curnyn, can surge through the cavernous Coliseum.

Swathes of the opera are devoted to ballet music; the dancing’s gone to give the orchestra acres of spaced to shine on its own.

The production itself is modern Berlin: austere, at times severe, energetic and highly charged.

Inevitably, there’s quite a bit of disrobing, the two sisters take off seven layers of knickers and, later, in the Elysian Fields, chorus members take their kit off completely, some revealing not a pretty site, enough to put you off nudism for life.

One sister is groped by a hand from Hades emerging between her legs.

Principal singers are young, vocally strong, looking their part.

Tenor Allan Clayton’s Castor is outstanding, well matched by baritone Roderick Williams’s Pollux.

• Seven more performances till December 1, 0871 911 0200, www.eno.org