Blue

Is there any opera in recent memory so overshadowed by its staging? Jeanine Tesori’s Blue will turn heads though maybe not in the way she expected it to.

This is a new opera, so new in fact that the composer is still alive and well and sitting in the press night audience. Her chosen topics here of Black oppression and police violence are rarely far away from the headlines in the US and this American production debuting at the ENO offers no surprises but pulls few punches. Simply called The Mother and The Father, London-born lyric soprano Nadine Benjamin and the 6’5’’ bass baritone Kenneth Kellogg are introduced as the soon-to-be parents of a baby boy. Time passes and the now-teenage son (South African tenor Zwakele Tshabalala) is an activist castigating his proud policeman father who prefers to be known as an “Officer Of The Law”. The son’s death is used as the pivotal event to explore how this family come together for love, fall apart in anger and then re-unite in grief.

Tazewell Thompson’s text is anger-laced but with tender moments and humour woven in. The story is tragically familiar and Thompson does not offer any new insights on the central themes. What you expect is what you get but that doesn’t belie the quality of the singing from this cast especially Kellogg as a man who clings to then throws away his uniform, first celebrating then disgusted with what it stands for.

The true star of Blue is its incredible staging which sees immersive images of New York projected onto a midair box. The box itself revolves vertically to present portrait or landscape areas for the cast to sing on. In a stunning scene after the interval, Benjamin silently stands in the box as it spins slowly around her with metaphorical magic: in her discombobulating world of grief, what was her floor becomes her ceiling, what she considered solid support is now moving away and, all the while, her friends (singing on the floor below) seem distant. Seeing is believing and, if Blue returns to London, it will largely be down to the brilliant work from designer Alex Lowde, James Farncombe (lighting) and Ravi Deepres (video).

Tesori’s opera itself is good but not great: no-one will walk away feeling that they are any closer to understanding the human condition or with much greater empathy than they already had for the very sad situation portrayed here (and thousands of times over across the Atlantic). There is not much to stretch the acting ability of the cast (if an opera singer finds it difficult to portray family love or grief, they should consider a change of career) and the music fits the mood but doesn’t leave any solid memories bar a couple of splendid scenes just before and after the interval. That’s all a shame as, if any of those aspects were on a par with the opera’s set, this would undeniably be one for the ages.

Blue continues at the ENO until 4 May.

Photo credit: Zoe Martin