Part residential summer school, part refreshingly unstuffy country-house opera, Dorset Opera festival regularly includes a rarity among its annual offerings. This year that curio is Le Roi de Lahore, the third of Massenet’s operas to be performed in Paris and the work that established his international reputation. It was widely performed across Europe within a few years of its premiere in 1877, before disappearing almost completely from the repertoire in the 20th century and the Dorset production, directed by Ella Marchment, was thought to be the first British staging since it was performed at Covent Garden in 1879.
Though the libretto is specific in setting the action in Lahore, as Marchment observes, the opera really inhabits a “fictional fantasyland”. At its dramatic core is a love triangle spiced with incest; the king Alim is secretly in love with Sitā, who has taken a vow of chastity, while she in turn is lusted after by her uncle, the king’s minister Scindia, who also has designs on the crown. Alim is killed by Scindia, but allowed by the god Indra to return to life as a commoner, with the proviso that he will die again when Sitā does. Forced to marry Scindia, Sitā kills herself, whereupon Alim dies too.
