Masque of Might, the centrepiece of Opera North’s Green Season, is billed as “an eco-entertainment”, and it’s every bit as improbable a hybrid as that descriptor might suggest. Devised by Sir David Pountney, it presses more than 40 pieces of Purcell’s music for stage, court and church into service for a collage-like examination of timely themes: the rise of the strongman leader, the wilful destruction of the natural world, and how the alarming progress of either might be halted.
Taking its cue from the semi-operatic forms of musical theatre in which Purcell and his predecessors worked, Pountney’s Masque makes a broad, allegorical gesture at plot – the ascent and subsequent destruction of the planet-killing despot Diktat – but its governing force is variety: of tone, style and musical form. Comedy jostles tragedy, sacred anthem abuts earthy coloratura, and dance, choreographed with verve by Denni Sayers, is woven throughout. Designs by Marie-Jeanne Lecca (costumes) and Leslie Travers (sets) conjure a lavish baroque-meets-brutal hodgepodge of recycled objects and textiles, embracing both the production’s genre-hopping sense of mischief and the Green Season’s sustainable principles.
