Another week, another foray beyond BBC Proms HQ. The latest Prom to leave the Royal Albert Hall was an “operatic experience” at Printworks London – once the largest printing factory in western Europe, and since 2017 reincarnated as a massive club and gig venue. It’s the kind of cavernous space that generates its own electric atmosphere long before any performance starts. (More’s the pity that this first Prom at the Printworks will also be the last: the entire complex is now set to close to allow for “redevelopment”.) As we stood waiting for the start in neon-shot darkness, an electronic soundscape of breathing – or perhaps it was the wind or the sea? – mingled with whispers of bafflement.
Bafflement turned out to be essential to this event masterminded by countertenor and operatic uber-showman Anthony Roth Costanzo in collaboration with English National Opera. Handel arias alternated with chunks of Philip Glass, punctuated by ear-bending beatboxing by Jason Singh, all subtle purrs and rattles, clicks and pops. Short films were projected on to the walls, minutely synched to the music: a Monty Python-ish medieval knight; dogs playing (leaping in comical slow-motion for one of Handel’s heart-wrenching slow sections); an adolescent girl weeping on a runway in a desert; a surreal sequence of erotic puddings, cigarettes and sausages in lurid 1960s colour.
