This was the first opera from the new period-instrument ensemble Figure, and it was billed as a semi-staging, a description that did no justice to Sam Rayner’s production. Who needed sets, when Rayner effectively had six pieces of human scenery to play with? And play is the word: these six actors and acrobats moved in often mischievous ways, constantly changing the space and the energy around the singers. One moment they were obsequious courtiers, then they were forming themselves into a horse on which King Xerxes went riding, then they climbed on each other’s shoulders to become the plane tree, the unlikely subject of the king’s glorious first aria. Later, out came a unicycle and a tightrope, and they were a private circus representing the desperation with which he was trying to impress poor Romilda. It was fantastically detailed stuff, intrinsic to the storytelling.
