War is the only communion between ancient rivals. In Handel’s final oratorio, Jephtha (1752), in the Royal Opera House’s new staging, Israelites are devout and obedient in black, their opponents, the Ammonites, wanton, profane and gaudy. The former are any sect, any time, their enemies a colourful fury of delinquency, skirts hitched up, legs entangled, as if modelled on the paintings of Hogarth. So far so clear. Oliver Mears’s production, buoyantly directed from the harpsichord by the Handel supremo Laurence Cummings, is careful to draw no literal modern parallels. None is needed. Ego and zealotry have divided nations for all time.
Struggling to finish the work in the face of sight loss and physical collapse, Handel took his subject from the Old Testament. A leader bargains with the Almighty, promising sacrifice in exchange for victory. The price is high: he must kill his only daughter, Iphis. Designed by Simon Lima Holdsworth, the minimal set is dominated by Richard Serra-style walls, inscribed with lines from the Book of Judges, in the King James version. These massive walls move around with spry facility, unexpected for concrete blocks, opening and closing to reveal the Ammonites in their gorgeous, stupefying tableaux, before their wholesale slaughter. Some less than convincing choreography at this point prompted untimely audience laughter.
