Peter Sellars' interpretation of the Handel opera-cum-oratorio starts in a high key, as Frode Olsen, as a sort of Pete Wilson-like Roman emperor, delivers an anthemic paean to imperialism with an onstage audience, mirroring the poshy habitues of the Glyndebourne Opera, gesture their ass-kicking approval behind him as if in a giant fascist Coke commercial. The story--of a Christian woman's martyrdom alongside her centurion-with-a-conscience beloved--is given Sellars' encyclopedic gestural vocabulary. There is no director on this earth better at extracting genuine emotion, not to mention up-to-the-minute political insight, from classical Western opera. (He is on less sure ground with most spoken texts--his brilliant production of Genet's THE SCREENS aside--and with modern music hybrids like THE PEONY PAVILION.) Though there are many moments that recall Sellars' productions of Handel's ORLANDO and GIULIO CESARE, the effect is cumulatively devastating--and the last half hour, in which Sellars treats us to a step-by-step analysis of the process of lethal injection, ranks among his most soul-chilling--which is tall praise indeed.
Tall praise also belongs to Dawn Upshaw, whose performance ranks among the strongest I've ever seen from an opera-world megastar.
