James MacMillan: The Sacrifice, New Theatre, Oxford, 14 November 2007. 

Of the three operas reviewed in this last issue of Term, pride of place must go to The Sacrifice, composed over the past ten years by James MacMillan, evolving with the active participation of librettist Michael Symmons Roberts, director Katie Mitchell and designer Vicki Mortimer. Supported by WNO’s Friends and Partners, the result is an overwhelming operatic experience, with the composer conducting, that sweeps away all critical judgement through the richness and variety of the orchestral sound and the quality of the singing. It is only when trying to make an objective judgement that the difficulties begin. The key lies perhaps in the formative effect of the composer’s exposure to Götterdämmerung at the age of twelve. What we have is a form of Celtic music drama, inspired by Welsh myth (the Mabinogion) with Irish folk overtones (represented by three lissom attendant ladies referred to as ‘Birds’), from a Scottish composer, but with references from other cultures. Trying to fit it into the canon of British opera one detects traces of Tippett, Walton, Britten but it has entirely the composer’s own voice.

Set in two bedrooms and ballroom of a vaguely eastern European, vaguely war-torn hotel, vaguely at a time in the near future: the vagueness deliberately aims at giving a timelessness to the action. Sian (Lisa Milne) consents to marry Mal (Peter Hoare) to effect reconciliation with his enemy the General, her father (Christopher Purves), leaving her lover Evan (Leigh Melrose), in a touching first scene with soaring first violins over portentous rumblings of wind and lower strings. At the end of a quasi-Jewish wedding scene, elaborately stage-managed, Evan stabs Mal and is taken into custody by the General. Seven years later, at his investiture as boy king, a son, Gwyn, is shot dead by Evan. In the final act, scenes of mourning (with heartrending lamentation from Sian, leading the chorus) are followed by the General, disguised in Evan’s clothing allowing himself to be shot by Mal in a final sacrifice. After Sian calls for reconciliation, the last words are given to her sister Megan (Sarah Tynan), a strange figure who comments on the action Cassandra-like throughout. It ends with a sequence of apocalyptic hammer blows.

This is opera in the grand tradition of the nineteenth century melodrama, though instead of arias we have the musical continuity of Wagner; as well as leit-motif we have recurring verse couplets commenting on people and events. The weaknesses are some implausibility in the plot and a lack of coupling between the music, the words and the action, the depth of motivation for the assassination and for the final sacrifice are not convincingly conveyed. What saves the day is the obvious total dedication of everyone concerned with the production, chorus, orchestra and soloists – it is impossible to single out any one though Milne’s performance of Sian’s lament continues to haunt. This is an opera to be seen again.

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