A quick note on the BOC Covent Garden Festival performance of Samson, as I
hope Dave Hall will comment on it fully.

Samson      Thomas Randle
Manoah      Peter Coleman-Wright
Micah       Catherine Wyn-Rogers
Messenger   Matthew Vine
Dalila      Lynda Russell
Harapha     Christopher Purves

Conductor   Harry Christophers

The Sixteen, The Symphony of Harmony and Invention

This is the concert ("semi-staged") of the recording. I heard a similar
cast in a pre-recording performance in November 1996, and the difference is
striking. Catherine Wyn-Rogers has had a makeover, vocally also, and sounds
much more glamorous as well as more dramatic. I'm not sure that a prophet
needs to be glamorous, but she was seriously dull before. Thomas Randle was
committed and dramatic before, but his singing has improved enormously. He
really carries the line through in heroic style most of the time (though
there were still one or two worrying momemts when his voice disappeared on
the last word of a line) and his acting was superb. The Sixteen were superb
then, and still are now. Lynda Russell, whose style and timbre still make
me think of Saturday afternoon rehearsals of the Messiah in draughty church
halls, was brighter than before. Peter Coleman-Wright was an emotional
Manoah, and Christopher Purves (a late substitute for Jonathan Best) made
Harapha sound like an amiable rugby-player.

The Grand Temple in the Freemason's Hall was a suitably imposing setting.
(It's funny that they've got a gallery, for women in the temple on which
the hall is modelled, but there are no ladies' loos.) They should really
have done Solomon there, of course, though the person from whom I collected
my ticket pointed out that Samson is an anagram of "Masons".

The performance was in the centre of the hall, with the audience on three
sides of the rectangle. The orchestra was in the middle, the choir on the
fourth side, and the singers on a plaform at the opposite end or placed
about the hall. Most of them used scores, and except for Thomas Randle,
didn't really act, though there was some expressive singing. The real
staging was in the lighting, which Andrew Clement said in this morning's
Guardian would have been more appropriate for a Pink Floyd concert. I don't
know about that, but I didn't think it was too bad, though the strobe for
the destruction of the Philistine hall was a bit much. The use of light and
semi-darkness seemed right because the libretto is organized effectively
around themes of darkness and light, literal in the depiction of Samson's
blindness and the world around him, and metaphorical for the depths of
despair and the heights of heroic glory that he gains from his suffering.

In fact, this production brought out well the classical concept of heroism
taken from Milton. The hero's suffering and death for his people results in
profound cathartic mourning which clears the way for optimism because of
the example of his deeds to others and the glory he brings to his people.
The understated funeral march (from Saul, as usual) and the laments were
profoundly moving, and the finale of Let the bright seraphim and the
following chorus were truly uplifting as they should be.