Param Vir isn't the first composer to fail to deliver a commission on time, and he won't be the last, but his inability to finish his new opera Ion for the scheduled premiere at Aldeburgh (with further performances at the Almeida later in the month) left the festival with a real dilemma. Rather than find an 11th-hour replacement for the opening night, the decision was made to go ahead with a semi-staged performance - some movement, casual dress - of what Vir had written.
We heard what was apparently 70% of the score, with a narration (delivered by Janet Suzman) filling the gaps in the story. David Lan's libretto boils Euripides's wordy and slightly diffuse play down to its essentials. Ion looks after the shrine of Apollo at Delphi, where the Queen of Athens, Creusa, comes to consult the oracle. She wants to find out why her marriage to King Xuthus remains childless, though she fears she already knows the truth: as a young women she was ravished by Apollo and had abandoned the child that resulted. Ion, of course, is that child; eventually mother and son are reconciled, and Ion sets off to return to Athens.
Though Lan's text is elegant and economical, it remains a curious, refractory choice for an operatic subject, and Param Vir's music, what there is of it, is unlikely to convince anyone otherwise. Under conductor David Parry, the cast (led by Rita Cullis as Creusa) have clearly worked hard in difficult circumstances, but their words are rarely audible (the opening invocation by Hermes, boldly sung by Garry Magee, is an exception), while the music, always unfolding at the same deadening pace, rarely delivers any striking theatrical ideas and never points up either the wit of the text or the lyricism that is implied.
There are brassy, Tippett-like volleys to open, but the rest is mostly long stretches of Brittenish word-setting underpinned with delicately coloured chords indebted to Messiaen. Some of it is very spare indeed, and in the circumstances it is natural to wonder whether this is intended as the final version, or is just a preliminary sketch of what might be if and when the score is finished. It is difficult to believe, though, that the missing music will provide the dramatic impetus that is so clearly wanting.
• Performances at the Almeida, London, on June 23, 24, 26, 28 and July 1 (Box office: 020 7359 4404).
