The delayed first performance of the Royal Opera's revival of Harrison Birtwistle's Gawain was a case of triumph over adversity. Roughly 20 minutes into the piece - at the point when the awesome pounding on the doors of Camelot heralds the phantasmagoric Green Knight's arrival - a stage manager appeared from the wings, stopped the orchestra and announced that the performance could not continue until a "serious technical problem" had been rectified. The cause of the chaos, it transpires, had nothing to do with the Opera House's controversially tricky computer stage system, but with a defective cable on the trap that heaves the Green Knight into view, a fault that could have occurred anywhere. Even so, a half-hour pause followed before we carried on.
Such an event could have proved disastrous, particularly in a work like Gawain, which is rooted in ritual theatre and relies upon musical and visual repetition for its effect. As it happened, the lost momentum was rapidly regained, and the opera soon re-exerted its powerful, at times insidious, magic.
In some respects Gawain casts its spell despite itself. Its balance of elements is awkward, its subject matter queasy. Engagement with the volatile score is sometimes hampered by the alienating effect of the very rituals on which it depends. In its vision of a universe governed, in the person of Morgan le Fay, by a malign, metaphysical female entity, it steers close to misogyny.
The score, conducted with fierce passion by Elgar Howarth, never lost its grip. Di Trevis's production still impresses with its combination of stark understatement and muted, if imposing special effects, though Alison Chitty's costumes (a mix of medieval Europe, kabuki and native American) have dated. The Green Knight's singing severed head remains a coup de theatre. The ending, in which Morgan le Fay vanishes uttering demonic laughter, while a Stravinskyan woodwing mocks the disconsolate, fallible Gawain, is still one of the most unnerving moments in contemporary music theatre.
John Tomlinson's electrifying Green Knight apart, the cast is new and there are some inequalities: Kathryn Turpin's Lady De Hautdesert is acidically voiced, which sits uneasily with the character's sensuality; Constance Hauman's Morgan, though sung with breathtaking ease and beauty of tone, suggests a skittish sprite rather than spiritual malignancy. On the other hand, Wilhelm Hartmann's Gawain is a touchingly credible innocent throughout, while Thomas Randle, scampering balletically as the Fool, is outstanding. Despite the interruption and my own qualms about the work, I found myself warming to it much more than I did in 1991 when the opera was new - and that is the highest compliment I can pay it.
