Grange Park Opera

John Tavener’s last work finally premieres – thanks to his friend the King

By Nicholas Kenyon

John Tavener’s last major work has finally been premiered, 13 years after his death. Krishna is not so much an opera, more a holy ritual that tells the story of the Hindu god of love, through chant, song and dance.

Huge in ambition, it draws together Tavener’s life-long preoccupations: his search for religious belief and world-embracing spirituality. Compellingly performed by Grange Park Opera, and staged by the ever-inventive Sir David Pountney, with choreography by Shobana Jeyasingh, this startlingly original piece is a fitting final tribute to a maverick composer.

Tavener, most famous for The Protecting Veil and Song for Athene (which was sung at Princess Diana’s funeral in 1997), was an archetypal new-wave composer in the late 1960s, recording on the Beatles’ Apple label and driving around in vintage cars. He was well connected, and had a close friendship with the now-King, who reportedly helped to bring about this posthumous premiere by asking Pountney whether Tavener’s surviving score could be staged.

Tavener became increasingly drawn into exploring different religious traditions: Krishna, though it may seem an outlandish piece, is the culmination of his continual quest for a world beyond ours. Here there are four Krishnas, child (the fine soprano Rosa Sparks), adolescent (Eliran Kadussi), youth (Elgan Llŷr Thomas) and man (the excellent Brett Polegato); the episodes of his life are narrated in chant by Ross Ramgobin as he grows up, seeks love, “ventures through cosmic evil”, and draws his followers towards Paradise.

Tavener’s music, setting his own libretto in English and Sanskrit, draws widely on Eastern traditions, with continuing ululations of rapture as Krishna unites with his wife (Nazan Fikret) and she meets with his childhood love Radha (Julia Sitkovetsky, with a shining high register). Nevertheless, it contains echoes of Western music, and finally subsides onto a fragment of Mozart, much as Tavener’s earlier Christian epic Ultimos Ritos was extinguished by a quote from Bach’s Mass in B minor.

The orchestration is conceived in Messiaen-like sharp blocks of music which provide a juxtaposition of shrill wind, insistently percussive tutti sections, and onstage drums vividly pounded by Nao Masuda. Mark Shanahan controls the Gascoigne Orchestra, including distant flutes in the upper circle, impassively. Rachana Jadhav’s designs aptly stack the chorus on a structure in ritual rows; only in the last scenes do they venture on to the stage. Movement is driven by the six dancers in Jeyasingh’s eloquent choreography, while Pountney’s characters are skilfully drawn from the barest outlines.
Nearly half a century ago, at the Covent Garden premiere of Tavener’s first opera Thérèse, a critic asked “If we are invited to take part in some mystical ceremony or ritual, do we need an opera house?” We could ask the same question now, but all praise to Grange Park Opera for providing such a compelling first attempt to realise Tavener’s final vision.