What can you say about Garsington Opera? It’s stunning, obviously. World-class opera in beautiful surroundings is only the beginning. Stepping onto the Wormsley Estate to see Maometto Secondo is like entering another universe, one filled with elaborate costumes, over-the-top scenery, and decadent luxury. And that’s before the opera begins.

 

Maometto Secondo lives up to its surroundings. One of Rossini’s most powerful and challenging operas, it’s unashamedly tragic, concerning the fate of the Venetian outpost of Negroponte, besieged by the Turks, led by the fearsome Maometto. Perhaps this tragedy has kept it from British stages - the Garsington performance is its UK premiere.

 

The staging was astonishing, stark and arresting. A vast marble woman lay dismembered across the stage, her head as tall as a man. Some simple but effective lighting transformed this vast ruin from the besieged walls of Negroponte into the gloomy tomb of Anna’s mother. A vast crimson hanging transported us inside a Maometto’s seraglio, then crumpled to the stage before the statue, like a pool of blood gushing from a giant’s corpse. 

 

From the first scene, we were plunged into a warzone. The Venetians might have stepped straight from the trenches of the Great War, all 20’s chic, pistols, and nurses’ uniforms. The Turks, meanwhile, were a mix of Lawrence of Arabia and dark pantomime. Their turbans and scimitars made them personifications of Orientalist nightmares, as they sang rousing choruses, smeared in the blood of their enemies.

 

The effect - powerful, awesome, almost overwhelming - was continued with a magnificent cast and orchestra. Erisso (Paul Nilon), the Venetian governor, and right-hand man Calbo (a bold choice to cast Caitlin Hulcup, justified by a stonking performance) ably handled their roles as men of action torn by concern for the one they loved - their daughter/beloved Anna. Sian Davies gave this part the rich and expressive pefromance it deserved.

 

But it was Darren Jeffery’s Maometto who stole the show, a swaggering, masterful tyrant. It was easy to understand Anna’s forbidden attraction to him as he alternately proclaimed his love and threatened her father with torture: he’s as compelling to the audience as to the pious girl tormented by desire. Jeffery’s bass-baritone roar complemented a bold performance from conductor David Parry’s orchestra. Rossini’s music alternated between threatening cannonades of drum & brass and touching melodies as Anna transfixed a chorus of Turks. Maometto Secondo is as masterful, bold, and compelling as its eponymous conqueror.