Black comedy of the highest order: the world premiere of Festen at The Royal Opera

Thomas Vinterberg’s 1998 movie Festen started a whole cinematic movement, a black comedy of manners which is “Black” with a capital “B”. We are preparing for the lavish 60th birthday party of patriarch and hotelier Helge Klingenfeldt and we learn immediately that bad things have happened in the family. As the story progresses, secrets emerge which ratchet up the tension, becoming steadily more shocking until the final, truly appalling revelations.

Out of all this, Mark-Anthony Turnage and librettist Lee Hall have created something extraordinary: an opera in which the horrors of the piece are as dark and dramatic as you can imagine, but which is richly entertaining and truly hilarious for a great deal of its length. Turnage’s score has masses of variety, from high-drama filmic sequences to conventional operatic recitative to big-band party numbers to deliciously lyrical arias, not to mention generous dollops of musical humour. The opera runs for 1h40 without an interval (although there are brief curtain-down orchestral interludes for scene changes) and there’s never a dull moment.

You certainly can’t accuse The Royal Opera of skimping. There are 25 named roles plus chorus and actors, and the cast list comprised more of the cream of British opera singing than any I can remember (plus some notable imports). Gerald Finley was revoltingly smooth and urbane as Helge. As Christian, the prodigal son who returns to the event to shake everything up by calling his father out on his abusive past, Allan Clayton was at his very best, giving a bizarre but completely credible mix of the goofiness we’ve seen from him in roles like Candide, the hard edge of a Peter Grimes and absolute beauty of voice in his lyrical moments. Stéphane Degout was brilliantly nasty as Christian’s violent younger brother Michael; Thomas Oliemans stole the show as the hapless Master of Ceremonies, Helmut, keeping the show going when everything is falling apart around him. There was even a fine cameo for Sir John Tomlinson as Helge’s senile grandfather.

The female roles, on the whole, are less pivotal, the most important being Christian’s sister Helena, sung by Natalya Romaniw with sweet-toned vocal appeal as well as heartfelt emotion, and Rosie Aldridge as the hypocritical mother. Space forbids me from name-checking everyone, but there truly wasn’t a weak link.

Miriam Buether’s sets and Nicky Gillibrand’s costumes are straightforward and effective. We alternate between three areas of the family hotel: the reception desk, the banqueting room and a set of three bedrooms/bathrooms (which are at times used simultaneously, a trick that would have violated Vinterberg’s cinematic principles but is brilliantly used here with musical counterpoint to match). Director Richard Jones and movement director Lucy Burge manage their massed forces with aplomb: the scenes of guests and hotel staff milling around the reception desk or banqueting table are a real whirlwind. But it’s not just the large numbers; Jones gets excellent acting performances in the many intimate moments and he is particularly good at putting the spotlight on someone in a crowd.

The real genius of this opera, however, is the way that Turnage and Hall mess with your head, throwing in a delightfully lyrical aria when a singer is describing the most fearful deeds, telling us in the music that bad things are afoot even if you can’t see them on stage, or catching you off your guard with exuberant party music suddenly interrupted by something important. It’s all performed by Edward Gardner and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House with great verve.

Festen isn’t the first opera adapted from a black comedy movie featuring a dysfunctional group of people trapped in a luxurious space. Thomas Adès’ adaptation of Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel ploughed the same furrow. But where The Exterminating Angel is a work of surrealism, the events of Festen are all too real: this is verismo on steroids, an opera that entertains and makes you laugh and cry at the same time, while hitting home a message that is all too relevant to present-day lives. 

It’s rare for a newly written opera to be quite such an obvious winner. Starting with its co-producers Finnish National Opera, I wish Festen many happy travels around the world.