Review: SYMPHONY OF SORROWFUL SONGS (SYMPHONY NO. 3 OP. 36), London Coliseum

Featuring a work which doesn't even last an hour, this was never going to be an ordinary evening for the English National Opera but, even from the off, history was being written.

The ENO's public battle to gain funding from Arts Council has been well documented and, on the opening night of the last show before he departs in the summer, its chief exec Stuart Murphy took this opportunity to have his latest - though we doubt final - say on the matter and take to task some of the audience members:

"History is watching you, Nick Serota and Darren Henley at the Arts Council. History is also watching you DCMS Secretary of State Lucy Frazer and Levelling Up Secretary of State Michael Gove. You will all be remembered for and judged by the decisions you made as those decisions could either enable and elevate for the next one hundred years or decimate and destroy what has happened for the past hundred years. I know you know this because some of you are in the theatre tonight. Everyone is watching what you do with this beloved institution."

Following Murphy's excoriating speech, a more somber tone was established due to Kieron Rennie's poetry. The ENO's resident spoken word artist has been a welcome sight this season with his intelligent and brave responses to the night's main event; it can't be easy to stand along on one of London's biggest stages with only a microphone stand between yourself and hundreds of people who can't wait for the opera to start. This, the last piece of his residency, unsurprisingly focused on death but Rennie, with verve and a persistently pertinent patter, digs deep to get under the skin of what it feels like to lose someone close. Bravo.

The ENO has a longstanding tradition of translating foreign language libretti into English but this version of Henryk Górecki's Symphony No. 3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs) keeps faith with the Polish lyrics and both Polish and English surtitles are shown. Murphy explained this beforehand as paying tribute to the text which includes words written on the walls of a concentration camp in Poland; real life, in this case, trumps, corporate norms.

Górecki is, in classical terms, something of a modern pop star. This minimalist symphony was written in 1976 but came to prominence in 1992 when a London Sinfonietta's recording, featuring soloist Dawn Upshaw, was championed by Classic FM and remained at the top of their charts for over a year. Across the pond, it remained in the US Classical charts for an amazing 138 weeks. One of the best-selling contemporary works of our time, its timeless themes of love, loss and grief resonate with a world still rocked by terrible wars and the after-effects of an era-defining pandemic.

Isabella Bywater did wonders with her immersive design for Jonathan Miller's La bohème, a much-loved favourite at the Coliseum. She returns to direct a visually enticing staging within a wedge-like installation bounded by a bead curtain on two sides is a metaphor in itself, showing how death is often a very pointed affair that is felt incredibly hard and deep before, over time, broadening out to become a more general sadness. Patterns suggesting rain or ocean waves are projected onto the curtains, visceral reflections of Górecki's heartrending music.

The music is slow, hypnotic and full of long notes. In response, the three movements are portrayed as a barely-moving tableaux. In the first part, a woman (American soprano Nicole Chevalier) mourns in the background beside a person suspended in midair and a man sits on a chair at the front of the stage. Chevalier eventually sits alone on the chair staring out at us before being joined by grey, faceless figures before, still sitting, she is lifted into the air. As the chair nears the ceiling, the singer falls off and slowly comes down to earth.

The second scene is based on the real words scrawled onto a Gestapo prison wall by a girl ("Mother, don't cry..."). Bywater's crepuscular and claustrophobic design captures the desperation and sorrow in the long notes perfectly, having Chevalier bent over, lit from below through a grate and from above by a single spotlight, before being dragged away presumably to her execution. Knowing its history gives all this a harrowing poignancy.

The final part recalls the first: a mother cries out for her son, searching the landscape for any sign of him, not knowing if he is alive, wounded or dead. Around her, dark figures with bloody clothing walk on only to fall down, writhing and then laying very still. At the conclusion, Chevalier is gifted a pair of immense golden wings and ascends to the heavens, dropping flowers onto a girl below.

Bywater has done a superb job of bringing to life the misery of death, the agony of separated mothers and children and the devasting effect on those left behind to mourn for the rest of their eternity. Russian-America conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya is a fascinating figure in the pit: sans baton, her hands weave and undulate with expert precision in alignment with Chevalier's powerful voice. All three women contribute to a work which elevates the affecting source material to new emotional levels.

Ultimately, it is not just Michael Gove under the watchful eye of history but all of us. At heart, Górecki's symphony is less about those who have passed on but those left behind. Newspaper headlines usually report war statistics purely in terms of the number of dead and wounded when, perhaps, a more meaningful figure would be the number of those bereaved. Of the millions of deaths caused by the manifold violent conflicts over the last century, how many more millions of hearts were broken, never to be repaired? And what can we as a society do to prevent such tragedies?

Symphony Of Sorrowful Songs continues at the ENO until 6 May.

Photo credit: Clive Barda

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