Oedipe, Royal Festival Hall, London: George Enescu’s opera has a bewildering impact

Vladimir Jurowski conducts an orchestra of 100 in this ambitious concert-hall staging

Vladimir Jurowski conducts the orchestra with baritone Paul Gay in the title role (Allex Max)

An orchestra of 100, two choruses, a staggering 14 soloists and no fewer than three Sophocles plays go into the making of George Enescu’s opera Oedipe. No wonder it took Romania’s national composer 20 years to complete. Logistics (both physical and financial) keep the work out of the regular repertoire but that only adds to the bewildering impact of the piece when it does occasionally make it to the stage.

In this case it was a concert-hall stage but since most of Oedipe’s drama is in its many-layered score – patricide, incest and civil unrest dissolved down into brusque bass clarinets and contrabassoons, wheedling saxophone and a lustrous oil-slick of strings – the loss was negligible.

Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra were joined for their opening concert of the season by two Romanian choirs as well as a starry team of soloists. The magnificent Ildiko Komlosi’s scene-stealing Sphinx (unnecessarily amplified), Willard White’s bluff, craggy Tiresias, Graham Clark’s characterful Shepherd and Gabriela Istoc’s chastely lovely Antigone were all glittering flecks in the musical fabric but it was Paul Gay in the title role who held focus – tireless through the relentless demands of Act IV.

Jurowski kept his huge forces afloat through the score’s stormier moments, though there was far too much physical faff and stage business among the soloists for the meditative sections of Enescu’s opera-oratorio to move beyond fidgeting and come into focus. Given the luxury of an opera house’s rehearsal time, this would have been a five-star smash to match the Royal Opera’s recent production.