Last Updated on March 13, 2026
Happy Families…
5.0 out of 5.0 starsA new opera by English composer Mark-Anthony Turnage is always a cause for excitement amongst the critical classes. Scribblers like myself, as well as the great and the good of the classical music world, were out in force last night at Covent Garden for the triumphant premiere of Festen, the finest English-language opera for many years.
Turnage’s work has a strong connection to the jazz idiom, showing the influence of Miles Davis, with his works often showcasing top-ranking jazz musicians. But it is Turnage as an opera composer of international renown that concerns us here. Turnage’s first opera, Greek, written whilst he was still in his twenties and first performed in 1988, is based on Steven Berkoff’s adaptation of Oedipus Rex. The Silver Tassle, from 2000, is an adaptation of Seán O’Casey’s play of the same name. Anna Nicole, first performed in 2011, told the salacious story of Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith. There was a family opera, Coraline, taken from the eponymous Neil Gaiman fantasy novel, at the Barbican in 2018. Next up is The Railway Children at Glyndebourne in October. But tonight is the opening night of Festen, the Danish word for ‘a celebration’, with Turnage’s music set to a libretto by Lee Hall (Billy Elliot, Rocketman) in a co-production with the Finnish National Opera.
Festen is anything but a children’s opera with the programme promising ‘themes of child sexual abuse, suicide and addiction’ with depictions of ‘racist behaviour, nudity, sex and violence.’ There is also a half-hour provided for reflection in the auditorium at the end of the show. There have been backstage whispers of the singers not being comfortable with the libretto, but judging from the whoops and cheers coming from the post-show party, any concerns have been left in the rehearsal room.
Festen’s story is taken from Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg’s film of the same name. The film, the first to follow the manifesto of the Dogme 95 film movement written by Vinterberg and director Lars von Trier, won the Jury Prize at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. Dogme 95 films were stripped of production effects such as music and lighting, with everything being filmed on location with handheld cameras to provide a greater sense of authenticity to the story and acting.
The narrative of Festen centres around a gathering to celebrate the 60th birthday of family patriarch Helge in his and his wife Else’s hotel. In a nice touch, each seat at the opera house had an embossed invitation. The event brings together family and friends, including Helge’s three remaining children; a daughter, Linda, had recently committed suicide. Christian, the eldest, has turned up unexpectedly from Paris in jeans and a flat cap. The other brother, Michael, a boorish, violent man who was not invited because of his bad behaviour the previous year, arrives with his much-abused wife, Mette and their three young children. The remaining sister, Helena and her black boyfriend, Gbatokai, a late arrival, make up the sibling group. The drama pivots around a speech given by Christian to honour his father, which turns into a damning accusation of brutal sexual abuse by the father of both Christian and Linda. Mayhem ensues.
The opera opens in the hotel lobby. Designer Miriam Buether’s set for Festen is a wide-open space framed by elongated pine panelling with just a circular reception desk to fill it. This allows the large cast to energise the space as they respond to the opening triplet string and brass figures. Mark-Anthony Turnage’s score which he has described as being “quite jazzy in places” is vital and energetic. It inhabits the world of contemporary classical music with influences from Wagner but most importantly Benjamin Britten, spinning in and out of tonality with a virtuosic flourish. There is a sense of propulsive rhythmic energy that comes directly from the big band era, with instrumental sections trading atonal riffs. There are also elegiac melodic moments as well as debauched takes on popular dance styles, Movement Director Lucy Burge’s chaotic conga is a highlight.
Central to the success of Festen is Lee Hall’s libretto. Blessed with a powerful three-act narrative arc, his words are punchy, playful or infused with violence and emotion. Hall is unafraid to use the most industrial of language as the story demands, and the first night audience lapped it up. Minor characters are finely drawn, creating an ensemble feel to the piece. Sensitive topics such as the explicit racism shown to Gbatokai, with the party guests singing an infernal round of Baa Baa Black Sheep to him, and the willingness of the party invitees’ collective denial of Helge’s sexual abuse, are handled with humour and understanding. The drama is interleaved with comedy. There is a hilarious soup-based scene in which the party guests try to identify the soup they are eating. “What is this soup? Salmon? Lobster? It’s more like a velouté.”
The 80-strong cast of Festen is uniformly excellent. Allan Clayton, the leading British dramatic tenor and the Peter Grimes of our times, plays the recovering alcoholic Christian as a shambling, sensitive and damaged soul. His voice is like a beacon of light as it caresses Turnage’s melodic contours, shining out through the emotional mayhem that he wreaks on his mother and father.
French baritone Stéphane Degout is convincing as the thuggish younger brother Michael. A domineering bully berating his wife for forgetting his dress shoes, he constantly teeters on the edge of violence and regularly delivers on that promise. It’s an appropriately sung performance of a character bearing his own scars. British baritone Peter Brathwaite makes a fine showing as Gbatokai, unwittingly getting drawn into the family drama, but he is no victim and is able to stand up for himself.
Grammy-award-winning Canadian bass-baritone Gerald Finley is charismatic and vocally powerful as the guilty father Helge. In a grim admission of his own culpability, he says to his children, “It was all you were good for.” Finley exudes a controlling sense of authority, added to by his rich vocal sonorities. Warm-toned mezzo Rosie Aldridge, who impressed as Mrs Sedley, the town snooper in Deborah Warner’s Peter Grimes plays Else, Helge’s wife and mother to the children. Always protective of her husband and dismissive of her children, she manages her character’s journey with aplomb. from a gracious hostess to uncontrollable screams as Helge is given a beating by Michael.
Welsh soprano Natalya Romaniw as the youngest daughter, Helena, weaponises her powerful soprano into a tool of accusation as she turns against her father, reading her late sister’s suicide note to the assembled gathering.
Dutch baritone Thomas Oliemans gave us a deliciously hapless turn as Helmut, the master of ceremonies for the event, desperately trying to hold things together as a series of disruptive events unfurls around him.
Mezzo-soprano Susan Bickley as Grandma, Fricka in director Richard Jones’ The Valkyrie at the ENO, created a standout moment of singing as she delivered a transcendent folk song with violence breaking out around her, and Philippa Boyle in her house debut as Michael’s wife Mette unleashes the power of her spinto soprano as she stands up to her vile husband.
As the dead daughter, Linda, mezzo-soprano Marta Fontanals-Simmons appears as a bedraggled wraith and impresses with her stillness and purity of tone.
Welsh character tenor Aled Hall plays the wily chef as a provocateur, encouraging his childhood friend Christian to unmask his father and ordering the hotel staff to remove the car keys of the guests so they all have to stay until the bitter end. English tenor Julian Hubbard makes his house debut as the receptionist Lars, trying to keep a cool head in the chaos.
Pia (British mezzo-soprano Clare Presland) a waitress member of the hotel staff, invites herself to her old flame Christian’s bedroom for a ‘bath’. In a touching scene and to the strains of a plangent oboe melody, she lists all her failed love affairs from the last year as she attempts to seduce Christian, the last man standing in her life. He simply falls asleep.
Star veteran operatic bass singer John Tomlinson as Grandpa creates an impactful cameo as a character sliding into dementia, but still able to humiliate his own son Helge with tales of his youthful inadequacies. Tomlinson’s voice lacks the grandeur of his glory years, but he has lost none of his control, and it was a joy to hear him again in Festen.
Director Richard Jones brings the same level of directorial control to Festen as he did to his visceral production of Sophie Treadwell’s extraordinary play Machinal at the Old Vic. With terrific acting and characterisations as well as a playful use of the large cast, this Festen should be a huge hit and be revived often.
Conductor Edward Gardner marshals the orchestral forces of the Royal Opera House with subtlety and a powerful sense of dynamics, never overwhelming the singers. The unfolding drama is tightly marshalled, building to a series of dramatic climaxes as the different orchestral sections fight for ascendancy. A classical orchestra will probably never achieve the sense of groove that seems implicit in Turnage’s music, but the ROH band made a pretty good fist of it.
If opera is going to be sustained as an art form in the UK, we need contemporary stories such as Festen, written in an accessible musical language that can attract and energise younger audiences. As we see the spectre of art becoming a weapon of the state in the USA, here in the UK, we must embrace the difficult, the problematic and the challenging. Turnage and Hall’s triumph is that they have shown the way forward with a work that is mature in conception and delivery, but that feels like a template for a new kind of high art as we move into an uncertain and disruptive future.
11–27 February 2025
Royal Opera House
Bow Street
London
WC2E 9DD
For more in London, check our opera previews for 2025
Leave a Reply