Handel’s Saul at Glyndebourne

Despite being a fan of the opera and growing up and living near to Glyndebourne, I’ve never actually attended a performance there. The eye watering ticket prices have up until now deterred me. But life is for living, I’ve always promised myself that one day I would shell out. i’ve been holding out for a revival of Theodora by Handel. I was tempted when they did Saul a few years ago. And now this has been revived I thought I’d give it a go. I’ve got quite a long history with Saul. It was picking up a CD of it at random in a public library that got me into Handel in a big way around 30 years ago. I’ve listened to it many times, particularly the John Eliot Gardner recording. So I know it well. How would it stack up on stage? In

Glyndebourne’s Saul Performance

Basically everything was great. The acoustics in Glyndebourne are astonishing. You can hear other members of the audience in the auditorium talking from the upper circle before the performance starts. When the music starts you can hear everything clearly and distinctly.

And the staging is out of this world. The sets were sumptuous. The singing was serene. The sound was sensational.

There were some bits that might have been controversial a few years ago. The relationship between David and Jonathan was portrayed as being a homosexual one. That is pretty much how it reads in the libretto so it isn’t much of a stretch. But it doesn’t really make much impression on an audience nowadays. There’s also a transgender witch. But it’s hardly the Rocky Horror Show.

How Does Saul Sound to Modern Ears?

Saul is an oratorio so wasn’t written to be staged. This means the narrative in the libretto does all the work of telling the story. So one of the things we can work out from the it is what the librettist – Charles Jennens who would later word up the Messiah – assumed about the audiences’ knowledge of the Bible.

So from the first scene it is assumed that you know quite a bit of the background.

You know that the Israelites are fighting the Philistines. The Philistines have a champion who is a giant who can beat anyone on the Israelite side. Saul is a successful king. Jonathan is his son and heir. David is a non-royal who has nonetheless saved the day by killing the giant with a sling. This prowess saved the day at one battle but the war is ongoing. David is also handy with a harp and can use it as therapy to cure Saul’s bouts of madness. There is a prophet called Samuel who has recently died but who previously advised Saul on military and political policies, including recommending genocide and destruction against the defeated city of Amolek – advice Saul ignored in favour of a more profitable approach of enslaving them and keeping their property.

When I first listened to the oratorio I followed the story easily enough but did have to dig out a Bible for some of the details. I am sure older generations would have had an easier time knowing what was going on. I doubt a typical modern youngster would find the characters or the motivations at all familiar. They would have much less trouble to find the information than I did – I dare say Wikipedia has it all. But nonetheless that still probably won’t give it the resonance that biblical stories have for older people. Culture changes and it’s interesting observing it happen.

What did Saul mean when it was first performed?

It seems to be the case that dramatic adaptations with music like operas, musicals and oratorios work best when they have a familiar story. It’s hard work on the audience following a plot and relation to characters that they know nothing about. At the time, Bible stories must have fitted this bill quite closely.

So with the framework in place the story the librettist could set about telling the story. It is a portrait of the fall of a great man.“Oh fatal day, how low the mighty lie.” Saul was an effective leader and a great fighter. But his pride and insecurity led him to be jealous of the skill and popularity of David. Handel never seemed to need a particularly good libretto to work from. But I think this one suited his talents particularly well. As Saul falls apart his madness leads to defeat and death. Every emotion is studied from grief and despair through to a final triumphant greeting of the arrival of David on the throne.

It’s old fashioned but it still works. We don’t believe in virtuous heroes any more but we still get the concept. It can still move us.

Saul and Geopolitics

This run of Saul at Glyndebourne has passed without controversy, but a recent performance at Cambridge University was cancelled. I think that was an overreaction. But I can see the point that was being made. The Bible account makes it pretty clear that the Israelites were aggressively trying to displace the original inhabitants, the Philistines, from a region that is at the time I am writing this a part of what is known as Israel.

The only place name mentioned in Handel’s work is Mount Gilboa. But David is associated with Hebron and Jerusalem in the Bible – being crowned in one and conquering the other. These are all located in what is now the West Bank which would be the heart of a Palestinian state that is recognised in principle by over 100 UN members. Logically it seems far fetched to associate the tribes described in an account of events some 3,000 years ago with modern societies. We don’t blame modern Norwegians for Viking raids or resent Italians for atrocities committed by the Roman Empire.

Although there is a similarity in the name between the Philistines of the Bible and the Palestinians of our time, there really isn’t anything linking them particularly strongly. They might share the geography but their culture is 3000 years apart. The settlers from Europe and other parts of the Middle East have an even more tenuous link to the stories in the Bible. But the libretto is rather bloodthirsty, and if you do identify with the Philistines you might well find their depiction in Saul a bit distressing.

I’m not aware of any corroborating evidence for the story of Saul and David outside of the scripture tradition, that we all share. it would be quite reasonable to dismiss it all as fiction. But there is something in this story that does seem to resonate with modern problems in the same area. Reading between the lines, it looks like Saul represented a less hardline faction that was happy to collaborate to some extent with the indigenous population. He had defeated the Amalekites but wanted to normalise relationship with them. David, who as a psalm writer had a media platform that he could use to his advantage, favoured genocide. As is often the case, bad behaviour was justified by being the word of God.

It feels to me that in the book of Samuel, we are reading not a made up fable nor a straightforward account of historical events. It is much more like the propaganda required by a new regime who is trying to establish its legitimacy. This is most obvious in the way David acquires the throne via an Amelekite who admits to having killed Saul out of mercy following his botched attempted suicide to avoid capture by the Philistines.

The narrative accomplishes multiple things for David simultaneously: it removes him from any complicity in Saul’s death (he wasn’t even present), demonstrates his loyalty and respect for legitimate kingship (he executes someone for killing “the Lord’s anointed”), and eliminates the only witness to whatever actually happened on that battlefield.

The timing is also politically perfect – David receives the royal regalia as “proof” of Saul’s death just when he needs to establish his legitimacy as successor. And the execution of the messenger, while presented as righteous indignation, does indeed silence the one person who might have contradicted the official version of events.

So I think we are the victims of centuries old spin. And while the weapons have changed out of all recognition, we still live in a world where the crafty can make the unwary do unspeakable things.