Page 130 - FINAL_The Sixteen Coverage Book 40th Anniversary Year

20 June 2019

The Grange Festival 2019 – Handel’s Belshazzar – Robert Murray,
Claire Booth, Christopher Ainslie; directed by Daniel Slater;

conducted by Harry Christophers

****

Thursday, June 20, 2019 The Grange, Northington, Alresford, Hampshire, England

Reviewed by Curtis Rogers

Daniel Slater’s astute production of Handel’s Belshazzar (an oratorio and not originally intended for staging)
dynamically and imaginatively aligns both the Biblical basis of the work (whose narrative tells of the fall of
Babylon and the liberation of the Jews, at the hands of the Persian king, Cyrus) with what seems to be an
oblique comment upon the current, ongoing struggle for control in the Middle East. The emotional focus
falls upon Belshazzar’s mother, Nitocris, who is seen grieving for her dead son at the beginning and at the
end of the work, and she appears to stand in metaphorically for the fate of the region generally (Babylon, it
will be remembered, lies in modern day Iraq) – as both the Jewish prophet Daniel, and Cyrus harbour
romantic interests in her (facets of this production which are not given in Charles Jennens’s libretto,
although she does take seriously the claims of the Jews that their God will eventually avenge himself on the
blasphemous Belshazzar).

The set is dominated by the huge wall encircling Babylon which looks impregnable against attack by the
Persians, though the city is eventually broached through the assistance of the renegade Babylonian, Gobrias.
In any case, this apparent war of liberation is shown up for the violent power-grab all such battles usually
turn out to be, as the Persians wield menacing daggers in ironic counterpoint to their chorus at the beginning
of Act Two where they anticipate victory and freedom. The appearance of the captive Israelites behind the
high battlements of Babylon, clad as contemporary Orthodox Jews, reminds us that Israel is emphatically
not the oppressed of the Middle East today, as the modern state now constructs obstructive walls – and
Trump Heights – in its turn, as an expression of invidious power, just as the contemporary counterpart to its
guardian Persians, America, does to keep Latino migrants at bay. But it must also give a British audience

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