Page 133 - FINAL_The Sixteen Coverage Book 40th Anniversary Year

24 June 2019

Belshazzar — a biblical booze-up at The

Grange Festival, Northington

★★★★☆

Richard Fairman

The choir is the star of this country house staging of Handel’s oratorio

Robert Murray as Belshazzar © Simon Annand

All kinds of works are turning up in opera houses these days which were not intended to be there. A case in
point is Handel’s oratorios. Written to be performed in concert during Lent when the theatres were
traditionally closed, they tell biblical tales often with a more urgent sense of drama than Handel found for
his long, formal Italian operas.

The Grange Festival (the one based in a handsome, Greek revivalist mansion in the depths of Hampshire)
has a special focus on the Baroque, so we can expect a fair amount of Handel on the programme.
Belshazzar, though, does not come round that often even in concert. This is thought to be its first
professional staging in the UK.

With a mighty booze-up on a biblical scale at its heart, flanked by scenes of the storming of Babylon, the
diverting of the Euphrates and a multitude of Jews in exile, Belshazzar calls out to be a lavish, 1950s
Hollywood epic.

At The Grange the staging, good though it is, was not the prime feature of interest. A Handel oratorio
depends heavily on its choir and bolstering the Grange Festival Chorus with The Sixteen under its founder
and conductor Harry Christophers gave the performance a tremendous shot in the arm. Every choral number
was unanimous and punchy, and the young singers had a high old time dashing in and out, now as Persian

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