Moses und Aron

Millennium Centre, Cardiff

3/5

SCHOENBERG’S Moses und Aron is a monumental, unfinished work and it’s a sign of Welsh National Opera’s increased ambition under the directorship of David Pountney that they’ve decided to tackle it as the first part of the “faith” season of three operas. 

The music is modernist and wonderful but the staging of Schoenberg’s epic, woeful in its misjudged 21st-century contemporeity, impairs the Exodus story of Moses leading his people out of Egypt. 

The opening act, staged in a conference centre replete with lecterns, has John Tomlinson as Moses seeking the help of his silver-tongued brother Aron to put into words to the Israelites what God wants them to do. 

Whether the staging is meant to be an allegory for the modern-day Middle East peace process or not is unclear but it certainly distracts from this compelling opera. 

Understudy Mark Le Broq sang Aron at short notice and was masterly in what is a supremely difficult role. It’s hard to credit just how good he was, especially since Le Broq had not apparently rehearsed the role with the orchestra and chorus. 

The latter is equally hard-worked by Schoenberg and during the first act their ferocious berating of Moses brings him to his knees as the mob roars its disbelief in the God they are being told to follow. 

The sound the chorus makes is colossal as it soars to dizzying heights — a true wall of sound. 

But despite the compelling singing and acting what comes unbidden to mind is not how dramatic the libretto is, as Moses tells Aron about “a miracle,” but Monty Python’s Life of Brian. 

When Moses goes into the wilderness in the second act, leaving his tribe in the desert, the stage becomes a cinema where the chorus sits watching Aron’s film. There is no singing for over five minutes as the chorus watches the film that the audience cannot see. This gives rise to an uneasy sense of alienation as the audience watch the chorus watching the audience.

The performances of Le Broq and Tomlinson (pictured) are wonderful and that WNO chorus wall of sound is simply biblical. Conductor Lothar Koenig leads the orchestra’s glorious playing of Schoenberg’s score and ultimately this more than makes up for the inept staging. 

Runs until June 7, box office: (029)2063-6464, then tours until July 26, details: www.wno.org.uk. 

David Nicholson