THE STAGE
REVIEWS OCT 24, 2022 NATIONAL OPERA HOUSE, WEXFORD

By George Hall
Dvořák - Armida
“Formidable delivery”
Jozef Benci and Jennifer Davis in Wexford Festival Opera's Armida at the National Opera House.

Rousing performance of Dvořák’s flawed final opera

Best known on the operatic stage for his dark fairytale Rusalka, Czech composer Antonín Dvořák produced his version of Armida in Prague in March 1904. It flopped. Dvorak died a few weeks later, casting a double pall on the piece, from which it has never recovered.

Other factors have militated against its revival. Set against the background of the First Crusade, the libretto pits Christians and Muslims against each other in a way that must have seemed outdated even in 1904 (the best-known settings of the story are one or even two centuries older). These days, it feels woefully politically crude.

Armida is a Muslim sorcerer. She’s encouraged by her father, King Hydraoth of Damascus, and the Syrian ruler and fellow-sorcerer Ismen to derail the Christian knights on the First Crusade by seducing their susceptible champion, Rinald, with whom she has dallied with before. She succeeds – but, following a romantic interlude in her magic garden, things go badly wrong when Rinald returns to the Crusaders and ultimately kills his lover, who has disguised herself as a male Muslim warrior.

Musically, the score is drenched in Wagner, almost to the point of plagiarism at times. The scoring is heavy and the style more symphonic than theatrical. The characters rarely come to life. That said, Wexford makes the best possible case for Armida. Drawing on videos (by Raffaele Acquaviva) and multiple mirrors, Hartmut Schörghofer’s self-designed production looks consistently good and even finds solutions to the narrative’s regular recourse to magic spells, as well as to its moments of sheer spectacle – notably a flying dragon.

CGI images of the invaders’ encampment make the crusader forces – played by Wexford’s relatively small but dauntless chorus – seem terrifyingly large. War footage from various periods exposes the brutality of the Christians’ prosecution of their supposedly Christian cause. The narrative comes over with devastating clarity.

The casting is close to ideal. Dressed on her initial appearance as a Brünnhilde-like warrior maiden, soprano Jennifer Davis keeps faith with the inordinately Wagnerian demands of the title role. As her easily tempted Christian knight lover Rinald, shiny-voiced tenor Gerard Schneider sounds magnificent for most of the evening, though (understandably) he tires on the final stretch. There are strong supporting performances from Stanislav Kuflyuk as the wicked Ismen, Jozef Benci as the threatened Damascene king, and Jan Hynk as Peter the Hermit, with Rory Dunne doubling as Bohumir and the Muezzin.

Conductor Norbert Baxa formidably delivers the challenging score, with the Wexford chorus (trained by Andrew Synnott) and orchestra giving their all. Presented at this standard, Armida proves well worth encountering. But there’s no way it is ever going to make it into the repertoire.