Susanna
- Robert Beale
- Oct 6
- 3 min read
Handel
Opera North
Grand Theatre, Leeds
October 4,11,20,22, 2025: 2 hrs 45 mins
(also at Newcastle Theatre Royal, November 7; Lowry Salford, November 14)
Turning a period-piece oratorio by Handel into an operatic performance for today is no easy task. Oratorio, though sung in English when most operas in London were heard in Italian, was done strictly without staging or costumes, often on biblical subjects.
Susanna, from 1749, is in the flowery poetic diction of the time and based on a story from the Apocryphal version of the book of Daniel – but has a strikingly modern theme, of a woman falsely accused by men whose double standards are all too obvious, but who is vindicated by her purity and integrity.
To stage it, Opera North have teamed up with Phoenix Dance Theatre, the Leeds contemporary company, to make a hybrid opera-plus-dance presentation.
“Susanna and the Elders” is about a chaste and faithful wife who is the subject of, first, voyeurist lust on the part of two supposed pillars of the community, then an attempted joint entrapment by the same pair as she takes a bath in her private garden. She refuses them and is publicly accused of infidelity with an unnamed “wanton youth” whom they say they saw. Instantly condemned to death (two witnesses being the requisite evidence), she is saved at the last minute by the intervention of the prophet Daniel, who asks each accuser separately what kind of tree shielded the supposed act, and they give different answers – hence collapse of prosecution case, and Susanna’s faithfulness and integrity vindicated.
You don’t need to look far to find hypocritical and lecherous men taking advantage of innocent women in every age, so the translation in Olivia Fuchs’ production to a timeless present (design by Zahra Mansouri) is highly apt. There’s an easily recognisable wedding scene for her and her husband, Joachim, a very modern-looking bath for her to take her dip as she sings Crystal streams in murmurs flowing, which might imply something more like skinny-dipping in the anonymous librettist’s mind, wonderfully sung by Anna Dennis in the title role; and when she is condemned a stone altar appears, to imply threatened blood sacrifice, though the main immediate visual action is her humiliation by besmirching hands.
In every way the jewel of the production is the title role performance by Anna Dennis. She interacts with everyone on the stage, she catches the emotions of the role in every glance and movement, and she sings with precisely-tuned beauty. Claire Lees, from the Opera North Chorus, has the important role of young Daniel at the close of the drama and, dressed as an obvious outsider and rebel, sang with force and distinction.
Because of the necessity for an open stage to accommodate the dancing, there were a few occasions when solo singers were not ideally placed to make their best impact. Matthew Brook, as Susanna’s father Chelsias, suffered a little in this respect, and James Hall, the unimpeachable husband who happens to be away when all the bad stuff happens, did also. But he has a glorious moment in the one and only duet in the score, right at the end – a lovely two-voice cadenza for him and Anna Dennis forming its glorious climax.
The two evil elders, Colin Judson, and Karl Humml, are a well-contrasted pair in almost every respect: voice type, stature and demeanour.
Johanna Soller conducts from one of two harpsichords and obtains both suitably weighty tone and contrasting lightness from the Orchestra of Opera North. The chorus singing (prepared by Anthony Kraus) is magnificent: one of the best qualities of the performance.
More info and tickets here
