Sumidagawa/Curlew River at Christ Church Spitalfields on 7 September 2012

There will be a rash of Benjamin Britten events over the next 18 months, since 2013 marks the centenary of his birth. But last Friday’s performance of Sumidagawa and Curlew River at Christ Church Spitalfields (repeated in Orford, Suffolk on Sunday) promised to be one of the most interesting, bringing together Britten’s “Japanese” opera with the Noh play that inspired it.

With current financial constraints, it’s become unusual to see genuine Noh performances in the UK, so even without the Britten, the performance of Sumidagawa was a treat for Japanese aficionados. Apart from some understandable short cuts in the staging, this was a first-rate and fully authentic performance, with the shite (protagonist) role taken by Tomotaka Sekine, Professor of Noh at Tokyo University of the Arts, and officially recognised as Preserver of an Important Intangible Cultural Property. The echo in the church made the words even harder than usual to make out, but the elements that struck Britten so forcefully when he saw this work in 1956 were apparent – in particular the way in which Noh’s highly stylised and pared-down gestures actually heighten the emotional impact of the theatre.

It therefore seemed perverse that these Noh influences were mostly discarded in the Curlew River performance that followed. It was a fine performance on its own terms, but why pair it with the Noh if one is going to ignore all Britten’s performance directions? Gone was the minimalism of the Noh stage and the stylised acting, and gone, too, was Britten’s translation of the story into a mediaeval monastery setting, in favour of an interpretation that seemed to set the action among a group of the homeless, sitting on discarded cans of cooking oil in front of a large pile of junk. (Or was that junk the present-day equivalent of the pine tree at the back of the traditional Noh stage?) Rather than to Noh, the references were apparently to Waiting for Godot – a valid concept in its own right, given the fruitless search of the opera’s main character for her missing son, but a missed opportunity when pairing the Britten with the original Noh play that inspired it.

In other respects, though, this was as fine a performance of Curlew River as one is likely to see. With the soloists all Japanese, I was worried that the words wouldn’t come across, given the echo in the church, but for the most part this wasn’t a problem. Jun Suzuki as the Mad Woman, in particular, should be singled out for praise, not only for his diction, but also for his superlative singing and acting. With his flowing locks and his eye shadow, he even looked convincingly like a woman – not that Britten would have wanted him to. The instrumentalists and chorus were all first rate, and the performance packed a powerful emotional punch at the climax, when the spirit of the dead boy appeared, apparently as a curlew (though whiter). So even though the link between them had been weakened, it was nevertheless an evening of two great performances.

These performances were supported by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation.