Judith Weir’s Blond Eckbert: Double Bill, Hackney Empire then touring; English Touring Opera.

4✩✩✩✩ Review: Clare Colvin.

“Murder will out on a dark and stormy night in the Harz Mountains.”

Dame Judith Weir’s haunting one-act opera is based on a supernatural short story by an exponent of early German Romanticism, Ludwig Tieck.  The setting is the Harz Mountains where Blond Eckbert and his wife Berthe live in self-imposed seclusion.  Designer Eleanor Bull’s evocative set updates the period to some time in the 1930s with the marital retreat as a modernist box of Venetian blinds, dominated by towering silver birches. Distant mountain peaks dissolve into mist.

All is not well, we learn from the narrator of the tale,  a talking bird in glittering cap that dwells on the roof of the house - exquisitely sung by the high-ranging soprano Aoife Miskelly, making her ETO  debut.  The pattering of bird’s feet  above their heads has an unnerving effect on the couple. They light up cigarettes to calm their nerves, and await the arrival of the only friend whom they still consent to see, the huntsman Walter (tenor William Morgan).

Baritone Alex Otterburn’s rigidly controlled Eckbert prevails upon mezzo Flora McIntosh’s cool, be-trousered Berthe to tell the strange story of her childhood to their mutual friend. When she does so, Eckbert realises that Walter already knows part of the story, which reflects uncomfortably on Berthe’s past.  A thunderstorm leads to Walter having to stay overnight.  Eckbert’s suspicions as to Walter’s knowledge of Berthe’s past boils over into paranoia, leading to the violent assault and murder of his overnight guest. 

From there we follow Eckbert’s deranged mind as he encounters others who appear to him as doppelgängers, either befriending or accusing him.  The moral seems to be that murder will out, as will living a lie.  The opera is certainly a fascinating piece of psychological detection, and beautifully sung, though bleak in its conclusion. 

As a short story rarely sustains a full evening, a preliminary one act concert as Vorspeise to Weir’s main course, titled Do not take my story for a fairy tale,  fills the gap.  The mash up of works by CPE Bach, Schubert, Haydn, and Beethoven, defined as German Romanticism composers,  is lovely to look at and there’s wonderful singing from soprano Abigail Kelly, mezzo Amy J Payne, tenor Matthew McKinney, and baritone Mark Nathan - but it’s rather low on dramatic appeal.

Conductor: Gerry Cornelius; Director: Robin Norton-Hale; Designer: Eleanor Bull; Lighting Designer: Jamie Bull; Costume Supervisor: Bex Kemp; Production pictures: Richard Hubert Smith

11-12 October at Snape Maltings Concert Hall with Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snowmaiden (017728 687110). Then touring till 30 November www.englishtouringopera.org.uk