Metastasio is at his most neoclassical in this, his tenth dramma per musica (out of 26 total plays, not counting the festival operas and shorter works). At its core, the plot of Adriano in Siria, the story of which is derived from the histories of Dio Cassius, is the well-mined Baroque trope of love versus duty. The opera is set in Antioch, where we find Adriano, the victorious Roman emperor, to be in love with princess and captive Emirena, daughter of Adriano’s now-conquered enemy, the Parthian king Osroa. However, Adriano conveniently forgets that he is betrothed to his compatriot Sabina, who also arrives in Antioch during Act I. Likewise, Emirena is in love with, and is loved in return by Farnaspe, a Parthian prince. Complicating these matters further is Aquilio, a Roman tribune who is secretly in love with Sabina, as well as Osroa’s repeated attempts to depose Adriano. As much as he loves Emirena, duty is ultimately victorious and Adriano allows her to marry Farnaspe, in so doing returning to Osroa his kingdom and fulfilling his promise to Sabina.

This text was by a long stretch one of Metastasio’s more popular libretti, having already been set 41 times by the time of Johann Christian Bach’s version in 1765 (the original setting by Antonio Caldara was performed in 1732) and would continue to be set another 22 times up until the late 1820s. The text has not been as popular in terms of variety of modern revivals when compared with other Metastasio texts such as L’Olimpiade or La clemenza di Tito, but there have nevertheless been a few notable productions of other settings, such as that of Pergolesi (Ottavio Dantone/Accademia Bizantina) and most recently a recording of Etienne Méhul’s late Classical, French adaptation Adrien, which has been released in digital-only format (Gyorgi Vashegyi/Orfeo Orchestra).

Johann Christian Bach was the only one of the Bach children to have written Italianate opera, even though this is on a rather small scale when compared with other composers of the time: his operatic output totals only 11 works, beginning with a setting of Metastasio’s Artaserse for Naples in 1760, and ending with Amadis de Gaule, a tragédie lyrique set to a reworked version of Philippe Quinault’s libretto, for Paris in 1779. Just over half of his works for the stage, Adriano in Siria included, were produced for London, where he had, like Handel before him, become a regular fixture in the musical life at court as well as on the public circuit. It is this particular London episode which is of interest to Ian Page and Classical Opera, given that the young Mozart and his family were present there in 1764/5 and would have in all likelihood been present at Adriano in Siria’s première. This performance forms part of Classical Opera’s Mozart 250 series, a project on a grand scale set to culminate in 2041, ‘which travels 250 years back in time to follow the chronological trajectory of Mozart’s life, works, and influences’.

J.C. Bach’s music was on the whole pleasant and accomplished, if not the most memorable. Typical of many mid-eighteenth-century composers, Bach’s style generally follows the trend towards a more identifiably Classical sound world, though there were nevertheless moments which could easily have passed for something written by Leonardo Leo or Johann Adolf Hasse (one thinks here especially of Adriano’s Tutti nemici, e rei at the end of Act II, or Aquilio’s Più bella al tempo usato in Act III). At times there were even flashes which looked forward to the styles of Christoph Gluck or Giovanni Paisiello. The slow arias tended to be the most successful and convincing showcases of his melodic gifts, such as Farnaspe’s Cara, la dolce fiamma, or Emirena’s aria with flutes Deh, lascia o ciel pietoso, both in Act II. The arie di bravura on the other hand, while technically difficult and adequate vehicles for display of vocal agility and virtuosity, felt on the whole to be somewhat lacking in the grandeur and brilliance which one might find in Bach’s direct contemporaries. Likewise the textbook example of a terzetto closing Act II could have been much more dramatically potent. But this is not to say that these pieces were not enjoyable. Indeed, there were many lovely moments in the score on the whole, such as Farnaspe and Emirena’s duet at the end of Act I, Se non ti moro allato, which makes very effective use of chains of suspensions to illustrate the pair of lovers’ entwined fate, or Osroa’s second act aria Leon, piagato a morte where the conflicting textures of the first and second violins mirror the trapped lion of Metastasio’s poetic comparison. Any disappointing moments (and perhaps I am being rather too critical here!) should be considered the fault of Bach’s score rather than Ian Page’s artistic decisions.

The production at the Royal College of Music’s Britten Theatre presented a strong ensemble cast, with sopranos Erica Eloff and Ellie Laugharne as Farnaspe and Emirena, mezzo soprano Rowan Hellier and soprano Filipa van Eck as the titular Adriano and his betrothed Sabina, and tenors Stuart Jackson and Nick Pritchard as Osroa and Aquilio respectively. The casting was evidently very thoughtfully done, with each of the sopranos preserving their own individuality and thus creating very clearly defined characters: a boyish Farnaspe, the strong-willed and sultry Sabina, and the demure and faithful Emirena. Across the board the singing was enjoyable and technically good. In terms of the interpretation, the ornamentation, which many find to be the bane of this repertoire, was used to good dramatic effect – particularly by Erica Eloff – by treating it as emotionally charged rather than just superfluous decoration. Occasionally one felt that the recitatives suffered from unclear diction, a problem which was especially apparent when there was a glitch in the surtitle projection during Act I. This may also have had much to do with the rather dry acoustic of the Britten Theatre, and an attendant sound balance problem. Likewise, only very occasionally did one feel that the acting could have been a bit tighter: Osroa comes to mind here, where his scheming nature did not come across as clearly as it might have. But, that said, Stuart Jackson’s clear and smooth tenor nevertheless delivered the goods in his arias.

The production benefited from a restrained staging. One often feels that modern directors are somewhat at sea with the stasis produced by the rigid recitative-aria formula which exists in the dramma per musica until the end of the eighteenth century, and thus feel the need to overdo the action and bits of business in a desperate attempt to rescue the audience from tedium. Thomas Guthrie ensured that there was none of that here, and it is to the creative team’s collective credit that at no point did the production feel as though it was dragging on too long, however much the eternal bringing-together and breaking-apart of the main pair of lovers may have threatened to do.

Visually, suggestion was the predominant modus operandi of the set design, somewhere in between minimalism and Baroque perspective scenery: a column here, a panel reminiscent of Pompeiian wall-paintings there. Much use was made of silhouette and different washes of colour, from the pastoral green of the royal gardens in Act II to the wonderfully atmospheric red used for the burning of Antioch at the end of Act I. While these effects may come across on paper as being simplistic touches, in practice they never felt trite or underwhelming. Metastasio’s writing and plot, like the French tragedy with which it shares much of its aesthetic ideals, can often be rather Spartan, and understanding it for what it is, and taking it on its own terms, in order to play and respond to its strengths is more often than not the right approach to take, I think, and certainly one which has been successfully applied here.

Despite my minor gripes, the evening was still a very successful one, and my closing comment is one which I will continue to make for some time, I fear. In the first place, we do need to hear more eighteenth-century operatic works which are not Mozart, or Haydn, or Gluck, for they, as Ian Page notes in his introduction, provide the (very rich and multifaceted) context into which these composers can come into their own and be understood as part of a tradition as opposed to simply way stations on the long path to the celebrated nineteenth-century operas which form the current repertory. And secondly, we need to hear them on a more regular basis, for otherwise, all the efforts to resurrect them are for nothing if they are to be just as transient as they were when they were first produced. Classical Opera’s Mozart 250 project certainly looks as though it has the potential to remedy this, and I look forward to seeing what else they present us with in years to come.

Three performances of Classical Opera’s new staging of J.C. Bach’s Adriano in Siria took place at the Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music, from 14th to 18th April 2015.