Jonathan Dove’s Itch at Opera Holland Park is a rollicking story — review

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Take one good story, trim the plot for the stage, add music to heighten atmosphere and narrative drive. Writing a successful new opera should not be rocket science, but it is surprising how often elementary mistakes lead to a lack of success.

For that reason, among others, it is a pleasure to welcome Jonathan Dove’s latest opera, Itch, which does all the obvious things right. An Opera Holland Park commission, this was the company’s first ever mainstage premiere, of which it is hugely proud.

The opera is based on the novels for young adults written by broadcaster and author Simon Mayo, from which a libretto has been fashioned by Alasdair Middleton. The story tells of a schoolboy who has a passion for collecting the chemical elements of the periodic table. His luck is in when he happens upon a hitherto unknown element that seems to offer limitless supplies of energy, but a multinational called Greencorps learns of its properties and what ensues is a breathless tale of kidnapping, car chases, and a fight between commercial profit and returning the rocks to the Earth.

The novel is said to be a “page-turner” and one of the opera’s strengths is that it holds the attention in the same page-turner way (except perhaps for half a dozen possible curtain-down moments leading to the interval). The quick turnover of scenes has a cinematic quality and Itch would make a good introductory opera on television. Are any TV executives paying attention?

Dove’s music is a furthering of the eclectic and approachable style that he has followed since Flight, his first big operatic success. Stravinsky rubs shoulders with Britten, post-minimalist John Adams and even, in the score’s word-setting, Sondheim, to create a kaleidoscope of quickly changing moods. Who would have thought that a listing of the periodic table could generate a musical fascination that is so magnetic?

After its highly praised revival of Flight in 2015, nearly 20 years after the opera’s Glyndebourne premiere, Opera Holland Park has form with Dove’s operas. Itch has been skilfully staged by Stephen Barlow, using a giant table of the periodic elements doubling as a wall for projections.

Among the cast of eight, Adam Temple-Smith does well to portray a convincingly teenage hero. Nicholas Garrett makes a strong impression as an unscrupulous science teacher and Rebecca Bottone’s head of Greencorps hits notes way up in the stratosphere (echoes of Flight) fearlessly, though the sound is not ingratiating. Countertenor James Laing’s haunting singing captures the free spirit of the hippy surfer with a feel for radioactive stones. The conductor, Jessica Cottis, draws glittering textures from an ensemble of 12 players from the City of London Sinfonia.

It is only when the opera is over that one realises it was both a rollicking story and a science lesson, a diatribe against commercial strong-arm tactics, and an ethical conundrum on the realities of producing green power. That is not bad for an accessible new opera.

★★★★☆

To August 4, operahollandpark.com