My favourite show: Paule Constable

In the second act, there was a break in the action with an orchestral passage played against a black curtain across the front of the stage. Then the music stopped and the curtain went out in silence to reveal the huge black box with the simple raked stage that had been covered throughout by what looked like earth. Now, that earth was covered in hundreds of lit candles. You felt the entire audience gasp because it was so beautiful and so unexpected. It was sublime. 

Christopher Purves as Saul and Iestyn Davies as David were wonderful but what I remember most was the chorus. They were incredible. The choral singing was extraordinary but the level of commitment from these young singers to performing with all this stylised movement and expression. It was visceral. It did something to your senses: it made you feel alive. 

When you make a piece, you make a pact with the audience. You take them by the hand and you define your terms of engagement. Those terms on Saul were so pure and so beautifully presented. As soon as it was announced that it was coming back to Glyndebourne this summer, and with those original leads, I knew I’d be going again.

Analysis – David Benedict

The most important and popular composer in England of his day, Handel (1685-1759) wrote 44 operas and 16 biblical oratorios. The latter were concert pieces for singers and orchestra with narration, arias and choruses – not unlike Hamilton – but in the 20th and 21st centuries, more directors have taken to finding ways to dramatise them. One of the most successful was Kosky’s beautiful staging of Saul, conducted by baroque specialist Ivor Bolton, designed by Katrin Lea Tag and lit by Joachim Klein, whose work won him the Knight of Illumination Award for opera. 

Kosky took the narrative about King Saul (Christopher Purves), the first king of Israel, and his ultimately destructive jealousy of his successor David (Iestyn Davies) and turned it into enthralling theatre; a meditation on darkness and light.

Much of the action was built around a stage-wide banqueting table with huge floral displays and lavish food presented upon a gleaming white tablecloth that resembled something from a Peter Greenaway film. 

Around that, he, choreographer Otto Pichler and Bolton’s orchestra created an imaginative world of intense emotion expressed by the full company while delivering spellbinding vocal performances of the utmost control and depth.

Saul returns to Glyndebourne from June 8 to July 24. For more, visit: glyndebourne.com. It can be streamed here: encore.glyndebourne.com.