War and Peace/WNO review: Fragmented structure saved by compelling sense of drama

Staging Prokofiev’s three-and-a-half-hour epic opera War and Peace is not an enterprise to be undertaken any more lightly than reading the Tolstoy novel on which it’s based. David Pountney’s 2018 production for Welsh National Opera was a brave, ambitious project brought to the Royal Opera for two performances.

Robert Innes Hopkins’s design creates a wood-panelled, semi-circular space at the front, while a cinematic screen at the rear projects the grand façades and chandeliers of imperial Russia in the first part (Peace) and battle scenes with exploding cannon in the second (War). Film footage was borrowed from Sergei Bondarchuk’s 1966 film. It’s an arrangement that allows a cash-strapped company to mount an opera with a cast of thousands while pointing up parallels between Tolstoy’s Napoleonic War and the Great Patriotic War of 1941–5, the era of the work’s composition.

The largely unchanged acting area was hardly suitable for the intimate scene for Pierre (Mark Le Brocq) and Natasha (Lauren Michelle), though such moments had to be seen in a different light anyway because all the action was witnessed by onlookers. The distancing device suggested a later generation observing and participating.

When new in Cardiff, the production was criticised for losing momentum as the evening wore on. Here, if anything, it was the first part that suffered more from the opera’s fragmented, sprawling structure. In the War sequences we were often swept along by a more compelling sense of drama. There were commendable performances from Jonathan McGovern as Andrei, Jurgita Adamonytė as Hélène, James Platt as Rostov and Simon Bailey as Kutuzov, as well as Le Brocq and Michelle. The excellent chorus and orchestra were conducted by Tomáš Hanus.

Further performance tonight (020 7304 4000, roh.org.uk)