For her latest role, soprano Sophie Bevan is covered in thick, gooey, red sludge. “It represents destiny,” she says cheerfully. “You can’t escape it. Everyone gets covered in it by the end.” It sounds like the most fun anyone could have in a tragedy about patricide and incest. Bevan sings the role of Oedipus’s daughter Antigone in a new production of George Enescu’s 1936 opera “Oedipe” at the Royal Opera. The staging, by Àlex Ollé and Valentina Carrasco of theatre company La Fura dels Baus, has already appeared in Brussels, where it quickly became known – for obvious reasons - as the “sludge” production.“On my costume the sludge is actually dry paint. And on my skin it’s just black and brown make-up. So I stay pretty dry,” she says. Ah, the magic of theatre.With her shimmering, limpid voice and uncompromising dramatic commitment to every role she’s undertaken, it’s easy to see why Bevan is a shooting star of the opera world. She’s already appeared as a superb Ilia in the Royal Opera’s “Idomeneo,” and will soon be back to sing Sophie in “Der Rosenkavalier”. She’s also just about to start work on the world premiere of Thomas Adès’s “The Exterminating Angel” in Salzburg.In “Oedipe” her role is smaller but equally vital. She accompanies her father/half-brother in his exile, and offers him comfort and hope. “I describe the landscape around Athens to him as a place of beautiful plants and nightingales and cuckoos – you can hear the birdsong in the orchestra. In this production, the landscape we actually see is dead people half-buried in red sludge. But after the horrors we’ve experienced in the previous act, when my father blinds himself and my mother commits suicide, it probably does seem quite pleasant to Antigone.”Although the opera is generally considered the composer’s masterpiece, it is rarely staged. “It’s surprising, as it’s such a magical score. It really has a way of drawing you in, and making you sit up and listen all the time. But the role of Oedipus [sung here by the superb Johan Reuter] is so exhausting and challenging, that perhaps it’s hard to find singers who can do it.”Bevan has appeared in some controversial productions in the past. She sang the main soprano role with ravishing beauty and awe-inspiring energy in an otherwise messy “Castor and Pollux” at English National Opera. Martin Kušej’s surreal production of “Idomeneo”, with its risible rubber shark, was roundly booed at Covent Garden. Does it upset her when productions don’t always hit the spot? “Lots of people say they don’t read reviews, but I really, really don’t,” she says.“But when you know everyone is talking about a staging, you can’t avoid hearing about it. And then it depends on how you feel about it yourself. I totally understood the concept behind ‘Castor and Pollux’ and I loved working with the director Barrie Kosky. I thought he captured the idea of hell perfectly. But it’s much harder for me to judge it as an audience member, because I was so closely involved in it.”Bevan’s father, a choirmaster, was one of fourteen exceptionally gifted children of a music teacher. She herself has seven very musical siblings, one of whom (Mary) also sings professionally. With such a background music was naturally a huge part of her life, but the decision to take up such a risky career must still have been a difficult one. What advice would she offer her younger self now? “The most important thing is to enjoy it in the moment, rather than dream of other things you might be doing or other roles you might be singing, or you won’t feel like you’ve achieved what you have. After all, it’s amazing to sing any role – you have to celebrate that.”With plenty of other major parts coming up, and a red-hot world premiere this summer, it doesn’t look like she needs to worry about future roles any time soon. Sophie Bevan performs in “Oedipe” at the Royal Opera.
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