As part of its exciting ‘Live Friday’ programme, the Ashmolean Museum has staged John Eccles’s opera The Judgement of Paris, giving two performances during the evening of 25 January 2013. These performances were the first in Oxford since the 1960s, although the piece, composed as an entry in a competition begun in March 1700, was performed with its competitors as part of the 1989 Proms season.
The opera is a setting of William Congreve’s libretto dealing with the famous episode in which Paris, a shepherd, is obliged to choose the fairest among the three goddesses Juno, Pallas and, inevitably, Venus. The bet is theirs, but as the story continues, there are many losers, particularly on the plains of Troy. However, during the competition, Paris finds himself the subject of various enticements as the goddesses attempt to persuade him in turn to award them the symbol of victory, a golden apple. For a young man spending much of his time among sheep, he manages to suspend his judgement for long enough to require both the singing of a number of arias and a degree of disrobing by each of the goddesses, before awarding the prize, predictably, to Venus.
The performances took place in The Mallet Gallery, laid out so as to give a sense of the look of a room in a grand house in the eighteenth century, complete with paintings on classical themes and of family groups looking extremely pleased with the social order and wealth which they had inherited. The audience was seated with its back to the door, facing a staircase. The orchestra, made up of students, were ranged along the left of the seating. This posed a challenge to the conductor since, as he took guard, his trumpeters were at mid off and his soloists at third man. However, apart from a moment of indecision for Pallas in the first performance, the playing, singing and direction by Isaac Louth, were of the highest order.
The action begins with Mercury descending the staircase, dressed on this occasion in a dinner suit, advising Paris to put aside his ‘tuneful reed’ because Jove has chosen him for an important job. In response to Paris’s question about what the job may be, Mercury explains the competition and the Radiant Fruit prize and before Paris can ask for any more details the goddesses approach.
Although the libretto promises their descent will involve ‘several Machines’, we see them descend the staircase wearing overcoats, apparently having just arrived by taxi. Paris is excited by this and is reassured by Mercury that he is safe to make his judgement. All the while, the goddesses are variously filing their immortal nails and going in for light preening and pouting on the staircase. This, after all, is where the idea of ‘The Golden Globes’ presumably started.
The competition then proceeds with Juno, then Pallas and thirdly Venus seeking Paris’s vote. Juno reminds him that she is Jove’s wife, which would be a good enough hint to most mortals. Pallas, probably misjudging a young man’s priorities, announces herself as, ‘A Virgin Goddess free from Stain’. Venus, having listened to this and therefore knowing she is on a winner, advises him that Love rules the Gods above and she rules Love, thus trumping Juno’s best card.
There follows some unseemly squabbling between the goddesses and Paris, warming to his task, and looking like William Brown in a sweet shop with sixpence, announces that in order to make up his mind, he will need to see each contestant individually,
And since a gay Robe an ill shape may disguise,
When each is undrest,
I’ll judge of the best.
The goddesses, having foreseen this eventuality, take off the overcoats to reveal Juno’s silver cocktail dress, Pallas’s green strappy number and Venus’s red catwalk creation. There then follow individual inducements. Juno promises earthly power, Pallas sings with enthusiasm of the ‘glorious Voice of War’ and offers ‘Fame and Conquest’. Venus, in her turn, sits on his knee, examines the apple, and promises him that, as we all remember at this point,
Should bright Hellen once behold thee,
She’d surrender all her Charms.
Paris duly hands over the prize. Juno consoles a weeping Pallas while Venus rubs her hands in glee and then they all head off back to the taxi rank leaving Paris unfulfilled but hopeful.
The production captured all the humour latent in Congreve’s libretto. The singing of Eugene Yamaguchi as Mercury, Tim Lintern as Paris, Johanna Harrison as Juno, Daisy Gibbs as Pallas and Leonor Jennings as Venus was enlivening and entertaining. The Chorus, not overly stretched in this piece, did all that was required of them. The orchestra, conducted by David Todd and led by Joe Lockwood, was excellent with perhaps a particular mention of Sam Moffitt on trumpet who did his very best to back up Pallas’s recommendation of the joys of war.
The opera was written as part of a competition, the entrants being Eccles, John Weldon, then organist at New College, Daniel Purcell and Gottfried Finger. The competition was announced in the London Gazette in March 1700 ‘for the Encouragement of MUSICK’, and presented opera specifically to be sung in English. All the entries were performed together at the Dorset Garden Theatre on 3 June 1703 and, in an early version of ‘Britain’s Got Talent’, the audience were invited to choose the winner. Eccles, like Susan Boyle, came second – thus proving the limitations of predicating long-term success on the outcome of a referendum.
On this occasion, the audience, made up mainly of young people but leavened by a number of proud parents and friends, and despite being frowned upon by the busts of four eighteenth-century popes, were sure they’d made the right choice on a snowy evening.