The Oedipus complex is probably Sigmund Freud’s signature contribution to 20th-century psychology—debated by a host of successor theorists, from Carl Jung to Jacques Lacan— and to 20th-century culture more generally. In its shadow, the Oedipus myth inspired at least three extraordinary 20thcentury operas: Igor Stravinsky’s opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex (1927) with its Latin text, and alienated affekt; George Enescu’s expressionistic Oedipe (1931), only now achieving the attention it deserves (it reached the Salzburg Festival in 2019); and Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Greek (1988), based on Steven Berkoff ’s scabrous play of the same name.
Although I have performed Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex, I seem to have spent an awful lot of my time singing pieces that fixate not on the child’s murderous assault upon the father, but on the father’s killing of a child. Handel’s oratorio Jephtha (1751), for one, which I sang at the Opéra Garnier in Paris in 2018. Although originally a concert piece, it works fabulously as an opera—not surprising, given Handel’s operatic genius and the fact that he only turned to unstaged oratorio in order to provide Lenten fare to a drama-starved London public. The story, from the biblical Book of Judges, tells of an Israelite general, Jephtha himself, who wins a victory by promising to sacrifice the life of the first living being to greet him on his return home. In the Book of Judges, his daughter pays the price, while Handel’s oratorio has a happier ending. Along the way, as Jephtha prepares the sacrifice, we get to hear him serenade his daughter with one of the most beautiful of all baroque arias, “Waft her angels”. Beautiful, yes; creepy too.