Medical ethics and the question of whether the pursuit of scientific knowledge should override the express wishes of the individual are central to composer Sarah Angliss’s and librettist Ross Sutherland’s new work, Giant – with John Hunter, surgeon to George III, diametrically opposed to the dying Charles Byrne, terrified of his 7ft 6in body being desecrated in an autopsy. It’s hardly obvious territory for opera, but this 75-minute opener to the year’s Aldeburgh festival held the attention in a compelling, albeit sometimes uneasy way, the music’s eerie metallic edge as transfixing as the moral ambiguities of the 18th-century story. The steep rake of the Britten Studio became a lecture theatre where anatomy students watched grisly dissection processes, with cadavers – before the Anatomy Act of 1832 – all too often provided by bodysnatchers.
Hunter’s insatiable curiosity in investigating the nature of disease and death led him to preserve and exhibit his collection of anatomical specimens, still on view at the Royal College of Surgeons’ Hunterian Museum. His conviction that Byrne’s body would yield vital secrets led to unseemly bartering with the young man, who was genetically destined to die young. But Hunter would ultimately be proved right as DNA testing recently revealed the rare genetic mutation causing the gigantism. Hunter, however, only got Byrne’s corpse by illicitly, unethically intercepting it before its burial at sea.
Byrne died in 1783 at just 22. Known as the Irish Giant, he became a celebrity in the years before his death, a freak show in a Haymarket show (Gweneth Ann Rand is the strong impresario figure, Mr Rooker, here). Hilary Mantel’s 1998 novel The Giant, O’Brien told his story and the history has emerged again as Byrne’s skeleton, exhibited over centuries at the Hunterian, has now been withdrawn from public view.
Part of Angliss’s skill is precisely in eliciting sympathy for both Byrne and Hunter, their sung phrases vividly suggesting dimensions of their characters. Hunter, occasionally uncouth in his zeal, also understood the lived anguish of Byrne: his offer to ease his final months with money and laudanum carried compassion, reflected well by baritone Jonathan Gunthorpe. Yet Byrne would not give in. This tender-hearted giant, perceived to be nearer heaven, was used by mothers as a means of intercession with their dead children; yet in reality he was isolated and suffering, a fate tenor Karim Sulayman – a properly towering figure thanks to platform boots and raised staging – expresses poignantly.
Befitting the period, Angliss’s score combines baroque sounds with percussion instruments of her own creation, notably bells, with violins and viola, all subtly manipulated electronically, the folk-like inflections invoking the Irish mountains of home and the implicit sense that Byrne should be returned there.
Director Sarah Fahie’s cast perform impeccably to create a moving, if draining, piece of theatre, with, ultimately, Hunter’s declaration lingering: “All life is a performance, then we fall, as corpses.”
• The Aldeburgh festival runs until 25 June.
