This wryly creepy chamber opera for kids aged eight-plus (and brave parents) is an adaptation of Nail Gaiman’s cult 2002 novella about a young girl on the cusp of puberty who steps through a strange door in her parents’ new home. She finds herself in a parallel flat in which she is greeted by effusively friendly alternate versions of her parents with buttons sewn into their eyes, who eventually prove to be just about as horrifying as you might expect.
Composer Mark-Anthony Turnage resists the urge to go the full Danny Elfman for this Royal Opera House commission, chipping in a restrained score of hard, bright strings and autumnal drifts of woodwind, performed by the Britten Sinfonia.
He strikes an unsentimental, low-ostentation note that leaves plenty of room for the story, which is enjoyably articulated by director Aletta Collins and librettist Rory Mullarkey.
Again, the temptation to goth it up is avoided: Giles Cadle’s drily witty set gives everything a wantonly retro ’70s sort of vibe; Mullarkey’s occasionally rhyming libretto is funny and even naturalistic, dwelling as much on Coraline’s pre-teenage strops as the spooky stuff.
We do get the spooky stuff, though: we build through oddball neighbours to ghost children and button-eyed people; by the climax of the second half the piece has slowly morphed into something like full-blown horror and I was nodding along earnestly as Coraline grappled with a gross disembodied hand.
If the performers probably aren’t required to turn in gale-force vocal turns, good acting is a must: playing Coraline on press night, soprano Mary Bevan had terrific comic timing; she’s got a fine soprano for sure, but equally important is that she makes a young audience laugh while petulantly throwing together a sandwich. And mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately is excellent in the dual role of Coraline’s mother and her increasingly psychopathic alternate version, Other Mother.
There is something a touch low-key and self-effacing about ‘Coraline’ that may or may not impact upon its longevity. But hopefully it’ll find its place in the repertoire, a clever dark comedy about the end of childhood with a few good scares thrown in.