As the ornate, gilded magnificence of Covent Garden is plunged into darkness, a woman appears, decorated in body paint and wearing sharp, elongated tentacles on each hand. To a low hum and dance beats, she flaps her extended limbs with increasing urgency, her desperate attempt to take flight marking the unsettling start of Swanlights, a much-anticipated gig by a truly unconventional star, Antony Hegarty. Since winning the Mercury music prize in 2005 with his band, Antony and the Johnsons, Hegarty has impressively balanced mainstream success with left-field passions and intriguing collaborations. Swanlights is a 90-minute performance piece commissioned by the New York Museum of Modern Art and first performed in January 2012. Featuring songs from AATJ's first four albums set to orchestral arrangements – played for this London premiere by the Britten Sinfonia – it's essentially a greatest-hits set elevated to high art, a celebration of all things Antony.
Hegarty begins Rapture in darkness, his stunning vibrato shimmering amid the reverent arrangement, before green lasers cast trails across a gossamer screen. Part of an innovative light installation at the heart of Swanlights, artist Chris Levine tenderly illustrates the butterfly-wing delicacy of both Hegarty and his songs. Shards of light reach beyond the proscenium arch during Christina's Farm, while a screen drains from black to startling white for a show-stopping, breath-holding moment of absolute silence during I Fell in Love With a Dead Boy.
Hegarty stands beneath a crystal-like sculpture, a shoeless, angelic figure in a white, floor-scraping tunic, his face glowing with childlike wonder during For Today I Am a Boy. Though Gael Rakotondrabe's piano and the passionate strings breathe new life into such AATJ's favourites, it's Hegarty's voice that continues to amaze. It turns Beyoncé's Crazy in Love from a supreme pop ditty into a torrid torch song, makes real the corporeal suffering of Cripple and the Starfish and wrings every possible connotation from the repeated refrain of Everything Is New. His faultless falsetto reaches new highs in Swanlights swangsong, Her Eyes Are Underneath the Ground – during which we get our first glimpse of the Britten Sinfonia – yet when it's finished, Hegarty is visibly thrilled. "I'm so relieved when it's done," he says with a grin. A shy and engaging presence, he pours his shattered heart into The Crying Light before literally running off stage, too eager to escape to enjoy the second standing ovation of the night.
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