Handel
Alcina – Opera in three Acts to an anonymous libretto after an episode in Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso [sung in Italian with English surtitles]
Alcina – Lisette Oropesa
Ruggiero – Emily D’Angelo
Morgana – Mary Bevan
Bradamante – Varduhi Abrahamyan
Oronte – Rupert Charlesworth
Atlante (Melisso) – José Coca Loza
Oberto – Malakai M. Bayoh
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Christian Curnyn
Richard Jones – Director
Antony McDonald – Designer
Lucy Carter – Lighting Designer
Sarah Fahie – Movement Director
Reviewed by: Curtis Rogers
Reviewed: 14 November, 2022
Venue: Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London
Handel’s magic opera Alcina (1735) has long been recognised as, in the composer’s musical setting at least, a more complicated work than a mere condemnation of a sorceress’s wanton desires, who uses and then destroys her lovers. Rather, as in many of his operas, he demonstrates a deep sympathy with the emotional inner life of the women, especially Alcina and her sister Morgana here, despite their wiles.
Doing justice to Alcina as a psychologically rounded woman in this work usually entails altering its scenario to some degree. But with comic sleight of hand, in his new production, Richard Jones subtly preserves her status as a witch in some sense (dressed elegantly in black) although that isn’t obvious at first. In order to captivate her would-be lovers, she uses her allure as what seems to be a perfumier by spraying a scent from a huge bottle branded with her name and standing in for her urn of magic spells. Already during the Overture a group of Puritans in characteristic seventeenth-century dress appear, whom Alcina tries to lure away from their morally straight path of ‘mercy love duty courtesy’ (as their logo has it) on to her island of pleasures. Ruggiero’s tutor Atlante, and his ‘wife’ Bradamante (in Handel’s scenario, only his betrothed) turn out to be Puritans from the world he has left behind, coming to rescue Ruggiero and the other human beings turned into animals. Atlante, with his mane of hair and stern look as a tutor or philosopher, somewhat resembles Thomas Hobbes. But he emerges as a less thoughtful figure – if still imposing patriarchal authority – when he comes to preside over a trial which condemns Alcina’s powers, like the witch hunts of the past which sought to eradicate the influence of transgressive women. She ultimately triumphs, however, as the Puritans give up their religious manuals in favour of copies of The Joy of Sex.
The production makes its point rather more simply and wittily than Francesco Micheli’s for Glyndebourne this summer. But, even though the latter was flawed in not being always entirely clear in execution, its concept was at least more consistently worked out across the whole performance in its similar inverting of the ostensible moral of the original story as not showing Alcina to be the villain of the carefully constructed parable of Enlightenment virtue. Where Micheli’s Freudian dimension was earnest and sustained, Jones’s cod psycho-sexual idea comes out as a throwaway joke at the end, even if retrospectively it makes some sense of what is otherwise a random conjunction of merely colourful elements and a slow dramatic unfolding leading up to that conclusion.
Alcina’s ex-lovers wait on her as human figures with animal heads, which tend to look cute, rather than horrifying, like characters out of Beatrix Potter. Their occasional dance routines (during some of the arias – surprisingly Handel’s instrumental dances expressly composed for a French dance troupe are not included here), and the clearly artificial strips of lawn with trees which are wheeled on and off to evoke Alcina’s island, along with Oronte’s garden shed, all placed within an otherwise bare set, look kitsch (for good or bad, according to taste) and resemble Barry Kosky’s ‘extravagant minimalism’ directorial style. It is a perhaps not accidental irony, however, that the oak trees evoke a classically English landscape for the island rather than any remote or exotic location, and most of the animals in Alcina’s realm are those which could be found in the English countryside (dog, rabbit, goat, ram etc). When Ruggiero and Bradamante try to make their escape, they are dressed in kilts which maybe implies a comment on Scottish independence, but the idea isn’t pursued if so. But otherwise the point – again inverting Handel’s vision – seems to be that the humans’ experience of the natural order as transmogrified animals has put them back in harmony with nature and normal bodily instincts, allowing them to escape the unnatural repressions of their Puritan pasts.
In general the vocal performances are consistently high, more so than had been the case at Glyndebourne. Lisette Oropesa’s Alcina is one of confident poise and control, perhaps already knowing that the allure of what she represents will win out in the end, and Oropesa correspondingly dazzles with her quiet intensity rather than the exuberance of a stereotypical soubrette. It is Mary Bevan (with more experience of the Baroque repertoire than Oropesa) who offers a compelling foil with comparably more vocal animation as her sister, Morgana, being well attuned to Handel’s ravishing coloratura, not least in ‘Tornami a a vagheggiar’. Varduhi Arbrahamyan rightly provides a different sort of contrast as Bradamante, Ruggiero’s troubled wife, bringing a darker, steelier register to express her sorrow and outrage as she witnesses Ruggiero’s apparent rejection of her.
Emily D’Angelo takes the role of the fallen hero, also acquitting herself magnificently and idiomatically in the music’s coloratura and decorating the da capo sections of arias effectively, without excess. José Coca Loza is a convincing voice of conscience in the part of Atlante, as the character is styled here (usually referred to by his assumed name of ‘Melisso’) though he has little opportunity to develop with only one aria. Rupert Charlesworth demonstrates much flair as Morgana’s jealous lover, Oronte, though he is strained in the higher reaches of the tenor role, settling down more comfortably in his quieter, softer aria. Malakai M. Bayoh was notoriously – and inexplicably – heckled on the opening night, as the boy Oberto, searching for his father who has fallen victim to Alcina. Often the role is cut entirely, but all three of his ariettas are preserved here, and Bayoh sustains those charmingly, with a soprano-like seamlessness and very little of the airy insubstantiality often encountered in a treble voice, making his performance a worthwhile inclusion.
Christian Curnyn conducts the modern instruments of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, rather than the smaller, authentic forces of his usual ensemble, Early Opera Company. That, and the need to fill an opera house which in its present form long post-dates Handel’s time and is larger than anything he would have known, results in the sort of measured interpretation that is not often heard in the composer’s music anymore. To some that will be welcome. But despite Curnyn’s expertise, it is disappointing that the orchestra as assembled haven’t internalised the insights of historically informed practice to bring more nuance within arias, and vital, energetic contrast between one and the next in their ongoing succession to create a more truly Baroque emotional cascade. Slower numbers tend to work better, such as the unearthly simplicity of ‘Verdi prati’ with its lustrous glow, or the tense, anxious throb of the detached chords of ‘Ah! mio cor’, than faster ones which can plod.
Nevertheless, the vocal performances and the colourful staging make this a coherent and approachable production of what is one of Handel’s most intricate and rewarding operas.