Tag: Christopher Ainslie

Agrippina (1709): George Frideric Handel

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Handel: Agrippina

★★★★

(Grange Festival, Hampshire, 8 June 2018)

Last weekend, on a balmy Hampshire afternoon, H and I donned our cocktail dresses and set off for the first of our two country-house operas this summer. It was time for the Grange Festival near Winchester (not to be confused with Grange Park Opera in West Horsley in Kent, who split from the Grange Festival two years ago in less than amicable circumstances). The Grange Festival have dusted themselves off, and are kicking off their second summer season in stunning style with Handel’s Agrippina. Full of maternal ambition, political intrigue and lustful shenanigans, this opera follows the Roman matriarch as she schemes to manoeuvre her son Nero onto the imperial throne. A dose of plotting makes me a very happy girl, but I was rendered even happier by the quality of the cast, headed by the redoubtable Anna Bonitatibus as Agrippina herself. Truly, an evening fit for an emperor.

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Giulio Cesare (1724): George Frideric Handel

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Handel: Giulio Cesare

★★★★

(English Touring Opera at the Hackney Empire, 7 October 2017)

2018 is shaping up to be the Year of Cesare. Three different productions of Handel’s Giulio Cesare are on my radar, each within a manageable distance of London. With this in mind, I wanted to belatedly post my thoughts on the forerunner to this embarrassment of riches: English Touring Opera’s ambitious two-part production, which descended on the Hackney Empire back in October for a weekend of intrigue, desire, conquest and general skulduggery. Visually splendid, with a dazzling Cleopatra, it was weakened only by the eccentric splitting of the opera. But I’ll come back to that in a moment. For now, rally your legions, let the sand sink into your sandals, and imagine yourself back in Alexandria in 48 BC…

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Joseph and his Brethren (1743): George Frideric Handel

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Malm: Joseph and his Brothers

★★★★

(London Handel Orchestra and Singers at St George’s Hanover Square, 20 April 2017)

Andrew Lloyd Webber wasn’t the first to realise that a good musical could be made from the story of Joseph in Egypt. 224 years before Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat was premiered, Handel chose the same subject for the second of two oratorios performed in his 1743 season (the first, a month before Joseph, was Semele). With a libretto by the radical clergyman James Miller, adapted in part from an earlier work by Apostolo Zeno, Handel’s oratorio throws us straight into the action, midway through the story. We first meet Joseph in prison in Egypt, and the tale follows his rise to power, his love for the beautiful Asenath, and his eventual reconciliation with his brothers. This was my final outing for this year’s Handel Festival and it proved a great conclusion, overseen by the ever-admirable Laurence Cummings with the London Handel Orchestra and Singers.

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