Tag: opera

Antigono (1756): Christoph Willibald Gluck

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Metastasio: Antigono

★★★

(Ensemble Serse, Grosvenor Chapel, London, 25 April 2015)

I know what you’re thinking. Serse again?! But no: fear not. No Xerxes today: instead I’m rather belatedly posting about Ensemble Serse, a London-based company of young musicians and singers who specialise in ambitious resurrections of Baroque opera. Their mission statement is to offer a musical experience that’s as close as possible to what an 18th-century audience might have heard. That means no cuts, all possible cadenzas and a take-no-prisoners attitude to singing.

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Xerxes (1738): George Frideric Handel

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Handel: Xerxes

★★★★ ½

(Oper am Rhein, Düsseldorf, 2 May 2015)

When my friends joined me at the interval of Oper am Rhein’s Xerxes, they found me clutching my prosecco glass with a slightly wild look in my eyes. “I haven’t the faintest idea what’s going on!” I whimpered. Since I’d spent three hours watching another production of Xerxes only two days beforehand, this might sound surprising; but Stefan Herheim’s interpretation of Handel’s opera is an entirely different beast from Hampstead Garden Opera’s offering. Anarchic, exuberant and splendidly insane, this was more Carry On than Covent Garden.

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Xerxes (1738): George Frideric Handel

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Handel: Xerxes

★★★½

(Hampstead Garden Opera at Upstairs at the Gatehouse, 30 April 2015)

Those who follow me on Twitter will be aware of my Xerxes Project. As I’ve booked to see three live productions of Handel’s Xerxes this year, each of which promises to have its own very distinct flavour, I thought I’d make a theme of it. (I’m also doing some broader historical reading on Achaemenid Persia, so I’ve been examining our favourite brat-prince from several different perspectives.) I kicked things off in style this last weekend by taking in two productions, in two countries, in two languages, in three days. Things got underway in Highgate on Thursday, where Hampstead Garden Opera was holding court at Upstairs at the Gatehouse, one of London’s leading pub-theatres.

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Adriano in Siria (1765): Johann Christian Bach

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Bach: Adriano in Siria

★★★★

(Classical Opera, conducted by Ian Page, Britten Theatre, 18 April 2015)

As Hadrian is one of my historical favourites, I was amused to discover that he’s the subject of a Metastasio libretto, set to music by more than sixty composers between 1732 and 1828. Classical Opera’s production is, rather remarkably, the first staging of the version by J.C. Bach (son of the Bach) since it opened in London in 1765. It’s been making waves in the press: the dominant reaction is amazement that we don’t hear more of J.C., especially since he spent most of his career in London* and was much admired.

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Giove in Argo (1739): George Frideric Handel

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Giove in Argo

★★★½

(Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music, 26 March 2015)

The final event of this year’s London Handel Festival for me was this staged version of the pasticcio opera Giove in Argo. Although Catone in Utica was also a pasticcio, the two differ because Giove is made up of arias and choruses from Handel’s own earlier operas rather than those of other composers. (However, as I’m still very much a Handel beginner, most of them felt new anyway!) It dates from 1739, the year after Xerxes, and represents one of Handel’s very last forays into Italian-language productions in London.

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Catone in Utica (1732): George Frideric Handel

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Handel: Catone in Utica

★★★★

(Opera Settecento at St George’s, Hanover Square, 17 March 2015)

We’re all going to be hearing rather a lot about Catone in Utica this year, so let’s get things off to a roaring start with a performance I saw last night at St George’s, Hanover Square, formerly Handel’s parish church, as part of the London Handel Festival. Although the opera was put together by Handel for his 1732 season, it’s stretching the truth a bit to say that it’s by him. Handel had to fill out his programmes somehow and so, at this stage of his career, he often produced one or two pasticcio operas each season alongside his own works. These pasticci were assembled from arias by several other composers and tailored by Handel to meet the taste of his demanding British public.

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The Indian Queen (1695): Henry Purcell

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Purcell: The Indian Queen

★★

(English National Opera, 6 March 2015)

Reactions to English National Opera’s new production of The Indian Queen have been mixed. Some critics have praised it as a creative and courageous reworking of Purcell’s opera, which dares to acknowledge the atrocities carried out during the colonisation of the New World. Other people (friends and colleagues, thus, ordinary theatre-goers, not critics) have expressed bafflement and rising irritation. Apparently audience members have vanished during the intervals in a number of performances. It was clearly going to be a challenging experience but, when I went last Friday, I was nevertheless determined to enjoy it. But it didn’t quite work out like that.

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Semele (1744): George Frideric Handel

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Handel: Semele

★★★½

(Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, 10 March 2015)

Let the London Handel Festival commence! Things got underway in suitably regal style at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, with a tale of divine seduction and boundless ambition that bore a moralistic coda: be careful what you wish for.

Nature to each allots his proper sphere, But that forsaken,
we like meteors err: Toss’d through the void, by some rude
shock we’re broke, And all our boasted fire is lost in smoke.

(Chorus: Act 3, Scene 7)

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Hercules (1745): George Frideric Handel

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Alice Coote

★★★

(The English Concert directed by Harry Bicket at the Barbican, 4 March 2015)

Six months into my Baroque voyage of discovery, it’ll soon be time to jump in at the deep end for the London Handel Festival. From fully-staged operas to concerts, solo recitals and pasticci, the next month will offer a veritable banquet of Handel in all his forms. Before the Festival proper gets underway, we had an aperitif to enjoy: something of an oddity.

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Ormindo (1644): Francesco Cavalli

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Cavalli: Ormindo

★★★★★

(Royal Opera House at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, February-March 2015)

In writing about Cavalli’s Ormindo, it’s hard not to feel that everything has already been said. (But I’m going to say it again anyway.) This production made its immensely successful debut in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse last year, blending the musical expertise of the Royal Opera House with the theatrical immediacy of the Globe. It is, quite simply, a match made in heaven: Cavalli’s operas, which predate the swaggering show-off arias of the high Baroque, feel like exuberant plays that just happen to be set to music. Naturally there’s nowhere in London more skilled at bringing such things to life than the Globe.

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