Music by Handel; production by David McVicar. Not an insignificant fact. David McVicar said in an interview the other week that no one would choose to go to an opera on account of him directing it, and I daresay he is strictly accurate, but, in my opinion, if one is teetering on the brink of indecision, I would say a McVicar production is enough to tip the balance to 'Buy Your Ticket and Go'.
Agrippina: Sarah Connolly
Poppea: Lucy Crowe
Nero: Christine Rice
Narcissus: Stephen Wallace
Otho: Reno Troilus
Claudius: Brindley Sherratt
Pallas: Henry Waddington
Lesbo: Richard Suart
Conductor: Daniel Reuss
I have an ambiguity about Handel's operas. I have not yet seen or heard a Handel opera I have failed to enjoy; on my occasions I have enjoyed tremendously; and the latter was certainly the case here. And yet, I can't really sit here and say what I like about the music, except that I like the tunes. I can't in all honestly rave about the orchestral tones or how they set and portray mood. One could easily point out the samey-samey nature of the music, da capo arias separated by lots of recitative, most of it secco. And I have to be honest and say that I can't really distinguish the music of one Handel opera from another. And I've heard less than a quarter of what he wrote.
So, I suppose the two main elements of Handel's operas are the quality of the singing and the entertainment value of the production. Which is perhaps how it should be. No need for intellectual analysis of the dramaturgy. Sit back and enjoy.
It's difficult to decide which of the women was the best. And even if I did, it would be difficult to separate out the beautiful voices from the dramatic interpretations. Sarah Connolly has a cult following and I can't say I am a paid-up member of the cult. Nevertheless she was very satisfying. I thought that Lucy Crowe was lovely, and Christine Rice was compelling. All three of them great stage animals.
I was not so impressed by the men. Brindley Sherratt was competent as Claudius. But didn't rock my boat.
The downside of Handel is the necessity of enduring counter-tenors. I think there is a major divide amongst opera lovers between those who love counter-tenors and those that don't. Because I enjoy Baroque opera, I have to accept the presence of counter-tenors. Some of the best I can find exquisitively beautiful for almost a whole aria, but my attention soon wavers. Unlike many anti-counter-tenorists, I don't have an issue with the volume of their singing, but I find the lack of variety in tone, colour and volume to be tedious. At worst, I find the falsettist approach to be bizarre to the point of almost frightening. My companions, neither of them counter-tenorists, tried to convince me that, actually, Reno Troilus's Voi che udite, coming immediately before the interval (a break that seemed to work, halfway through Act 2 out of 3), was a thing of beauty. I daresay they are correct, but I preferred the oboe, and I would have much preferred to have had it delivered by a mezzo or a contralto with lots of chest! I can only endorse the description given to Stephen Wallace as one of the Monty Python men pretending to be women.
As for the production. There had been a lot of descriptions of the production in the media, and I won't repeat the descriptions. There were a couple of moments that were flagged up repeatedly. A very free translation had Nero singing "Fuck fuck fuckety fuck" and later, snorting enormous quantities of cocaine. I think in both cases the slight shock - or more, dislocation - value was diluted because of this. Alternatively, a casual reader might think that either incident was the sum total of the drama, suggesting a laziness and a desire to shock for its own sake. they were just aspects of the characterisation of Nero as a spoilt teenage boy. Much comment has been made of the scene in a bar,with the harpsichordist brought on stage to represent a pub pianist.
Scenery wise, there wasn't much to applause. There was a throne at the top of a high staircase. At various stages there was furniture, useful for a bedroom scene, or for a bar scene. I thought it was all rather lovely. I suppose there are people who would like to see a Handel opera played all po-faced and serious, with Roman Empire characters wearing togas and laurel wreaths in order to stand at the front of stage and belt out their arias with no need for dramatic coherence. I don't. I liked the modern dress, I liked the interaction between the characters, the main ones of which were believably three dimensional. Obviously, I don't know how Handel would view it, but I suspect that someone who wrote opera after opera for entertaining an audience would approve of this entertainment. It may not be true to the eighteenth century, but nor am I.
As others have commented, it's a shame that this hasn't been filmed for DVD. I hope it gets revived in due course, and assuming a good cast, I would definitely go again.
