Last night was firm proof that I can appreciate avant grade staging of traditional operas … if done well.
This blog has seen many objections to misguided attempts (most recently the ROH's awkward Maria Stuarda) and a general preference to keep things staged in the eras in which they're set. But Longborough Festival Opera's transformation of Handel's Crusader-era tale Rinaldo into a fairground/circus romp worked a charm. In fact, I think it was my favourite of all the operas we've seen at Longborough since we discovered it in 2010.Any staging of Rinaldo needs to get creative to move past two big challenges. First, it's about conflict between Christians and Muslims, firmly establishes the latter as evil and ends with the bad guys finding salvation by converting to Christianity. These days, that's a dangerously incendiary plot line. Second, if you were to stage it literally, you'd have to include battles, sea journeys, exotic Saracen clothing, knights in shining armour … scenery and costumes to break the bank.
Longborough chose to dress the chorus as clowns, the lead characters as ring masters, strongmen, sexy burlesque vamps and one doll-like innocent for our heroine. A giant clown's head stood centre stage, its mouth alternating as a cavern, prison and entry point. Folding partitions in carnival stripes and polka dots became walls, paths, boats and chariots. The orchestra, with period instruments anchored by a beautiful harpsichord, sat on stage, with singers striding through them as the plot moved along. It instantly defused the Muslim/Christian sensitivities, instead giving us a play-within-a-play atmosphere of romping performers pitting a less-defined good against a menacing, but ultimately harmless, evil. With a happy ending. A rare but sweet treat in opera.
Delightful and appropriate as the visual interpretation was, it's the music that sent the show into the stratosphere. Rinaldo was Handel's first opera, strung together from already popular, previously-written hits. Think Mamma Mia, circa 1711. The music is fantastic, with arias covering every mood from sublime to bombastic, melancholic to passionate.
The most famous tune is the poignant Lascio ch'io pianga, a lament from our imprisoned heroine to the chief villain to let her go. Eloise Irving delivered this as flawlessly as any recording I've heard, and with such emotion she made it completely believable that her captor would fall in love with her there and then. (An important plot twist.)But even more jaw-dropping is our hero Rinaldo, played by Jake Arditti. One of the oddities of Baroque opera is the preference for men with boyish, high voices (usually castrati … singers who'd been castrated in childhood to preserve their voices) to play the lead roles. These days, it usually means women singing as men. And, as good as they are, it's hard to be cajoled into admiration of a swashbuckling hero with both a high voice and a bra. Arditti is a broad-chested, virile, manly action hero who just happens to have the voice of a choir boy. He employs his counter tenor to vibrant effect, trilling up and down vocal fireworks that leave you amazed the human voice can actually be persuaded to work that way. Several times during his arias, my jaw literally dropped.
Not only did I enjoy every moment of the production, but … as the first Baroque opera I've ever attended … it triggered all sorts of revelations about the more familiar operas that would follow it. Suddenly, the Queen of the Night's mind-blowing aria in The Magic Flute wasn't a one-off, but a progression in a tradition of vocal gymnastics. Wagner's sexy temptresses in Parsifal seem to have descended in a straight line from the sirens who try to lure Rinaldo off his path. The experience has left me very keen to see more Baroque opera and to learn more about how it influenced the following centuries.
Next summer, Longborough returns to its roots of Wagner and 19th century classics. We already have our rooms reserved at Windy Ridge for Tristan and Isolde. But I do hope they return to the Baroque in some future season. How about the Coronation of Poppea for summer 2016?
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