Handel Festival
THIS year’s 250th anniversary of the death of George Frideric Handel has brought an abundance of his operas and oratorios, including a baroque marathon when, after Zurich Opera’s concert of Agrippina during the afternoon at the Royal Festival Hall, the more stalwart of the audience dashed to the Barbican for three-and-a-half hours of the rarely performed Arianna in Creta.
Of Handel’s 42 operas, only a few are regularly performed.
Arianna in Creta has been neglected because it lacks a dramatic plot.
The Greek hero Theseus arrives in Crete to slay the minotaur in the labyrinth and carry off King Minos’s daughter Ariadne but the death of the minotaur is a side issue and the main story is the usual tangle of lovers’ misunderstandings.
Performed in concert by the Academy of Ancient Music under Christopher Hogwood, though, the opera is a fresh delight.
There’s a wide vocal range in the cast of five women singers and one man. As the sacrificial virgin Carilda, Sonia Prina’s rich, dark contralto subtly blends with the cello. In the title role, Miah Persson’s silvery soprano is flawless.
Mezzo Kristina Hammarstrom may have lacked the assertive drive needed for Theseus’s heroic arias but has elegance of tone. Bass Antonio Abete is a grim and threatening King Minos.
The Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music, celebrating its 25th anniversary year with “100 years of English genius” opened with Handel’s English oratorio Athalia, in English-German collaboration with the Concerto Koln under conductor Ivor Bolton.
Highlight was stunning German soprano Simone Kermes as the tyrannical Queen Athalia, daughter of Jezebel.
The relish with which she sang her vengeance aria, exiting in a flourish of swirling scarlet gown that complemented her red hair, was energising.
Iestyn Davies, as her opponent, the high priest Joad, singing with strength and clarity, is a rising star among British counter-tenors.
Laurence Pelly’s revived production of L’Elisir D’Amore, Donizetti’s romp about the effect of a love potion on an Italian village, can be seen just once more tomorrow.
Updated to the Fifties, with the local youth on Vespas and a removal van for the charlatan Dr Dulcamara, it is somewhat marred by manic stage business.
Giuseppe Filianoti is appealing as lovelorn Nemorino, though tested by Una Furtiva Lagrima.
Diana Damrau is in crystalline voice as the village beauty Adina and Simone Alaimo’s Dulcamara livens up once he dons his showman’s red suit.
Despite the production’s shortcomings, Donizetti’s music, conducted by Bruno Campello, exerts its familiar charm.
