Handel: Alcina
Catherine Naglestad (soprano) - Alcina
Alice Coote (mezzo-soprano) -
Ruggiero
Catriona Smith (soprano) - Morgana
Helene Schneiderman
(mezzo-soprano) - Bradamante
Bernhard Schneider (tenor) - Oronte
Michael
Ebbecke (bass) - Melisso
Sarah Castle (mezzo-soprano) - Oberto
Stuttgart State Opera Orchestra
Roy Goodman (conductor)
Jossi
Wieler/Sergio Morabito (directors/dramaturgs)
Anna Vielbrock (set and costume
design)
Monday 25 March 2002
Hungarian State Opera House, Budapest
Presented as part of the 2002 Budapest Spring Festival
The Stuttgart State Opera may have been voted the most innovative company in Germany for the past several years running (a distinction some might consider dubious), and has given us some amazing mises-en-scène, but would it be too much to ask for them to stick a little closer to the plots? Some people may find enlightenment in Brünnhilde singing her "Immolation Scene" in an evening gown in front of the curtain, or Rodrigo in Verdi's Don Carlo committing suicide, but .
But then, Wagner and Verdi operas have straightforward storylines compared to Handel, especially Alcina. In an work which probably holds the record for the number of times the phrase "disguised as" appears in its synopsis, and which contains more gender confusion than Der Rosenkavalier and The Rocky Horror Show combined, Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito have done us no favors. As if the convolutions delivered by the anonymous libretto weren't enough, the régisseurs have interpolated such contrivances as a woman (Bradamante) disguised as a man (her brother Ricciardo) finding solace in the arms of another woman (Morgana) who initially believes her to be a man but eventually finds out her true gender identity, or a man (Oronte) allegedly in love with a woman (Morgana) stripping to his underwear, literally letting his hair down (he wears a pony tail) and graphically coming on to another man (Ruggiero) who is played by a woman. You figure it out, the directors seem to be telling us.
These escapades take place in a large room with peeling wallpaper in a pattern which would make Edward Gorey's obsessively cross-hatched drawings seem tame, and it keeps moving back and forth. There's a big pile of stuff — broken furniture, guns, swords, musical instruments — in a corner, and a gigantic gilt picture frame which sometimes gives us a view of another room and sometimes acts as a mirror. There's a great deal of pushing, pulling, sulking and pacing, as well as lots of throwing of objects, not to mention groping, frottage, bondage, and removal and changing of clothing and/or gender. Now that this whole farrago has been captured on DVD, perhaps some enterprising post-graduate student can study its three hours and do a doctoral thesis explaining it to the rest of us.
But the sludge on stage is worth wading through for the glorious Catherine Naglestad, whose Alcina is one of the most carefully wrought pieces of singing to be heard on any stage these days. Even while sporting more little black cocktail dresses than one could keep track of (including one with a see-through panel over her breasts) and eventually taking a bullet in the head, the American soprano created a musical and dramatic creature of great tragic proportions, every bit as complex and compelling as Medea or Norma (a role which she will undertake for the first time in May). Naglestad's lush voice has a dusky, reedy quality — a natural sound for producing long lines of aching lyricism — but its size and weight make it all the more surprising that she's equally capable of effortless trills and unearthly sustained pianissimo phrases worthy of Montserrat Caballé in her prime.
As Ruggiero, Alice Coote (who en travesti looks alarmingly like
Ian Bostridge) deployed a passionate, warm mezzo with unforced bottom
notes, confidently blazing coloratura and a seamless vocal line; Helene Schneiderman
as the gender-bender Bradamante/Ricciardo was no less spectacular in
her show-stopping vocal fireworks. After some uncertain top notes early on,
Catriona Smith's bell-like high soprano steadied and opened up for some ravishing
moments in Act Two in the role of Alcina's sister, Morgana; Sarah Castle made a
believably gawky teenager out of Oberto, though she struggled with some
difficult fioritura. Only the men seemed totally out of their league:
with Bernhard Schneider's flabby, unsupported tenor and Michael Ebbecke's
unfocused, woofy bass, the large cuts made to the roles of Oronte and Melisso
seemed wise.
With a lot of cutting and pasting of the score, the second half of the opera
was essentially turned into one extraordinarily long scena for Alcina. In
addition to omitting several choruses and arias and shortening still others,
entire scenes of recitative were eliminated, as were most of the instrumental
dances. (Considering the ludicrous pantomimes presented, one wished the three
orchestral numbers retained had been cut, too). Yet even with the opera's three
acts presented in two parts (a break was inserted after the third scene of Act
Two), there remained nearly three full hours of music. With the pit elevated
almost to audience level (the set was raised several meters from the stage
floor), each trill and flourish in Handel's original orchestration was lovingly
articulated under Roy Goodman's expert direction — and in the mostly
wooden auditorium of the Hungarian State Opera House, you could feel the bass
reverberating in the seat of your pants.
