Handel shines at Glimmerglass
Baroque opera, based as it usually is on improbable ancient myths and legends, nearly always benefits from a fresh eye from a bold director. If today’s audiences are to understand what the hell is going on, a quirky take will grab attention. Louisa Proske, Resident Director at Opera Halle, Germany, plucked up her courage, breathed deeply and jumped right into potential controversy in deepest Adirondack America.
At Glimmerglass Festival Opera she set Handel’s eighteenth-century Rinaldo in the intensive care unit (ICU) of a very 21st century American hospital. Robert Carsen staged Glyndebourne’s 2011 Rinaldo in a schoolroom. I found the hospital setting more convincing. ICUs play with the mind.
Heresy! Traditionalists moaning in the front stalls. Some in need of intensive care themselves. Where are all the beautifully crafted, static, never-ending arias we have come to expect of Baroque? “My God, Cyril, we can even understand the plot. Outrageous!”
Hang on. Maybe it’s the clunky out-of-touch performances of Baroque operas, appealing to a dwindling number of aficionados, that need to be in intensive care.
Proske applied vigorous CPR to Rinaldo and dragged the romantic dreamer screaming back to the relevance he had in Handel’s time, when Baroque productions were the cutting edge of their day, playing to demanding crowds, using fantastical stage machinery, featuring ascending or descending Gods (as the mood took them), unbelievable myths, magical disappearances and explosive special effects.
The emerging nineteenth-century verismo style brought real life to the opera stage, just as the kitchen sink BBC plays of the 1950s brought the harsh realities of post-war Britain to the 12-inch black and white TVs of the era. Great stuff, but much of the magic was lost. Gloomy heroes languished – Jules Massenet’s Werther. Heroines died of consumption – Mimi, Violetta – or jumped off parapets – Tosca. Verdi was always banging on about Italian independence. All the reality of a CNN news bulletin.
Baroque opera is meant to be appreciated as something else entirely. Grandiose. Sets, costumes and lighting to inspire awe. Mythical plots to entrance audiences, enshrining onstage the awesome power of gods and heroes. In 1711, when Rinaldo premiered before a delighted London audience, it bristled with innovation. That sense of setting spectacular new frontiers infuses Proske’s production. I think Handel would approve. No spinning in the grave here.
Rinaldo puts on stage the dreamworld familiar in popular Harry Potter films. Rinaldo is a hero. He abandons a mission to save his beloved. He mounts an assault on a castle. There is a helpful magician in a cave. The heroine is abducted by a black cloud. A shape-shifting sorceress tries to seduce Rinaldo. A dragon-drawn carriage flies through the sky. Three battles feature Templar knights from the Crusades, demons and special magic wands. Come on! Hogwarts, eat your heart out.
Yet, there is also a modern moral. Proske was intrigued by the idea of Rinaldo’s dream world, springing from the fantasy of a young patient trying to make sense of his bewildering experience of today, by inventing his own myth from the past about rescuing the comatose girl in the bed opposite. “I want to take you on an adventure, to create a space full of urgency, surprises and complex resonances for Handel’s sublime music”, Proske tells us.
So, this is the adventure on which we all embarked. The success of Proske and her production team was marked by the seamless melding of her real world with the mythical.
The scene is a state-of-the-art intensive care unit. Monitors, bleeping things, tubes, cannulas everywhere. A radiography screen. Tutting medics poring over worrying X-ray results. Stage left is Rinaldo, in post-op recovery, head partly shaven, reading a book of heroic myth. A large window bisects the set. Stage right is a bed in which a comatose girl lies. Her stricken parents are being given discouraging news by the docs.
Rinaldo immerses himself in the world of his book. Knights in Templar gear appear in the window, conjured by his imagination and Rinaldo is summoned to action by his king, Goffredo. Quickly a red cross is conjured up from a roll of surgical tape and strapped to his chest. Now a fellow crusader, he will fight Argante, a mysterious adversary. But Argante secures a truce from Goffredo.
The sorceress, Armida, tells Argante that he will be victorious if he can seize Rinaldo. In this production Goffredo is also the father of the girl in the opposite bed, who morphs into the king when Rinaldo’s imagination takes over from reality. The girl becomes Almirena, with whom Rinaldo, of course, falls immediately in love.
Armida sees an opportunity, seizes the girl as bait and Rinaldo pledges to Goffredo that he will rescue her.
The ICU becomes Armida’s enchanted domain. When Rinaldo comes to rescue Almirina, things are complicated, just a tad, when Armida falls in love with him. She uses her magic to disguise herself as Almirina and captures him.
Meantime, Goffredo learns of Rinaldo’s plight and he and the other knights decide to storm Armida’s castle, even though warned off by a sorcerer. This scene was cleverly projected through the window with cut-out black and white characters advancing up the mountain and being repulsed. The real-life bloodied knights then collapsed back into the ICU through the open window. Very slickly executed.
Re-armed with the sorcerer’s magic the band strikes out again, scales the mountain, this time rescuing Rinaldo and Almirena. Reunited, the heroes celebrate only to find that Argante and Armida reappear and fighting begins anew. This scene is set against the partial intrusion of the real world, with doctors shaking their heads about the prospects of recovery of the girl in the bed, Almirena.
Rinaldo joins the battle, and his heroic response brings conflict to an end. New lives can be embarked upon. The real world with its bleeping machinery and flashing life-sign displays takes over. The girl in the opposite bed is cured. Her parents prepare to take her home. But there is a twist. Wait for it!
Proske was a smart catch for Glimmerglass. The purpose of the well-established festival is to nurture fresh talent, promote innovation and the German director ticks both boxes. The cast, all highly motivated, sang and acted their hearts out, led by countertenor, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Artist in Residence.
Costanzo was mesmerising. He is one of the world’s leading countertenors and was in full voice. I have marvelled at the power of Costanzo’s upper register ever since he bared himself (literally) as Akhnaten in Philip Glass’ opera of the same name at English National Opera in 2016. The role of Rinaldo was expounded with blazing intensity.
Jasmine Habersham, an American soprano, sang Almerina. Habersham is a former Glimmerglass young artist. The remainder of the cast was drawn from this year’s crop of young artist students. The subtle blend of experience and ambition resulted in a spellbinding performance. Being together with highly talented contemporaries in a campus setting for several weeks certainly develops an esprit de corps.
Emily Senturia has recently conducted Rinaldo at Minnesota Opera. She pushed the pace and the Glimmerglass Festival Orchestra rose to the challenge. Since 2013 she has built a considerable CV, mostly in smaller opera houses across the USA. Her Rinaldo proved she is ready to take on greater challenges still.
And now for that twist. As normality seemed set to be reasserted, Rinaldo determined to embark on anther quixotic mission. His bed was transformed into a ship and as the lights faded, there he was, static, with sword pointing heavenward in dramatic pose, about to lead his bloodied knights on their next romantic adventure.
God help the patients in the next ward who don’t know they need to be rescued. Sadly, Handel never got round to writing Rinaldo II.
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