The 57th Street entrance to New York’s Carnegie Hall is festooned in unfestive scaffolding. On the rain-soaked sidewalk a forlorn, uniformed figure holds a table-tennis paddle sign pointlessly announcing “Carnegie Hall”, an arrow aiming erratically this way and that. Security screening scanners stand guard on the sidewalk.
They ping constantly as a procession of titanium hips, aluminium knees and stainless-steel ankles process through the flashing arches. No one seems to bother much. My iPhone passes unremarked. It’s a disappointingly unglamorous introduction to one of the world’s most legendary concert halls.
Inside there is relief from the Christmas kitsch of nearby Broadway. No trees, flashing lights or attendants dressed as Santa. The restrained cream stucco and red velvet seats of Carnegie promise a serious artistic experience. Round the corner at Radio City the Rockettes are rocketting in a Christmas show that has been running since George Washington was a wee boy.
Meanwhile at 881 Seventh Avenue, conductor Harry Bicket and The English Concert are tuning up to deliver different magic, a semi-staged version of Handel’s superhit opera, Rodelinda.
For George Frideric Handel, 1724 -1725 was a miracle year. The year of three operas; Giulio Cesare, Tamerlano and Rodelinda, each radically different from the other. Not a formulaic template in sight. Imagine if Andrew Lloyd Webber had conquered the West End with Evita, Cats and Phantom of the Opera in a twelvemonth! It took a decade.
The German composer’s output was prodigious. His operas, staged by an earlier version of The Royal Academy at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket, were a huge commercial success. Opera was mainlining as public spectacle rather than courtly private performance for the first time. This was London opera-pop in spades.
Much of the credit goes to Nicola Haym, Handel’s librettist. He had been brought to London from Italy by the Duke of Bedford to be master of his chamber music, and in short order became Secretary of The Royal Academy, manager and lover of the star soprano, Joanna Maria Lindehleim, and a well-respected numismatist, writing several books on ancient coins.
He also piled up the coins for Ms Lindehleim, negotiating a 100-guinea contract for ten performances. A fortune for a singer back in the day. Haym understood how to drive a plot. He moved away from customary naval-gazing, formulaic contemplative arias. Haym’s and Handel’s pants were on fire, their plots fast-moving. Haym delivered the rattling words, Handel the musical fireworks. Never a dull moment in Rodelinda.
We find ourselves in Milan and the surrounding countryside, early 18th century. The goody, Bertarido, king of Lombardy and Milan, has been attacked and deposed by the baddy, Grimoaldo, an ally of Bertarido’s estranged brother, Gundeberto.
Gundeberto was killed in the battle and Bertarido vanished, leaving his queen, Rodelinda, and a young son, Flavio, in the power of the victorious Grimoaldo. As a reward for defeating Bertarido, Gundeberto had promised Grimoaldo the hand of Bertarido’s sister, Eduige.
That would go some way to legitimising Grimoaldo’s claim to the throne of Milan. Eduige and Grimoaldo fall in love, but she will not marry him while mourning her two warring brothers – one dead, one missing in action.
From abroad Bertarido has sent word of his own death, intending to return to Milan in disguise, rescue his wife and son, and escape to an anonymous life far from the vagaries of politics and the burden of government.
He, not Tory cabinet minister Norman Fowler, was the first politician to claim he wanted to spend more time with his family.
The news of Bertarido’s death has devastated both Rodelinda and Eduige. Grimoaldo, intent on gaining the throne, weighs his options. He has two special advisers – Garibaldo, his closest aide, and Unulfo, a member of Bertarido’s cabinet, who maintains back channels to the royal family, especially Rodelinda, and is the only person who knows that Bertarido still lives.
That crucial piece of knowledge provides the motive force for the whole opera.
The English Concert performance was semi-staged. No scenery, but the singers interacted rather than simply standing with scores on stands singing at the audience. A formula I think works exceptionally powerfully. The Carnegie stage must be set mostly in the mind.
Rodelinda and her son are being held in a sparsely furnished room in the palace in Milan. The Metropolitan Opera’s 2004 production had the heroine chained to a bed. Maybe on the extreme side for house arrest.
Grimoaldo enters with Eduige and his advisers and says he is going to marry Rodelinda, thereby gaining the throne. He has also fallen insanely in love with the queen. The outraged Rodelinda refuses him and storms away. Eduige, is flabbergasted by Grimoaldo’s desertion. Yet she – remember she is the goody king Bertarido’s sister – offers him her hand, heart, and some legitimacy.
Grimoaldo, however, is still stung by her previous postponements and infatuated by Rosalinda, fiercely declines Eduige’s offer. Now Garibaldo – the tee-shirted Dominic Cummings back-office Gollum of the piece – makes overtures to Eduige, hoping to gain the throne for himself. Eduige, furious with Grimoaldo, does not discourage him.
When he is left alone Garibaldo reveals his ambition for the throne. A full-blown Tory leadership-style battle is underway. Three kings in one year? Who would ever have thunk it!
Bertarido arrives at the stables, where Unulfo has left a simple soldier’s uniform for his disguise. He finds in the cemetery a memorial built for him by Grimoaldo, to appease the Bertarido faction. He longs to see Rodelinda but knows he cannot reveal himself. His reunion with Unulfo is interrupted when Rodelinda brings her son to plant flowers at the memorial. Unulfo succeeds in restraining Bertarido, who wants desperately to reach out to his family.
Garibaldo appears with an ultimatum from Grimoaldo, to which Bertarido must also bear silent witness. Either Rodelinda agrees to wed Grimoaldo, or Garibaldo kills the boy. It’s the “If you don’t marry me, I’ll shoot the goldfish” moment.
Rodelinda is forced to agree. She takes back her child, lashes out at Garibaldo, and rushes away. Bertarido cannot see past Rodelinda’s surrender to Grimoaldo’s demand. He thinks his wife disloyal, having given in too easily. He is unaware she has a cunning plan.
Unulfo promises to find some resolution to the dilemma. Alone and disconsolate, Bertarido grieves over Rodelinda’s apparent loss of faith.
Act II is set in the palace library. Garibaldo again offers his services to Eduige in exchange for her hand. He will kill Grimoaldo if need be. But he sees that Eduige still loves Grimoaldo.
Rodelinda appears with her child and reassures Eduige that her son’s future is her greatest concern. Eduige shares with Rodelinda her confused anger over Grimoaldo’s rejection of her. Grimoaldo enters with Garibaldo and Unulfo, and Rodelinda presents him with an ultimatum of her own: she will marry him on one condition, that he kill her son before her eyes.
It is a plot twist that takes an unfamiliar audience totally by surprise. A real episode-ender straight from Apple’s current best spy thriller, Slow Horses.
Her gambit works. Grimoaldo backs down. But he is very taken with Rodelinda’s courage and constancy and feels even more in love with her, though he cannot entirely forget his feelings for Eduige. A real player!
Garibaldo and Unulfo are left alone to debate Grimoaldo’s options. Garibaldo believes power should be seized and ensured at any cost. Hang any future potentially embarrassing judicial inquiry into Rodelinda’s lockdown.
Unulfo, musing alone, decides to take Rodelinda to Bertarido and finds a breath of hope. Walking near the stables, Eduige happens upon and recognizes Bertarido. She is overjoyed to find him alive. She assuages his fears about Rodelinda’s constancy, and they move away deep in conversation as Unulfo brings Rodelinda to the stables.
Unulfo goes off to look for Bertarido, who soon returns with Eduige to be reunited at last with his wife. When they are discovered together by Grimoaldo, he orders Bertarido taken into custody and enraged, bids them take their final farewells. Bertarido is at last going to die. End of Act II
In Act III, Eduige sends a servant to the dungeon with a concealed weapon that is to be given to brother Bertarido. She and Unulfo plan for Bertarido’s escape. Unulfo, who has access to the prison, will lead Bertarido through a hidden tunnel from the cell to the palace garden, where Eduige will wait with Rodelinda and the child. From there they will escape and lark about in peace in the Tuscan countryside.
Grimoaldo enters with Garibaldo, who advises him to kill the prisoner or lose the kingdom, but Grimoaldo’s conscience stays his hand. There follows a pivotal aria. Trapped in a web of conflicting feelings – fear, suspicion, love, and remorse.
Bertarido is reassured when a weapon is dropped through the bars of his prison cell. In the darkness he strikes out at what he believes to be an assassin – but it is Unulfo, come to help him. Bad luck. Even though he is wounded, Unulfo manages to get Bertarido to change out of the clothes he has been seen in.
As the two men escape into the tunnel, Rodelinda and Eduige arrive – Rodelinda has insisted on rescuing Bertarido herself – but finds only his clothes covered with Unulfo’s blood. She imagines the worst. At the foot of Bertarido’s memorial Grimoaldo’s internal struggle continues. He ultimately acknowledges his cruelty and guilt. Exhausted, he falls asleep. Garibaldo now attempts to assassinate Grimoaldo, but is stopped and killed by Bertarido, who gives himself up to Grimoaldo.
Following Grimoaldo into the library, Bertarido dares him to condemn his own saviour. Grimoaldo is himself ready to surrender and restores wife, child, and throne to the rightful king. His apology to Eduige goes unheeded at first, but eventually she forgives him. With reason restored, Bertarido back on the throne, Grimoaldo off to rule in Parma with Eduige as his queen and their Santa lists of goodies shouted up the chimney, the survivors acclaim a happier future.
It is, frankly, impossible to overstate the excellence of this performance. Harry Bicket and The English Concert are at the top of their Handel game. Bicket has forged a band dedicated to his relentless search for delicately nuanced interpretations of Handel’s majestic opera scores. Never is a musical line repeated without adding additional shape, colour, or dynamics to the performance.
Bicket has been artistic director of The English Concert since 2007 and their musical journey together is unparalleled. I think the most impressive characteristic, which came over particularly well in the Carnegie space rather than from an opera house orchestra pit, is Bicket’s effortless lightness of touch.
There are only 26 players in the ensemble. The Met’s orchestra features 110. But The English Concert sound is sufficient. Unforced. Musical passages are deftly handed from one section of players to the next. Everyone has a say. Bicket crafts a musically compelling conversation.
And when that conversation is shared by a cast of singers of exceptional quality and empathy the experience becomes totally enthralling.
English soprano Lucy Crowe was Rodelinda. Some readers may recollect Crowe is famous for having met Reaction’s opera critic in the Manhattan Hotel, Times Square elevator in January 2022. She was in town, nailing the role of Susanna in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro at the Met. Not in the elevator, stupid. The Lincoln Center.
She, unreasonably, thinks her well-deserved reputation as a go-to Handel principal rests more on her perfect vocal interpretation of the composer’s extensive oeuvre. The experience in Carnegie Hall was uncanny. There were moments when it was difficult to tell when Crowe’s gently fading phrases ended and the orchestra picked up, so in synch and sympathy with the music was she.
Crowe is also an acting dervish. She ranges the emotional spectrum with ease and total commitment. My first encounter with the Rosalinda character was through the voice of Renée Fleming in a Met performance, again conducted by Bicket. She sounded brilliant, but, compared with Crowe seemed more like a frustrated Long Island housewife having a bad day with the AGA than a usurped queen.
No doubt at Carnegie Hall. Crowe whipped up an emotional tempest. Semi-staged, perhaps, but semi-performed? No way. She embodied the heroine on a mission to save her husband and family at any cost.
English counter tenor, Iestyn Davies, is no stranger to Rodelinda. I first encountered him in the role of Unulfo in a Met production in 2011. He went on to sing Bertarido in 2017 and was reprising the role in Carnegie Hall. He has an unusually penetrating counter-tenor voice, his lines cutting through with perfect clarity and force where necessary, without any sense of strain on the register. He and Crowe riffed off each other perfectly.
And now, my dog in this fight, American countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, Unulfo. I first came across Nussbaum Cohen in 2019 when he was an Adler Scholar at San Francisco Opera. Impressive then, he has developed his distinctive, “other worldly” voice to become, in the words of Limelight Magazine, “a redefining force in the countertenor field.”
I have really no idea what that means, but it sounds terrific. And Nussbaum Cohen is snatching up roles all over the place, from New York to Glyndebourne. Must be true. His early Adler sponsor is a good friend, a San Fran lawyer and former President of the San Francisco Opera Guild, Karen Kubin, who emailed during the performance to ask how he was getting on. Such is the commitment of opera’s essential mother hens.
Nussbaum Cohen understands the power of the expressive gesture. His Guildenstern in the Met’s 2022 run of Brett Dean’s Hamlet was hilarious. In Rosalinda, he never stopped acting. Even a slight toss of the head while exiting the door stage right was consequential. He also happens to be a really engaging personality. Keep watching the Nussbaum Cohen space.
American tenor Eric Ferring as Grimaldo, English mezzo-soprano Christine Rice, Eduige and American bass-baritone Brandon Cedel, Garibaldo, completed this fantastic cast. The sextet pulled off the neat trick of leaving nothing to the imagination in a scenery and almost prop-free stage. There was, however, a table knife, which looked like it had been picked from the Weill restaurant in a hurry.
With Bicket delivering Handel’s succession of ravishing aria hits with sure-fire precision, directing with occasional light flourishes from his harpsichord, this sell-out Rodelinda was unforgettable.
Wagner dreamt of his Gesampkunstwerk, his perfect artwork of the future. Last Sunday Bicket created his very own Gesampkunstwerk right there, in Carnegie Hall. Handel’s perfect artwork of the past, courtesy of The English Concert, Crowe, Davies, Nussbaum Cohen et al.
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