Gismonda, Elizabeth Karani; Adelberto, Kieron-Connor Valentine; Ottone, James Hall; Matilda, Lauren Young; Teofane, Nazan Fikret; Emireno, Edward Jowle. Conductor, Gerry Cornelius, with the Old Street Band. Director, James Conway; Designer, takis; Lighting Designer, Tim van ’t Hof
This was the first of three Handel operas I am intending to go to in just over a week! The ETO is offering three Handel operas in Buxton but I am missing out on Agrippina, which I saw on a Met live broadcast a few years ago and which is also clashing with something else I’m doing.
It was a really cold evening- the first really Autumnal evening this year, with a murky, misty light as I travelled towards Buxton, with a smell of woodsmoke in the air. It seems bizarre that a work first performed 300 years ago and then lost to audiences for the next 250 years should pop up in Buxton to a reasonably sized audience with so little difficulty of access and such a talented cast, at a time of cost-of-living crises and straitened public finances. ETO are a marvellous company and I hope they are not too harmed by the forthcoming Arts Council cutbacks (update – their budget has been increased by 20% for the next triennium but of course, with inflation, that means the budget remains at its current level or so in real terms) .
Ottone’s plot is very convoluted, even by the standards of early 18th century opera. I won’t attempt to describe it in detail, save to say that it’s set in 10th century Italy, and involves multiple cases of mistaken and assumed identity. It is an interesting work, though, in that the opera seria form, and the da capo arias, for once seem quite well-suited to an operatic context where all the 6 main characters are in their different ways isolated and miserable, and the coming together of people at the end, with everyone holding each others’ hands, even the fairly monstrous Gismonda, has real impact on stage. The da capo aria does seem an ideal form for the characters to express their loneliness and melancholy, and their separation from each other. The director ensured there was sufficient reaction between the characters in the recitative sections and, where needed, in the arias, but inevitably there is only so much which can be done to enliven this form of opera for a modern audience (therefore replying heavily on the music and the expertise of those singing and playing it) – there are some moments of wry comedy, mainly associated with Gismonda and her son Adelberto, which were deftly brought out and not over-done. The opera was sung in English, which I think was a good call, even if you only heard maybe 10% of the words – it meant that, with the surtitles giving the general direction of travel, you really did feel you understood what was going on – reading the summary of the plot in the programme book beforehand induced mild panic, and I put it quickly away.
The set worked well – two curved semi-spherical shapes which could be the interior of a palace or a cave wall, and which the singers moved around as needed. The two shapes – see pictures below – could, with the painting on them visible, be made to look like a Byzantine court, but, lit in other ways, were able to become cold and grey – the cave walls and distant sea shores. One or two critics said the lighting was too dim, but that is not how it appeared to me – I thought the lighting created atmosphere but not at the expense of visibility.
As a score, I found the work really enjoyable – I just felt I wished I had heard it more times before. There’s such inventiveness – if not quite in the ‘every aria a hit’ mode of the Messiah – and there was a lot of wonderful music. The highlights for me were Gismonda’s beautiful aria where she reflects on her son (Vieni, o figlio, e mi consola), a wonderful duet between Gismonda and Matilda in the cave (Duet: Notte cara), and an upbeat aria from Ottone when he’s beaten Adalberto in battle.
The singers’ diction wasn’t brilliant apart from the baritone singing Emireno. All the singers were good – there were certainly no weak links. Gismonda, sung by Elizabeth Karani, who’s clearly quite an experience singer in major houses, was particularly good, and Nazan Fikret as Teofane floated some beautiful high notes. Lauren Young as Matilda maybe naturally has a slightly abrasive voice but I enjoyed her energy and passion. Adelberto, sung by Kieron-Connor Valentine, and Ottone, James Hall, were both slightly feeble characters dramatically and one almost felt that for the most part Handel had withheld the best music from these roles (although as this performance only ran to 2 hrs 50 mins with interval, presumably at least an hour or so of music was left out). The Old Street Band dug into the music with vigour as most period groups tend to do – a few blips occurred along the way but nothing to take away from a very enjoyable show. Gerry Cornelius didn’t sound as though he was one of the more extreme helter-skelter early music experts, and he let the music surge and relax very well, I thought.
John's musical journey 