Director, Richard Jones; Designer, Antony Mcdonald; Lighting Designer, Lucy Carter; Conductor, Christian Curnyn; Alcina, Lisette Oropesa; Ruggiero, Emily D’Angelo; Morgana, Mary Bevan; Bradamante, Varduhi Abrahamyan; Oronte, Rupert Charlesworth; Atlante, José Coca Loza
This will definitely be in my top ten list for 2022. It was for the most part extremely well sung and very cleverly staged.
The basic concept was that Bradamante and Ruggerio were Puritans, with Atlante an elder figure advising them. Alcina’s previous lovers who have all been turned into animals are also Puritans. The Puritans seem to be winning at the end, but Alcina and her sister Morgana have the last laugh! The set was a series of bunched together curtains which were lit in different colours to suit the changing moods of the piece. Beyond the curtains you occasionally see the darkness which highlights the magic of the Island – that darkness being something of a Jones trademark (in fact the greenhouse in Act 3 looked exactly like Hunding’s hut in the recent ENO Valkyrie, directed by Jones). At times there’s some front curtains with pictures of Alcina while set changes are taking place, and also another one, used for the overture and the later parts of the opera on occasion, with a picture of a Puritan man and woman walking together towards a setting sun with the inscription ‘The One Path’ – this gets changed to something else at the end by Alcina! The enthralled lovers of Alcina are a constant surprise with their animal and birds’ heads, reacting to the singers (was it my imagination or did the hare have waggly ears?). There are also some parkland trees and bushes which pop up from time to time, moved around by the ‘animals’, and there’s an enormous white bed for Alcina which periodically makes an appearance.
It’s a very busy production, bubbling with ideas and, where appropriate, gags, quite rightly so given the tendency towards the static in da capo arias – Alcina’s urn is a huge perfume bottle, for instance, that squirts out lethal scent with a brand label saying ‘Alcina’ . The famous aria Tornami a vagheggiar at the end of Act 1 is a tour de force – a dance routine that involves singers and animals and which really moves energetically with the music in a delightful and totally natural way (there’s another great dance routine for Ruggiero’s aria ‘Sta nell’Ircana‘, the one with the high horns). Throughout, the singers on stage act well, responding to each other with energy, intelligence and passion. Their actions seemed more attuned to the music than the ETO performances the previous week. Given all the grumbling I’ve seen about some of Jones’ productions in the past, this was a thorough-going repudiation of his critics. Costumes were blue and white bonnets for Puritan women, sober black for the Puritan, a blaze of colour for the animals and for Morgana. Bradamente and Ruggiero on the island tended to the sober black and white. Alcina had a very tight short black cocktail dress.
The stand-outs among the singers were (of course) Lisette Oropesa as Alcina and (perhaps less obviously) Mary Bevan as Morgana. Both had what I look for in singers – an ability to caress the notes, to convey the emotions they’re feeling through the nuancing of how they sing and their pointing of words, coupled with technical excellence. Oropesa had no problems with delivering razor sharp coloratura but was also excellent at conveying Alcina’s genuine emotion at the loss of Ruggiero – she is also a very considerable actor who had a whale of a time bouncing around the stage being seductive, provocative and imperious. All Mary Bevan’s arias were beautifully sung, with some lovely floated high notes and she also acted energetically. I was also quite impressed by the richness of tone of Varduhi Abrahamyan as Bradamante. The rest of the cast were very good (though, I thought, no better than the ETO singers the previous week) – Emily d’Angelo, of whom a lot has been written recently, did not particularly impress me (I kept hearing in my inner ear how other famous mezzo’s might have handled her arias and the shadings they might have introduced). I thought maybe the boy soprano was a bit of a mistake – it is, I think, more normally sung by a light female soprano. I have to say I was quietly pleased that the production team had decided to go for a woman in the role of Ruggiero rather than have a counter-tenor!
I have become perhaps a bit too used to the fizzle and snap, the gut string sounds, of specialist Baroque bands, and at times the ROHCG orchestra seemed a bit less lively than would have been ideal (and it was very large – it looked almost a Verdi sized orchestra – I counted 6 cellos, for instance). The leader of the orchestra and the leader of the viola section rightly came on stage at the end with the conductor in recognition of their beautiful playing in two of the arias
At the end of the day this was not only a hugely enjoyable staging but also a reminder that there is some wonderful music in this work – Tornami a vagheggiar, Verdi prati, Ah mio cor, Lascia ch’io panga and the beautiful aria with the solo cello (Credete al mio dolore) are all world-beaters! These I remembered – but ‘Sta nell’Ircana’ hadn’t registered with me before, and it’s been going round inside my head all day………
John's musical journey 