Stream: Ariodante
The Royal Opera House
I first heard Dopa Notte from ‘Ariodante’ 30 years ago when I bought a 99p cassette of Handel to play in the car, and there was Janet Baker singing this astonishing music -all these runs, that syncopation. Very recently, in the frank and moving television documentary, ‘Janet Baker in her own Words’, I learned that the opera recording session under Raymond Leppard was about to stop after a hard day in the studio, but Baker wanted to sing Dopa Notte. She recorded it in one take! It’s worth catching both of these online if you get the chance.
The 2020 concert version at the Royal Opera House was to be the first live performance in front of an audience since March but, with lockdown intervening, it’s been recorded for streaming. Like the Leppard version, it has a wonderful cast, this time with a chamber orchestra which includes period instruments. ‘Ariodante’ was first staged at Covent Garden, in 1735, and this is its first performance there since. Based on Ariosto’s ‘Orlando Furioso’, the Scottish-set opera resembles part of the plot of ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ (without Beatrice and without the laughs) – the false accusation that a young woman has been seen to commit adultery just before her wedding. Here the victim, Ginevra, is disbelieved by her father, the King, as well as by her betrothed, Ariodante. She is imprisoned and generally has a worse time of it than Hero in Shakespeare’s play. The author of the heroine’s misfortune is the villain, here Polinesso, and in Shakespeare, Don John, known as the Bastard, both archetypal renaissance anti-heroes. (When I read the play with a fourth year class some years ago, the boys used to race each other to the door to be the first to ask, “Please can I play Don John, the Bastard?”).
Polinesso is clearly still the most fun character to play, and Iestyn Davies makes the most of his chance. Skinny and sinister-looking in his tight dinner-jacket with turned-up shawl collar, grey jeans, and stubble which suggests a bad lockdown, he snarls and scoffs his way through the role. There’s no scenery to chew, but he paws the ornate side pillars, and at one point appears to stub out a lit cigarette on his hand. Davies has possibly had more experience singing Handel than the rest of the cast, and the villainy does not detract from the beauty and fluidity of his superb counter-tenor voice.
With no accounting for tastes Dalinda, Ginevra’s maid, is captivated, and Polinesso persuades her to impersonate her mistress. Sophie Bevan works hard in this role. She has lovely music and acts well to convince us (the weak point in the plot) that she is entirely innocent of deceit. She eventually returns to her true love, Ariodante’s brother, Lurcanio, played by the tenor, Ed Lyon. Their duet, a relatively rare event in Handel, is the penultimate number, and after singing alternate lines, the voices blend together in beautiful harmonies. Lyon, as far as I can tell, is the only member of the cast to have sung his role previously, in Scottish Opera’s production on 2016.
This production is a semi-staged performance in a wood panelled set on the Covent Garden stage. The twenty-five piece baroque orchestra sits behind the singers, who use the front of stage entrances and the front part of the stage. They interact with each other and sing from memory. So in most respects the ideal type of concert performance! There are a few curiosities. Christian Curnyn, conducting, never once communicates with the singers – not a nod, not a glance. Unusual in concert performances, where the ability for conductors and singers to look over their shoulders is usually a given. They have of course been very well prepared, and it’s a small cast. Or are they watching the conductor on screens further back in the auditorium?
The performance is directed by Isabelle Kettle, a recent graduate of the Jette Parker Young Artistes Programme, and the lighting is by Simon Bennison, an established member of the ROH team who normally works in ballet productions. Both seem to have decided on a light touch approach. This is sensible, but for me initially puzzling. For example, as the first characters on stage, Ginevra and Dalinda were in modern evening dress, I wasn’t immediately clear that the cast were in costume, appropriate to their status, and to some extent character. The stage lighting seemed harsh at first when a bright orange Trumpian glare shone off the wooden walls. Later more subtle effects darkened the stage or threw a more flattering light on the characters.
Ariodante incidentally is in three acts, and the broadcast last Saturday on Radio 3 (available for 30 days on BBC Sounds) divides it, with informative talks at each interval. For some reason the streamed performance, isn’t divided, so it loses some sense of structure. Nevertheless, the individual stories and destinies are easy to follow. Chen Reiss, as the heroine, has the most difficult role to get right. She has to move from joy to despair, from Princess to prisoner. She has a lovely voice and a secure grasp of her difficult arias. But I’m not always convinced by her acting. The victim is a thankless role (I can remember many Beatrices in Much Ado, but no Heros!), but there were a few opportunities where her state of mind, maybe with clearer direction, could have been more clearly communicated. Her scene with her father just before the duel worked well in revealing her puzzlement as well as love, and her last lovely duet with Ariodante was a heartfelt ending to the opera.
Gerald Finley was the most interesting person to watch on stage. His warm bass-baritone ideally suited to the part, he made every word and every note count in his music, not the most memorable in the opera. The only unnamed character, he looked every inch the King of Scotland, freshly barbered, in grey double-breasted suit and dark pink tie. Most importantly he had got to grips completely with the method of singing to camera in an empty auditorium. He interacted convincingly with the other characters on stage but remembered that he was also singing out to us, his audience, and into a large resonant theatre. His last aria, as he sings “I embrace you and I leave you” to his still wretched daughter is a quiet slow piece, accompanied by two flutes.
Ed Lyon, as Lurcanio, shares many of Finley’s virtues as an actor. I’d never seen him in a baroque role previously, but he handles the demands of the style with ease. His role as the champion of Ginevra provides him with a moment of socially distanced super-power, when in the duel, he dispatches Polinesso with a dirty look from the other side of the stage. South African tenor, Thando Mjandana (natty in braces) impressed as Odoardo, a servant, a small role which he made count.
And to the hero. Ariodante, originally written for castrato voice, has become a go-to role for the modern mezzo. Paula Murrihy is certainly on a par with the best of them. It’s a long sing, with a big aria half-way through and a bigger one right at the end. Scherza Infida is taken very slowly, allowing the orchestration to blend beautifully with her voice. The obbligato is provided by the bassoon, and at parts the dissonances in the score add to the character’s pain. The recapitulation is if anything even slower, with a quiet emphasis on words and feelings and with relatively little extra ornamentation. A highlight as ever of Handel’s score.
Even better is her Dopa Notte, which comes near the end of the opera. This is taken at a brisk pace, but there is no sense of Murrihy showing off her finesse. It’s light, buoyant, and seemingly effortless. Although it celebrates the end of Ariodante’s troubles, only in the recapitulation does she smile and enjoy the opportunities for some elaboration of the melody. Her final number is a duet with Chen Reiss, who, somewhat unfairly, has to wait longer than everyone else to know she has been rescued. It immediately follows the duet between Lurcanio and Dalinda, and both bring the opera to a close quietly with harmony and without fireworks.
This is an opportunity to hear a major Handel opera with a fine cast. Unlike other streamed music at the moment, it wasn’t made originally for film, and to some extent, that shows. The Royal Opera House has been a bit stingy too in its access to information about the performers – there are no cast biographies and no list of the orchestra members. I had to rely on Andrew McGregor in his introduction to the Radio 3 performance for information on the size of the orchestra. It’s well worth the £10 which you pay for the streamed performance, but the Radio 3 broadcast includes useful commentary.
Available to stream for £10 on the Royal Opera House website.
