Handel, Teseo: (New Production) Soloists and chorus of the Opéra de Nice, Ensemble Baroque de Nice, Gilbert Bezzina (conductor) Nice, France. 18.03.2007 (MM)

The Handel revival has been going on for some thirty years now as it takes a while to rediscover fifty-six operas.  Hereabouts in the south of France we have had three memorable productions in recent years, all superb ; a Rinaldo in Montpellier and two Alcinas, one at the Aix Festival and the other in Lyon.

A germinal moment in the Handel revival was Peter Sellar’s politicized Giulio Cesare at the long defunct Pepsico Summer Fare in New York, the story translocated to war-torn Lebanon (the 1980’s one), specifically to the bombed out Holiday Inn (the orchestra pit was the swimming pool needless-to-say).  Another particularly arty version was Isabel Milenski’s Los Angeles Semele set on JR’s Dallas ranch, the long necks of the theorbos in the pit echoing the vertical thrusts of oil derricks on the stage.

Swiss director Marco Arturo Marelli set his Rinaldo (Montpellier, Berlin) in the timeless outback of the Middle East, ground-to-air missiles on the backs of burros, speakers mounted on neo-gothic church towers blasting Mohammad’s message.  Jossi Wieler put his modern dressed Alcina (Lyon, Stuttgart, San Francisco) in a huge Baroque picture frame to prove that duty, while noble indeed, is pretty boring.  Robert Carsen’s Alcina (Aix-en-Provence, Paris) set in a minimal abstracted space had his warrior heroine Bradamante going through some pretty tough tests, like submerging herself fully clothed in a pool of water then delivering an aria dripping wet.

The phenomenal power of Handel’s music and vocalism easily sustains the inexorable political and emotional forces that drive these stories.  Ironically, stories were not important to Handel, only emotions were – a Handel opera is simply a string of twenty-five or so arias, each focused on one or two strong affects.  Nothing more, nothing less, hang them on whatever story you want.

This amazing tradition of contemporary Handel stagings brought us to a heightened level of anticipation for Teseo in Nice (18/03/07), Handel’s second opera seria for London (1713).  Unlike Rinaldo (1711), his first, based on the purely Italian form, Teseo continues French lyric tragedy. Handel's libretto is based on Quinault’s libretto for Lully’s Thésée (1675), itself based on the tragic shapes of the celebrated Corneille (1606-1684).  This means five acts instead of three, a happy ending for sure based on the magnanimous sacrifice of a sovereign ruler, this being, after all, the France of the Roi Soleil, art in service to the state.

The curtain rose onto a setting of painted Baroque architecture, with fluffy cut-out Baroque clouds in the background. Agilia loves the absent warrior Teseo, though she must marry the king Egeo.  Everyone was in fully wigged Baroque regalia, delivering their arias in poses reminiscent of Baroque portraits - picture the one of Louis XIV standing in a perfect balletic third position.  Hardly competitive in theatrical excitement with the Handel we have come to expect.

Yet when Agilia, soprano Brigitte Hool, missing her beloved Teseo, cut loose with vocal fireworks in an extended duet with an oboe, things heated up mightily.  L’Opéra de Nice, eschewing the use of mezzo sopranos for Handel’s favored voice, the countertenor, had invested in three of these rare males.  Teseo’s lieutenant Arcane, Damien Guillon, cut loose with a vocally virtuosic account of Teseo’s bravery in battle and finally, the long awaited return of Teseo, sung by male soprano Jacek Laszezkovski, kept vocal tensions high in his brilliant entry aria that sailed well above the staff.  The sorceress Medée, the fiery mezzo Aurélia Legay, Agilia’s rival for the affections of Teseo, furiously threatened Agilia in jealous musical rages. 

Aria after aria flowed in a succession of affects that became the drama, a purely musical drama.  Just when you thought all imaginable dramatic force had been exhausted, Agilia and Teseo were reunited by the magnanimous king, the male alto Pascal Bertin, in a spectacular duet, male and female voice competing with each other in vocal virtuosity and intensity in the same mostly above the staff register. Really huge human emotions were made utterly magnificent in the artificial world of Baroque theater.

This artificial world evoked by director Gilbert Blin was not at all a re-creation of an original Baroque production, rather it was a metaphor as outrageous in its way as any of the productions cited above, using wigs, tights, poses, clouds, painted architecture, pagan hell itself - images as exotic as a bombed out Holiday Inn - to clothe Handel’s music drama.

Monsieur Blin staged the opera, designed the scenery and costumes, and lighted the stage, a tour de force indeed - though there was the underlying feeling that since opera is a collaborative art form, a few more collaborators, most apparently a lighting designer, would have benefited this considerable achievement.  Conductor Gilbert Bezzina, the willing musical collaborator with his intrepid Ensemble Baroque de Nice held forth nicely, though modern performance practice has induced a taste for a richer string sound than emerged from this pit.

 

Michael Milenski

 Pictures © Alain Hanel

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