Handel's Alcina is such a great opera, & I feel very fortunate to have experienced it live three times. The first, in 2002, was at San Francisco Opera, when a Stuttgart production was brought here by Pamela Rosenberg. I already loved the opera from recordings but had not heard good things about the production (that includes reviews not only of the SF production but in Gramophone of the DVD of the Stuttgart performance). I was overwhelmed by the intelligence & style of the production & regretted that my ticket was for the final show & I couldn't go experience it again. It's still one of my fondest memories among my opera nights. (It may have helped that I knew the opera, as mentioned, but had also read the Barbara Reynolds translation of the source, Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, so I was already aware of the characters & context). The second time I heard it was at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music this past April; each spring the Conservatory does a historically informed performance of a baroque opera, & this year it was Alcina. I heard & very much enjoyed the first cast (I had a conflict & couldn't go the next day to hear the other group of singers). The third time was last Saturday, in the first of two concert performances presented at Hertz Hall at UC Berkeley by Festival Opera as the climax of the bi-annual Berkeley Early Music Festival. There will be two fully staged performances on 19 & 21 June at Festival Opera's usual venue, the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek, & their audiences are, based on Saturday's performance, in for quite a treat.
Alcina is one of Handel's "magic" operas, meaning there are plentiful opportunities for visual splendor & shifting scenic extravaganzas, so although it works very well concert-style as a psychological study, staging adds to the fun & the sheer theatricality of the piece, but, as I said, the opera can stand on its own without baroque visual effects. One of the fascinating things about the piece is the potential ambiguity of character: how sincere is Alcina's love? She is a Circe-like sorceress who lives on her island, surrounded by wild beasts, rocks, & even waves that were once lovers whom she tired of. But she does seem – possibly – genuinely attached to the knight Ruggiero; even at the end, when it is clear he is leaving her, are her warnings to him motivated by sincere concern, or jealousy, or vindictiveness, or some combination of all those things?
Ruggiero has been rescued (or "rescued") from Alcina's pleasure island by his mentor & tutor, Melisso, & his once & future beloved, the Woman Warrior Bradamante (disguised for protection from hostile magic as her brother Ricciardo). There are further complications involving Alcina's sister Morgante, her general Oronte, & Oberto, a pageboy searching for his father, who has been transformed by Alcina into a lion. I will reiterate my usual advice on the plots of baroque operas, which is never read the plot summary, which will, inevitably, leave you hopelessly confused, with X in disguise as Y the beloved of Z & girls playing boys & boys who sound like girls playing military heroes: it will all make perfect sense on stage. And I don't think of these plots as fluff, or as some convoluted excuse for lots of pretty arias. There is a great deal of psychological insight & truthful dramatic strength in how life is portrayed in such operas. I find a more accurate reflection of the confusions & vagaries of love in baroque opera, with its gender-bent confusions & longing for love & uncertainties about what is real & lasting, than in any sweeping verismo statement of grand passions.
I've never understood why people who claim that they just want beautiful memorable tunes out of opera aren't clamoring for more baroque opera, which is basically a string of beautiful, memorable (&, let me emphasize, dramatically & emotionally appropriate) tunes – I mean, I'm sure there are some such who do love baroque opera, but people who make such statements usually mean they want overly familiar things done in an old-fashioned romantic style. You need terrific singers for baroque opera, & we certainly had them on Saturday night; let me run through the list, starting with the pageboy Oberto, sung by Nina Jones: it's a small part, but she brought pathos & power to it. Isaiah Musik-Ayala as Melisso was appropriately virile for someone trying to redirect his wayward pupil from love to duty – not, in the eyes of many of us, a very sympathetic position, but it's Melisso's position, & Musik-Ayala sold it. As Oronte, the general of Alcina's army & hopeful lover of the fickle Morgana, Spencer Greene was almost surprisingly memorable; this character can come across as a weakling, a mere cog in the wheels of lovely & lustful complications, but here he was a convincing frustrated lover.
To move on to the main quartet: Sarah Couden, well known as a commanding yet often whimsical presence in local productions of baroque operas, brought sincerity & pathos to Bradamante. As Morgana, Alcina's sister, another well-known local singer, Shawnette Sulker, was kittenish & hilarious but also, when the character expressed what is (possibly?) sincere regret over her straying love, genuinely moving. You couldn't blame Oronte for being won over, even if neither he nor we could be quite certain how sincere Morgana is. There was an unaccustomed bit of roughness, I thought, in Sulker's first aria, but she very soon righted herself & her voice was sweet & insinuating thereafter & her acting was reliably funny & on point. Courtney Miller as Ruggiero was elegantly assertive both as a lover & then as a warrior (though, for a concert performance, she maybe should have considered butching up her outfit or appearance a bit; I think some audience members were a bit confused by the femme looks of the valiant hero). And anyone who has heard Nikola Printz knows that they are brilliantly cast as the sorceress Alcina, commanding the stage with physical presence (even though Printz does not seem to be a very tall person) & vocal splendor; you truly believe that Alcina has magic powers & can control both her lovers & her magic island. Printz's interestingly androgynous face (they would be excellent casting as Joan of Arc) & clothing (a combination of soldier-like boots & flowing sheer tops in different colors for each of the three acts & necktied shirts) helped dramatize the erotic & subversive lure that captured so many supposedly strong men. Using not just sheer vocal volume but nuance, Printz held the center of the romantic & political complications of the plot. After Alcina's first aria, Printz delicately raised a finger & wiped first one side of her lips & then the other: the sort of understated but telling gesture that reveals a character in all her decisive & certain power. Festival Opera head Zachary Gordin directed the staging & Derek Tam led the ensemble from the harpsichord; the contributions of both were valuable parts of a memorable production.
One of the blessings of our musical moment is the revival of baroque opera, once thought an exotic blossom forever extinct, but in our time we have seen powerful & revelatory stagings of these formerly forgotten works. This year is a particularly good one for Handel operas in the Bay Area; not only did we have this Alcina, as well as the one in April at the Conservatory, but next month Philharmonia Baroque will be performing Tolomeo & in August West Edge is doing Rinaldo. All is not yet lost.
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