Philharmonia Baroque: Handel's Tolomeo

One of the more exciting & unexpected developments in my now four decades plus of opera-going is the resurgence, not just in specialty festivals but in mainstream houses, of that expansive & rich body of work, once considered as extinct as the brontosaurus: baroque opera. Not surprisingly revival has come at an uneven rate, & while some works are well known, there are others, even by a giant like Handel, that are relatively obscure; such a one is Tolomeo, which Philharmonia Baroque revived this week. I saw the first performance, in Herbst Theater. Musically the piece was rich enough to satisfy any opera lover, especially with such a truly outstanding cast, but dramatically the semi-staged production by James Darrah Black was less satisfying.

PBO's new Music Director, Peter Whelan, led a lively & musically convincing performance, with a stellar cast of singers: countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen in the title role, soprano Lauren Snouffer as his beloved wife Seleuce, countertenor Kangmin Justin Kim as his younger brother Alessandro, bass-baritone Dashon Burton as Araspe, king of Cyprus, & soprano Nicole Heaston as Elisa, his sister. The first three, members of the Egyptian royal family, are in exile or hiding or shipwrecked on Cyprus, & therefore to some extent under the power of Araspe & his sister. Complications romantic, dynastic, & familial inevitably ensue. There's no point in spelling them out; baroque operas have notoriously convoluted plots, but the action is generally clear enough in performance, & I will continue to insist that the shifting & often disguised layers of love, longing, & loss portrayed are psychologically & dramatically truer to life than the grand passions of verismo. As is usual in baroque opera, the characters were called on to display a wide variety of emotions (though Araspe was mostly restricted to the anger produced by rebuffed royal love, which Burton delivered with magisterial fury) & the cast was on-point, each time & in all moods; vocally, it was a glorious evening of glowing splendors.

Dramatically things were less certain. Here's one of the points at which vocalization & characterization intersect: Elisa's love for the disguised Tolomeo was portrayed in a comically overdone, almost camp, way. This is a legitimate choice, & Heaston played it extremely well, but it's not the choice I would have preferred. Once you've established Elisa as a comic character, with basically silly emotions rooted in the whims of an entitled princess, then halfway through the opera when her love turns to vengeful anger, it's difficult at that point to start taking those emotions seriously – and if her threats don't carry a sense of real danger with them, then the dramatic tension is really defused.

Also, there's a tendency to see baroque opera as lots of lovely tunes wrapped around a hollow core, emptied of significance, which I think diminishes what these works can actually accomplish for present-day listeners who are open to them. The conventions are already to start with alien enough for many modern audiences; turning them into campy comedy scenes is, I think, something that should be done very sparingly.

I said above that the basic action of baroque opera, however convoluted in the plot synopsis, is clear in performance, but I need to modify that a bit, as on Thursday night the basic story-telling was often unclear, though I'm familiar enough with what is likely to be going on to make educated guesses. At one point, if the characters themselves weren't narrating what they were seeing & doing ("Why is my beloved, who ungratefully doesn't love me, going over to that shepherd? Why is she speaking to him, a mere lowly shepherd? I will slay him!"), we would have been completely lost. During one aria Tolomeo was in front of Seleuce, who was singing about him, but apparently he was meant to be only in her thoughts (the usually lively & sensitive Cohen was stiff & withdrawn at those moments, which is why I think we were meant to "read" him as present only in her mind).

The ending was very confusing: Elisa has given Tolomeo a poison. I guessed that it would be some sort of narcotic sleeping potion, as it's unlike baroque opera to kill off the hero like that: the eighteenth century liked its happy endings; or, to put it in a more appropriately philosophical way, they liked to have order restored to & on the restless world before sending the audience out into the seething night. I was right about the sleeping potion. But Elisa has also announced that she's seen Seleuce slaughtered in front of her – but then the very much alive Seleuce is led in. Elisa doesn't even look surprised. What's going on? Afterwards I read the plot synopsis & it turns out that Alessandro, who has decided to do the right thing & restore his elder brother to the throne of Egypt, has rescued her. I think the libretto itself was a bit slapdash there, but the staging didn't help things.

The costumes didn't help either. Everyone was in vaguely contemporary outfits, mostly in those sort of wheat-ash-pale pale olive green-beige-taupe shades. At first I thought they all looked like models in a Banana Republic catalogue. Then I noticed there were some differences: the brothers Tolomeo & Alessandro both wore stylish hiking boots (which I envied), while Araspe had very polished black dress shoes. His shirt was black, though his linen suit was pale ash-grey or off-white or some other evanescent shade, & his sister also wore black, though her outfit was also topped with a pale jacket. Seleuce wore a lovely pale (yellowish?) sundress & then partway through switched to a different lovely pale (greenish?) sundress; I don't know why she changed. Were Alessandro's earrings & painted nails part of the characterization, or just the personal style of the singer? (Or both?) And I don't know how some of these distinctions (like the footwear) would be seen if you weren't sitting in the front row, as I was, so I don't know quite what was going on there. I don't really need characters dressed like "shepherds" or "kings" but it's helpful to paint some of these differences in broader strokes & brighter colors, & it might be helpful if characters in disguise have some sort of rudimentary, even symbolic, disguise; otherwise you may well wonder why someone is looking directly at the beloved spouse he or she has been pining for in aria after aria yet does not recognize said beloved. There's suspending belief, & then there's asking for the impossible.

On either side of the stage there were what looked like parts of a wrecked plane, built out of wood, half-buried in sand. These weren't really used, & were meant to indicate that Tolomeo had crash-landed on Cyprus, or at least I think that's what they meant. Stretched along the front of the stage were fluorescent tubes on wooden blocks, which were moved into different shapes on occasion (& the bulbs changed colors sometimes). In the middle of the stage, behind the row of lights, there were some wooden boxes covered with some sort of foam insulation & tied down with ropes. These were eventually removed, & used to tie up a character, & inside the wooden boxes there were large mirrored cubes, which came out in the last half & were stared at by various characters for long periods.

This was an interesting idea, & multivalent enough to be intriguing: was the staring literally a reflection of their narcissism? In the director's note, which I read afterwards, there is a suggestion that even the reflection of a face can't convey everything that face signifies or that that person has gone through. There was a comic edge sometimes: the first person to stare into the mirrored cube was Elisa, & the action seemed in line with her self-indulgent vanity (I couldn't help thinking of Semele in her Handel opera, staring into a mirror & singing Myself I shall adore, if I persist in gazing). Afterwards an audience member who seemed delighted with the mirrored cubes referred to them as the characters' cellphones (because everyone kept staring into them obliviously), & you could follow that line of thought too, satirically &/or seriously. (But I should probably also note that the reflections off the mirrored cubes repeatedly hurt my eyes.)

There were some striking stage pictures, so much so that the man next to me took several surreptitious photos (he was actually not nearly as annoying as the couple behind me who frequently whispered & then emitted a round of high-pitched giggles). The staging was at its best when it worked on a symbolic, poetic, signifying level, which is where the striking stage pictures would come in; where it fell down was with the basic what is going on here stuff. I do know people who just don't even bother trying to follow the plot twists & emotional complexities, but just bask in the music, &, you know, sure, there are many mansions &c, but for these wonderful works to maintain their newfound theatrical vitality, at some level they need to make sense & be taken seriously. It sounds prosaic, even banal, even, oh horror, literalist & low-brow, to insist that the action should be clear, but it's especially important in a work as little-known as this one. If you mess around with Tosca, some people will have a fit (I am definitely not one of them), but a large part of the audience will know what you're playing around with. That's not the case with Tolomeo.

Having said all that, I have to go back to swimming in the musical glories of the evening. Even if I didn't love Handel & baroque opera as much as I do, just the chance to hear the vivid orchestral playing & the endlessly glorious unfurling singing would have been enough. I wonder if anyone made a surreptitious recording to go with my neighbor's photos?

Berkeley Early Music Festival/Festival Opera: Handel's Alcina

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.

West Edge Opera: The Coronation of Poppea

The second opera I saw at the West Edge Opera summer festival was Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea, conducted by Adam Pearl & directed by NJ Agwuna. with Shawnette Sulker as the bewitching, scheming Poppea, Sarah Coit as the weak & willful Nero, Sara Couden as Nero's soon-to-be-abandoned wife Octavia, Philip Skinner as the sober philosopher Seneca, Michael Skarke as Poppea's former lover Ottone, Samuel Faustine in the comic drag role of Poppea's attendant Arnalta, & Rayna Mia Campbell as Ottone's would-be lover Drusilla. All were top-notch & musically the afternoon was a delight.

With its complicated but emotionally logical plot, its richness & range of characterization, its easy alternation between comedy & tragedy, high & low, its dramatic irony & moral ambiguities, this opera is more Shakespearean than many of those directly based on his work; &, as with Shakespeare, whatever you think of as the ur-text is likely to arrive in somewhat altered form in performance. In this performance the prologue with Fortune, Virtue, & Love debating was cut, as it often is, & various other alterations are made (the only one that for me disrupted the flow – meaning it brought me out of the performance & into considerations of the text – was the absence of Seneca's acolytes during his suicide, as their cries of Non morir, Seneca have always seemed to me a key part of that scene – nonetheless, their absence did not detract much from Skinner's sober, wise, & ineffectual philosopher). The story flowed smoothly & clearly, & in this production, more than in others I've seen (live or on video) you were aware of Poppea as the puppetmaster (or, I guess, puppetmistress) manipulating the action – Sulker was, not surprisingly to those who have heard her before, fabulously seductive in the role. Octavia, portrayed with appropriately delusional dignity by Couden, didn't stand a chance with the sensuous Nero, though we in the audience were free to enjoy her more than he did (but then, few of us are decadent emperors, at least outside of our own minds).

The setting was semi-contemporary, semi-classical, which works fine. The salacious aspects of the plot were emphasized by projections at the back, with typically lurid tabloid headlines describing the goings-on of the rich & famous; all very suitable, even if the tabloid presentation is harmlessly anachronistic. I will say that many of these projections were partly blocked for me by the set, but I got the gist. I did have a problem with one part of the staging: when Ottone, spurred & blackmailed by Octavia into attempting the murder of Poppea as she sleeps unattended, disguises himself in the clothes of Drusilla & then flees when he is foiled, Poppea & the interrupting Arnalta think the attempted assassin is, in fact, Drusilla. In this production, Drusilla wore a distinctive ensemble of dull red over a green skirt, but that's not what Ottone borrows – he's in some sort of brownish cloak that we've never seen before, & doesn't much look like a woman's garment anyway, so it's unclear why everyone thinks, "Oh, Drusilla!" With this gender-fluid outfit, you also miss the sense that he is unmanning himself in obedience to the Empress Octavia's murderous orders. & then the tabloid projections start, & we see paparazzi-style photos of the fleeing killer – only we can clearly see his face, which is easily identifiable as Ottone's, & which has masculine facial hair – so, again, why is everyone convinced that Drusilla was the would-be assassin? I don't know what they were thinking there. Other than that, this was a solid, even captivating, afternoon, & the gorgeous final duet between Poppea & Nero, sung in stillness & partial darkness, sent us out floating; historically & psychologically, we know better than to be convinced by this love duet, but isn't the whole point of the opera the overwhelming appeal, despite our moral qualms & realistic assessments of a given situation, of such gloriously gorgeous sounds?