Handel and drama
Michael Tanner
Sosarme Royal College of Music Vanda Bloomsbury Theatre
Elor four out of every five Handel operas I see I do my best to persuade myself of and report on their dramatic cogency, however unapparent; their ceaseless flow of melody, even if it often seems unrelated to the words a character is singing, let alone the sentiments he or she is expressing; the subtle characterisation, which strikes many people, as it used to strike me, as not being characterisation at all; the irrelevance to the works' value of the fact that the plots are an unintelligible farrago, with a large number of personages falling in and out of love with one another at random and treating unreciprocated passion as treachery; in fact, all the things that Winton Dean, as superego of the baroque opera world, has insisted upon on pain of one's being crassly unable to tell an emotion in opera unless it is depicted with the lurid forthrightness of 19th-century Romantic works.
Then the worm turns, and I spend a long evening re-embracing all my old heresies, remembering with pleasure that Joseph Kerman, in Opera as Drama, still my bible of operatic criticism, accords Handel only one passing mention. Admittedly, it seems very favourable (`the greatest of traditional operatic composers'), but the impression is that Handel and drama have little contact. And though I warmly concede that there are exceptions, such as Semele (which is officially not an opera) and at least a lot of Giulio Cesare, my over-riding sense is that the dramatic pleasures in Handel's operas are incidental to the musical ones. The quality of the performance I'm at doesn't have so much to do with this view as the length of time since I last admitted to myself that that is really how I feel.
This year's Handel Festival sports a production of Sosarme at the Royal College of Music which is in most ways good, if not as good as last year's brilliant Agrippina. But I was assailed from early on by the suspicion, soon hardening into conviction, that it is dramatically a nonstarter. I wonder if the director William Relton, or the author of the very audible new translation Simon Butteriss, share my view to any extent, What makes me raise the question is that I don't see in the plot, or hear in the music, any indication that this is a comic work, anyway intentionally. But Relton produces it for long stretches as if it is a send-up of love, jealousy and intrigue, though he doesn't, because it wouldn't be possible, maintain that approach throughout. Butteriss's translation tolerates or encourages a fair amount of jocular enunciation, though again that can hardly be more than occasional, given the way things are going on the stage. Some of ReIton's devices suggest that he's afraid of losing the audience's attention: for instance, during a perfectly serious aria the addressees keep picking up their tea cups, only to replace them in their saucers in the face of the next deluge of musical decoration. Business during arias is always a dangerous sign, unless evidently dictated by the text or situation, That Handel has a strong sense of humour, perhaps a stronger sense of irony, there's no doubt. It's just a question of whether it's to he found in, or is only imposed on, such a work as Sosarme.
I'd be interested to know why Relton updated the action from the early-13th century to the early-20th. Not that there is a keen sense of time or place in the action, but the period it's been transferred to has become irritatingly trendy, and the plot seems more inane than it's bound to if sited in a time of which we have fairly defined expectations. The performances of the women in the cast were notably stronger than those of the men. Once again the Finnish Essi Luttinen played a king — last year Nero, this year the title role — with disturbing androgynous force. Here, though, it seemed less pointful, though she has a gorgeous voice. The Elmira of Elizabeth Watts, who sings the opera's show-stopping Act II duet, was the star of the evening, and by a long way. Tireless, with rich and thrilling tone, each of her arias was an occasion; and the Erenice — her mother — of Jennifer Johnston, played as a kind of well-intentioned Lady Bracknell, was impressive too. The four men in the cast were adequate but not arresting. The chorus was notably invigorating and fullvoiced, making one wish they had a lot more to do.
The previous evening at the Bloomsbury Theatre I had seen Dvorak's Vanda , University College Opera's annual resuscitation of a neglected work. As so often, one applauds the effort, is fasci
nated to hear and more particularly to see these pieces, but ungratefully compelled to say that the performance didn't really give the work its best chance. Here the conducting of Charles Peebles was energetic and shapely, and there was a striking heroine in Elaine McKrill. She has a stage presence which many a famous singer might envy, and she threw herself at the title role. But for a young singer who is a cover-Briinnhilde her tone is worryingly frayed and edgy. Her hapless beloved Slavoj was Bradley Daley, an established tenor with a very agreeable voice, but he needs to learn to act, The student singers were embarrassing, and the chorus surprisingly feeble, with lots of stirring Slavic stuff to sing. Setting this drama as near-contemporary is idiotic, but presumably it saves on costumes. I need to be persuaded of Dvorak's operatic talents, and this didn't do much to help.
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