My taster of this year’s Handel Festival Halle included two of the festival’s three opera productions, Arminio and Riccardo primo, as well as Handel’s rarely performed serenata Parnasso in festa (per gli sponsali di Teti e Peleo). The first, a regular production by Opera Halle, is going to remain in the repertoire for at least two seasons. The second, set at the eighteenth-century theatre associated with J. W. Goethe in nearby Bad Läuchstadt, was meant to showcase young talent in collaboration with Wolfgang Katschner, head of the Lautten Compagney Berlin, and the master courses in baroque opera organised by the University of Music Franz Liszt in Weimar. As is often the case with opera festivals, the biggest stars were to be seen and heard in concert performance. So it does not come as a surprise that Parnasso in festa turned out to be the most accomplished performance of the three in strictly musical terms. It not only featured the bright young Australian countertenor star David Hansen (Apollo) and two other talented soloists, Martina Janková (Clio) and the male soprano Paolo Lopez (Orfeo), but also impressed with the remaining soloists Silke Gäng (Calliope, Cloride), Jenny Högström (Euterpe) and Ismael Arróniz (Marte), all recruited from the ranks of La Cetra Vocal Ensemble. They seamlessly alternated the roles of choral singers and soloists.
Both the choir and its accompanying orchestra La Cetra Baroque Orchestra have strong links with the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, and the dedication with which this institution promotes historically informed performance practice explains why, under artistic director Andrea Marcon, one had the impression of an overall ensemble achievement, in spite of the aforementioned distinguished soloists. The serenata was composed in 1734 for the wedding of Princess Anne and William IV of Orange, allegorically equated with the mythological figures of Thetis and Peleus, who do not appear in the serenata as characters. Instead, it is left to Apollo, his son Orpheus, and the muses Clio, Calliope and Euterpe to praise the conjugal union in celebratory tableaux, with the odd contribution from the huntress Cloride and the war god Mars. The undramatic nature of this series of jubilations on Mount Parnassus has been partly responsible for its relative unpopularity, although the reasons must also include the fact that Handel borrowed heavily from his oratorio Athalia, performed a year before at Oxford. However, the effect is astounding, for what one hears in Athalia as the emergence of a fully-fledged style of English oratorio acquires a decisively Italianate flair in the serenata. Handel seldom composed in the genre: if we exempt the early, virtuosic and “learned” Aci, Galate e Polifemo,written for only three soloists in 1708, we can see that around this time (1733-1734) he was exploring the stylistic capacities of different interpretive forces (soloist and choral), languages and/or styles, as in the bilingual second version of Acis and Galatea (1733), also a serenata. Thus, due to a different dramaturgic context and its musical-dramatic topoi, Parnasso in festa comes over as an independent work, although almost eighty percent of the numbers are borrowings from Athalia.
Its merits came to the fore in the flashy, virtuosic arias written for Apollo, although Hansen showed that besides an impeccable coloratura technique, a characteristic masculine timbre and a forceful interpretation reminiscent of the young David Daniels, he possesses an equally attractive messa di voce, making him a worthy heir to the famous mezzo soprano castrato Carestini, who sang the part at the premiere. The second most important role in the serenata, that of the muse Clio, was perfectly suited to the lyric sensibility of Janková’s soprano. In the predominantly slower, melancholic and thinly accompanied arias written for Orfeo, Lopez gave us an interesting insight into the workings of a male soprano voice: however pure in vocal timbre, he remained somewhat insecure in the higher, soprano register. The inspired playing of the Cetra orchestra and the singing of the eponymous choir under Marcon stole the show, with their sophisticated, rounded, sonorous balance coming off particularly well in the Georg-Friedrich-Händel Halle, the city’s chamber concert hall.
The same level of subtle coordination between soloists and accompaniment was present in the Händelfestspielorchester Halle’s contribution to Arminio, under the baton of violinist-turned-conductor Bernhard Forck. There was an aesthetically questionable addition of percussion to the orchestra in order to enhance the rhythm (also an unfortunate characteristic of Katschner’s reading of Riccardo primo, and applied irrespective of the musical nature of the individual arias), as well as a few technical lapses in the string section. But on the whole, the festival orchestra, consisting largely of members of Opera Halle’s regular orchestra and therefore not focused exclusively on historical performance practice, presented a convincing reading of the score.
Out of the soloists, three singers (Melanie Hirsch as Tusnelda, Robert Sellier as Varo and Ki-Hyun Park as Tullio) are members of the ensemble, but this is more due to voice type than the importance of the roles and their musical excellence. Handel laid the strongest emphasis on the couple formed by the principal protagonists, Arminio and Tusnelda, and on the secondo uomo, Sigismondo. Following the trend of assigning castrato roles to countertenors at the Halle Festival, we were treated to two very different voices of the type, the colourful alto of Hagen Matzeit (also active as a baritone) in the title role, conveying its tragic character with vigour, and the more monochromatic mezzo soprano of Jeffrey Kim, another singer of impeccable coloratura technique, but slightly less equipped to convey the edginess of Sigismondo’s troubled character. Julia Böhme, a youngish-sounding contralto, was the ideal choice for the crisp, playful arias of Ramise, but Melanie Hirsch shone the brightest as the dramatic prima donna Tusnelda. Her part abounds in “pathetic” arias in the minor mode, so it is no wonder that she was at her most moving in the heart-breaking Largo “Rendimi il dolce sposo” (in the major mode!) that closed the second act, with Tusnelda in the ambivalent situation of begging her enemy, the Roman general Varo, to spare Arminio’s life.
The rest of the soloists were reliable in their minor roles: Sellier revealed a solid lyric tenor in Varo’s two arias, and Ki-Hyun Park a somewhat blustery bass as Tullio. In 1737 this role was premiered by an alto due to a cast change, but Handel had already sketched some of the arias for bass, so that the casting decision made in Halle could have been conceived as going back to the composer’s original intentions. Tomasz Raf in the dramatically pivotal, but musically rather marginal role of the villain Segeste (at the time of the first performance in London only of a singer of limited possibilities was available to Handel) did not leave us wishing for more, due to a rather coarse voice, lacking in subtlety, although Raf was very satisfying in the recitatives and is obviously an able actor.
It is difficult to describe British director Nigel Lowery’s approach to Arminio in one sentence. Handel’s opus is one of those operas whose original action is rendered obscure by the excessive cutting of recitative. In this case, the reworking of Antonio Salvi’s libretto was even more extensive, with some arias cut and new arias inserted to accommodate the cast changes, which occasionally leaves the action lacking in motivation. Unlike Immo Kamaran’s reading of Siroe, Re di Persia at last year’s Göttingen Festival, the director’s intention does not seem to have been to present a little known opera in a dramaturgically attractive light, but to deconstruct a work that has not yet been properly ‘constructed’ on the operatic stage. Like numerous operas of its day, Arminio is based on an episode from Roman history, with its characteristic depiction of conflict between Romans and Barbarians. The fact that the latter were Germanic and that their leader Arminio’s defeat of the Roman general Varus became important for the construction of national pride in German history greatly influenced Lowery’s approach to the piece. For instance, at first every character of the opera seemed to be in a costume from a different period of (German?) history. This is absolutely justified, but there was another element in his production that had little to do with either the text or the music of the opera. Namely, the production was projected onto a meta-theatrical level by the inclusion of an observer (actor Bernd G. Albrecht), who seemed to be the representative of a local government about to close down the theatre, due to financial restrictions. Similar processes have been taking place in the past few years in former East Germany, and although this overtly political aspect of the production was at times convincingly executed, it seemed overly contrived and – even more importantly – did not constitute a unified theatrical interpretation, for the production seemed to move in and out of this mode of representation. At one moment one was watching singers in costumes from different operas rehearsing together, and in the next, for example at the end of the second act when the drama is at its most intense, one was heavily drawn into the action.
Clara Kalus’s approach to Riccardo primo was very different. The young director presented herself in a sympathetic light with a production of Porpora’s Polifemo at the Winter in Schwetzingen Festival in 2012. However, while that opera’s mythological plot provided her interpretation with a solid frame, in Riccardo primo she fell victim to her own ambitions. The opera opens with a sinfonia depicting a storm that shipwrecks Costanza and her companion Berardo, throwing them onto the Cyprian coast, and flows seamlessly into a dramatic accompagnato for the heroine. Kalus and her set designer Mechthild Feuerstein came up with a promising, visually striking image for Handel’s dramatic musical metaphor of the crushing of Costanza’s hopes. During the whole of Act One the stage remained dominated by the image of a demolished Victorian-style bedroom, and as Costanza crawled from under the remnants of the bed’s wrecks, one began to realise one would be drawn fully into her shaken world. This “coming of age” take on an opera, which features another of the “damsel in distress” roles Francesca Cuzzoni was so famous for, is rather ingenious.
However, far more than Costanza’s faith to her unseen betrothed Riccardo is at stake in the first two acts, as she struggles to survive in the hostile environment of Cyprus, defending herself from the unwelcome advances of the tyrant Isacio. The impact on Costanza of the somewhat different, but also traditionally feminine stratagems her counterpart Pulcheria (Isacio’s daughter) adopts in her dealings with her father, her fiancée Oronte and Riccardo himself, was well worked out in the production, with a degree of gusto evident in the young singers’ openness to fresh ideas. The boyish-looking bass, Ludwig Obst, offered a convincing portrayal of Isacio as a dangerously powerful, utterly spoiled man whose feelings for Costanza turn out to be more profound than one had expected. Jennifer Gleinig (Pulcheria) and Georg Arsseny Bochow (Oronte) built up a finely nuanced double-act, from the initial unproblematic infatuation, through a conflict embedded in power, to its subsequent resolution.
Whereas Handel and his librettist Rolli’s gradual preparation for the first encounter between the lovers Riccardo and Costanza in the lengthy duet at the end of Act Two, which leads to Costanza’s eventual disillusionment with Riccardo, didn’t feel at odds with Kalus’s interpretation of it, the director opted for a somewhat bland (and blunt) reading of the final act. When war between Riccardo and Isacio broke out, the characters started wearing animal masks, with the exception of Costanza, who spent the whole of her final aria “Il volo così fido” covering the stage (and the rest of the cast) in plastic drop cloth under which the final coro was sung while the heroine opened a backstage door and disappeared into the garden. This suggested loss of individuality in the face of war, with Costanza the only fully-formed human being left, and makes sense in the context of Kalus’s interpretation, but to simply eliminate not only the lieto fine but also the whole dramatic action that precedes it will inevitably be seen as adopting a somewhat facile solution. Nevertheless, all the young soloists enthusiastically followed not only the lead of Wolfgang Katschner, but also Kalus’s at times very detailed instructions, and in terms of ensemble achievement the integrity of everyone involved in this production was displayed just as professionally as in Arminio.
When it comes to the musical aspect of the performance, there were certain drawbacks attributable mainly to simple lack of experience. Although she has the right timbre and is musically very talented, the mezzo soprano Zoe Kissa wasn’t able to cope with the high virtuoso demands of Riccardo’s third act aria “All’orror delle procelle”. The most accomplished soloists turned out to be Marielou Jacquard (Costanza) and the aforementioned countertenor Bochow, both of whom could have a bright future in the repertory. Their voices dealt with the demands of the roles in a disciplined, self-contained way that still allowed for individuality of expression. Obst and Gleinig, although I have no reservations whatsoever about their singing, shone less brightly, perhaps because some of Pulcheria’s arias were cut in order to highlight Costanza’s role. What a shame, as Handel carefully balanced the two roles due to the rivalry between his singers Cuzzoni and Faustina! Besides the already mentioned addition of percussion and of wind instruments, the conductor Wolfgang Katschner handled the score more freely by dropping several of the da capo repeats in Costanza’s arias. What disappointed me in Lautten Compagney Berlin’s rendition of the score was the toning down of the opera’s lyric dimensions. Katschner’s penchant for faster tempos and angular phrasing can be exciting when it infuses the score with tension, but at other moments it can seem insensitive to the hidden riches that Handel’s scores always hold in store. However, these minor shortcomings did not affect the vibrant, positive response that the Handel Festival Halle has a tradition of eliciting.
The Händel-Festspiele Halle took place between 5 and 15 June 2014 in Halle .
Production photograph © Oliver Fantitsch (Cornelius Uhle (Berardo), Marielou Jacquard (Costanza), Georg Arsseny Bochow (Oronte), Ludwig Obst (Isacio), Jennifer Gleinig (Pulcheria)) .