The Boston Early Music Festival (BEMF) is one of the oldest, largest, and grandest biennial early music festivals in the world. Since its founding in 1981, the centerpiece of almost every BEMF has been a historical performance of an opera, beginning with Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea (1981; also L’Orfeo in 1993 and Poppea again in 2009), and running through Rossi (L’Orfeo, 1997), Cavalli (Ercole amante, 1999), Lully (Thésée, 2001, and Psyché, 2007), Purcell (King Arthur, 1995), Steffani (Niobe, regina di Tebe, 2011), Rameau (Zoroastre, 1983), Handel (Teseo, 1985), to Mozart’s Idomeneo (1989). They have done three operas written for Hamburg in the first decade or so of the eighteenth century, including Johann Georg Conradi’s Ariadne (2003), Johann Mattheson’s Boris Goudenow (2005), and this year Handel’s Almira, the only work of Handel from Hamburg that survives more-or-less complete. In line with previous festivals, Almira received a lavish production with period costumes and sets, designed by Gilbert Blin, stage director and set designer, and Anna Watkins, costume designer and supervisor; a fine baroque orchestra, led by Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs, musical directors, with concertmaster Robert Mealy; an ensemble of baroque dancers prepared by Caroline Copeland and Carlos Fittante, choreographers, and Melinda Sullivan, ballet mistress; and an excellent cast of singers.
The plot of Shakespearean complexity revolves around Almira, who is about to become Queen of Castile on her 20th birthday. She is secretly in love with Fernando, a foreigner of obscure birth, and is paranoid about the woman she sees as her rival for his love, Princess Edilia, who is actually in love with Osman. (Edilia’s first aria sung while walking in the palace gardens is much like Serse’s “Ombra mai fù” in Handel’s late opera of 1738.) Confusion arises when Almira surprises Fernando carving a declaration of love into a tree (à la Ariosto), and although he intends to write “I love you eternally” (Ich liebe dich ewiglich), he only gets part of the way through, with sloppy line breaks:
ICH
LIEB
E DI
which Almira interprets as “I love Edilia” (Ich lieb’ Edi…).
More confusion arises in act 2, where Osman challenges Fernando to a duel. Here art imitates life: apparently, while working on his first opera, Handel was challenged to a duel by Mattheson, and the composer was saved either by a brass button or perhaps the manuscript of this opera. (Ellen Harris gives a very entertaining introduction to Almira: http://www.bemf.org/pages/fest/almira_video.htm.) Edilia’s final aria in act 2 shows the potential that Handel realized throughout his later operatic career.
Act 3 opens with a court ballet in honor of King Raymondo. Fernando depicts Europe, Osman represents Africa, and a counselor Consalvo, Asia. Handel did reuse some of the instrumental music in Rinaldo (transformed into the aria “Lascia ch’io pianga”). The court clown Tabarco plays Folly. (The pageant presages the finale of Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims (1825), where the guests are entertained by dancing and national anthems of the dignitaries.) Almira, convinced by Consalvo that Fernando is hopelessly in love with Edilia, sentences him to death, and from prison he sends her a necklace of rubies inscribed “I belong to Almira.”She visits him secretly and offers to pardon him if he will marry Edilia. But Fernando convinces Almira that he loves only her, and the two lovers sing their duet. Consalvo tells everyone that the ruby necklace belonged to his wife Almira, who put it on her infant son Floraldo, who had been presumed drowned at sea. Finally, it is clear that Fernando is the lost son Floraldo, who can now wed Almira and become King of Castile; Raymondo takes Edilia as his bride, and Osman marries the confidant Bellante.
Naturally, this is a much simplified synopsis of an opera that has more than fifty short arias, most of which are two or three minutes in length. (It still lasted almost four hours with one interval.) The cast all added tasteful embellishments, whenever there was a da capo. In the title role was Ulrike Hofbauer, who sang well, but her arias are not as varied as those of the seconda donna, sung by the local favourite and veteran of BEMF, Amanda Forsythe. The third woman, Valerie Vinzant as Bellante, has a much smaller role. There were no castrati in the Hamburg opera, and the male roles were sung by tenors and basses: Christian Immler (Consalvo), Zachary Wilder (Osman), Colin Balzer (Fernando), and Tyler Duncan (Raymondo). These are all approximately equal roles (Mattheson would have sung Fernando), and they were balanced though somewhat non-descript. Jason McStoots as the comic Tabarco has more character, though in this production, more in his antics than in his singing. It is worth remembering that the opera was written less than a hundred years after Shakespeare, and it was another generation before the mixing of comic characters was banished from opera seria. It is also a curiosity that Hamburg freely switched between German, Italian, and (in Telemann’s time) French in their operas.
I’ve heard people object to performing opera as a “museum piece,” but BEMF has shown time and again that there is value in reconstructing not only the music on original instruments but also the mise-en-scène. I love it, and while I do not object per se to updating early opera, many post-modern productions create a huge dissonance between the music and the staging. (Even ones where characters are not randomly undressing or crawling on the floor.) By selecting for the most part lesser or unknown operas to perform, BEMF also fills in the gaps of opera history. I’ve seen or heard Handel’s later masterpieces (Giulio Cesare, Alcina, Serse, and others) in several productions or recordings, but this was the first time I’ve heard his first opera. (There is a recording available.) I applaud Kathleen Fay and her production team—O’Dette, Stubbs, and Ellen Hargis among others—who bring us these unknown works in historically informed productions.