Handel
stephen.walsh
Not all geese are swans, and not all Handel oratorios are like Messiah – storyless, spiritual, monumental sequences of reflective arias and choruses. By definition, though, they aren’t operas either, and it’s always a calculated risk to put them on the stage, as Iford Arts are doing with Susanna, a quasi-oratorio that Christopher Hogwood has described as “a pastoral opera verging on the comic”.The production’s director, Pia Furtado, would probably question that description. Iford Manor, near Bath, does, it’s true, have a pastoral touch. One looks out from Harold Peto’s wonderful semi-formal Read more ...
philip radcliffe
Handel, a national hero at the time, went blind writing Jephtha, his last great oratorio, and sadly thence into terminal decline. Now, 260 years after its first performance at Covent Garden, we have a new production by Frederic Wake-Walker, who is also responsible for the design. So, it’s very much his show.Being an oratorio, Jephtha wasn’t written to be staged. So, what do you do? After all, the story is about a man with ambition whose success on the battlefield brings him national acclaim but personal tragedy. You could go traditional or modern. Or make him a character recognisable in today Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Other towns may choose national heroes as their emblems – posing generals, politicians or sword-wielding officers on horseback, glaring sternly down from their plinths – but not Göttingen. It is entirely in keeping with the unassuming, unobtrusive loveliness of this small town in Lower Saxony that its symbol should be not a grandee but a goose-girl.The delicate art nouveau statue of the young girl and her feathery charges that tops the fountain in the market square (pictured below) is the heart of the town, kissed in ritual celebration by every graduating doctoral student. But while students Read more ...
graham.rickson
Massenet: Werther Rolando Villazón, Sophie Koch, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House/Antonio Pappano (DG)Massenet’s Goethe adaptation needs a lot of love to make it convince as a drama. Fortunately this live Covent Garden performance, taped last May, has Antonio Pappano at the helm. There’s no one better at glossing over the piece’s longueurs. You need someone who can make you forget Werther’s clunkiness, its occasional risible moments. I can never maintain a straight face in Act 3 when Charlotte learns of Werther’s fateful message: “ I am leaving on a lengthy journey. Will you lend me Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
No greater proof of the potency of the current Handel revival can be found than the London Handel Festival, now in its 35th year. The festival continues to fill concert halls and churches across London every Spring with the composer’s chamber repertoire, but it is the annual opera that remains unquestionably the main event. No matter how abstruse the choice (and this year’s Riccardo Primo – unperformed in London for some 20 years – is surely as unfamiliar as it gets) audiences return, lured by the energy of the festival’s Musical Director Laurence Cummings, and his cast of young singers from Read more ...
graham.rickson
Handel: The Eight Great Suites Lisa Smirnova (ECM)This set slipped out quietly at the end of 2011. The typically muted ECM cover gives no hint of how life-enhancing these two discs are; I felt like getting the fluorescent highlighters out and jazzing up the monochrome sleeve art. Pianist Lisa Smirnova, Moscow-born and now living in Vienna, makes a bold case for these underrated, immensely enjoyable suites. Comparing them with Bach’s keyboard output is inevitable. Both are fabulous, of course, but it’s hard to disagree with Uwe Schweikert’s comments in the sleeve notes, that Handel’s Read more ...
graham.rickson
Handel: Agrippina Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin/René Jacobs (Harmonia Mundi)Handel’s early opera appears in a new edition from René Jacobs, in a version which aims to reconstruct Handel’s original intentions. Agrippina was premiered in Venice in 1710 and was a huge hit, bolstering Handel’s operatic confidence which blossomed after he pitched up in London two years later. Jacobs’s edition is trimmed – several arias in the third act are gone – but you don’t feel you’re missing much. As with this conductor’s superb Magic Flute, there’s a thrilling sense of theatre, helped by the Read more ...
graham.rickson
It’s the pace that takes getting used to in a Baroque opera. Five words in the libretto can easily take up five minutes to sing, and Handel’s music is often disconcertingly jaunty, even when tragic events are unfolding. Tim Albery has also directed Opera North’s current Madam Butterfly revival, a thrillingly cinematic, fast-moving production. His Giulio Cesare is judiciously pruned, with a total running time of about three hours. The cuts prevent any sense of stasis; what’s remarkable is just how much entertainment Handel’s imperial epic provides.Albery’s 20th-century update is dominated Read more ...
mark.kidel
Coram Boy is a thrilling story of dead babies, teenage love, material greed and the redeeming power of music. This is Christmas entertainment that packs a powerful punch, borne aloft by the inspiring sound of Handel’s Messiah, with horrific events presented on stage, an emotional rollercoaster ride that is definitely not for the very young or the faint of heart.The production comes from the same team that launched the show, based on Jamila Gavin’s now classic young persons’ novel, at the National Theatre in 2005. Adapted by Helen Edmundson and directed by Melly Still, it has been re-imagined Read more ...
Jamila Gavin
Someone told me that the highways and byways of England were littered with the bones of little children. It was a shocking statement and of course I asked, “What do you mean?” I was told that abandoned children were a common feature of the past, but that in the 18th century someone called a “Coram Man” used to wander about from village to village and town to town – a bit like a tinker – picking up unwanted children.But who was this Coram Man?” No one seemed to know. With only the name “Coram” to go on, I trawled through the London telephone directory and came across the Coram Foundation in Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Where’s the African car? Seun Kuti wanted to know. There are German cars, Chinese cars (he grimaced) even Brazilian cars. At least, anyway, there is “original African music”, not traditional but something new. Actually, not entirely new, as some of the music and some of his band, Egypt 80, were that of his father, that visionary genius, subversive and sex maniac Fela. (Not just 28 wives “on a rota system” as Fela explained to me in an interview I wrote up for theartsdesk, but plenty of groupies, too.) One of the things I found impressive about Seun and his band last night was how he Read more ...