Theatrical phantasm and offstage actuality are the dominant metaphors in Francesco Micheli’s new Glyndebourne staging of Alcina. Lavish, unsettling and, at occasions, teetering on camp, it’s a finely crafted piece, although whether or not it ideally serves Handel’s nice 1735 examination of the mutable nature of need and transience of magnificence is, maybe, debatable.
Micheli relocates the opera from the Renaissance to a Sixties Italian metropolis within the strategy of reconstruction, its skyline dominated by cranes and a concrete skyscraper modelled on the Torre Velasca in Milan. Alcina’s enchanted island is now a nightclub-cum-variety-theatre (known as Isola di Alcina) within the skyscraper’s shadow, with Alcina herself (Jane Archibald) each its proprietor and one among its principal stars, alongside Soraya Mafi’s Morgana.
Micheli and conductor Jonathan Cohen reinstate Handel’s typically minimize ballet music right here, and nostalgic retro glamour – captured in huge routines niftily choreographed by Mike Ashcroft – has successfully changed the sorcery that retains Alcina’s admirers corresponding to Samantha Hankey’s Ruggiero hooked. In the beginning, Beth Taylor’s Bradamante and Alastair Miles’s Melisso plan Ruggiero’s rescue in a soulless-looking boardroom within the concrete jungle above. Later, as Alcina’s powers wane, forays into the membership’s backstage areas repeatedly remind us of the fragility of the world she has created, although a twist on the finish additionally suggests Micheli believes in its abiding validity.
The city setting, nonetheless, signifies that the mutable pure world evoked by the libretto is now conspicuous by its absence, and Hankey finally ends up starting Verdi Prati, not in a forest, however in entrance of a strip-lit concrete wall. And there’s a hardness of edge in tone and magnificence all through that doesn’t fairly seize the unhappy ambiguity on the work’s coronary heart, particularly that Handel views the destruction of Alcina’s world as an ethical necessity, whereas on the identical time mourning its passing in music of typically wrenching poignancy.
Sporting a putting sequence of, at occasions, outlandish couture robes, Archibald sounds pretty within the title position, beautifully rising to the problem of her central Ah, Mio Cor, Schernito Sei. Ruggiero lies fractionally low for Hankey, impeccably fashionable although she is, and it's Taylor, her voice darkish and targeted, her coloratura sensational, who provides us the night’s most spectacular singing. Mafi does high-quality issues with Tornami a Vagheggiar, whereas Stuart Jackson makes a properly sardonic Oronte, handsomely sung and successfully performed because the membership’s maitre d’. The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment play with appreciable panache for Cohen. The dancing, in the meantime, is nice enjoyable.
Alcina is at Glyndebourne, Sussex, till 24 August.
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