Francesca Caccini - La liberazione di Ruggiero
Vache Baroque, Buxton International Festival, 2026
Jonathan Darbourne, Eloise Lally, Camilla Seale, Jon Stainsby, Phoebe Rayner, Filippo Turkheimer, Betty Makharinsky, Harriet Burns, Aina Miyagi, Tom Kelly
Pavilion Arts Centre, Buxton - 21st July 2026
The Buxton International Opera spread its wings this year, mixing up the traditional focus on rarely performed opera with a well-worn crowd-pleaser (La traviata) and an operetta (The Merry Widow). It was not a welcome development for my part - personally, I wouldn't take the trouble of flying over from Ireland just to see another La traviata - but the regular Buxton attendees aren't getting any younger and there is undoubtedly the necessity of attracting a younger audience that might never have seen the classics. There were however still some rare gems worth that made a visit to the festival worthwhile, such as an inventive take on Handel's Amidigi di Gaula and an incredible opportunity to be taken back and see life breathed into a piece of opera history with Francesca Caccini's early opera La liberazione di Ruggiero.
Composed in 1625, the first opera to be composed by a woman, they don't come much more obscure than La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina. It's a rarely performed and not many would ever have had the opportunity or pleasure of seeing this 400 year old work staged. The quality of the work is beyond question, the challenge rather that it needs to be played by musicians specialising in early opera and in the playing of the instruments of the period. That would be someone like Vache Baroque and having seen their excellent production of Charpentier's unfinished 1687 chamber opera La descente d’Orphée aux enfers at Buxton last year, you could be certain that Caccini's only surviving opera was in safe and experienced hands. Front seat booked for this one.
La liberazione di Ruggiero is indeed a very rare opera, but I have seen it performed before in a production presented by Royal Irish Academy of Music and the Lir Academy of Dramatic Art in 2019 at the Abbey Peacock Theatre in Dublin. My review of that production covers the history of the piece, its qualities and the influence Caccini's work may have had; possibly just as important to the development of opera as Monteverdi. Historical importance aside, it's simply just a beautiful work in how the arrangements of baroque instrumentation work their magic musically and harmonically and in how Caccini chooses to tell the familiar story of the enchantress Alcina and her magical powers, keeping Ruggiero captive in her twisted garden of discarded lovers who have been corrupted into living plants.
I've seen La liberazione di Ruggiero described as a comic opera - and indeed the 2019 Dublin production retained that element of the opera in their production - but evidently there are any number of ways that a director can reinterpret and reflect the work from a modern perspective. In contrast to how Handel's take on the legends around Orlando Furioso were successfully re-interpreted with more of a comic touch his Amidigi di Gaula at this year's Buxton Festival, director Eloise Lally and the Vache Baroque find a rather darker undercurrent running through Caccini's opera and chose to focus on that instead. That's one of the marvels of being able to see such works side-by-side at a festival such as this, seeing rare early works of opera treated with respect and with the intent to present their themes to a contemporary audience.
Without having to get too revisionist about it, it's clear from the fact that the opera was written by a woman - no less than the first ever opera written by a female composer - that she brings and places a distinctly feminine aspect on the work, with two women in powerful roles as sorceresses - Melissa and Alcina. They are not just opposing forces who use their power for good or for evil - or a least they don't have to be seen that way, and Eloise Lally's interpretation did provide a little more sympathy for Alcina. She may have turned her lovers into twisted trees and plants, but she was acting out of love, however misguided.
Without it having to be over-emphasised (although the programme synopsis does situate this version in the near future or "somewhere between the present and the future: a world ravaged by war") you could also see the dark world as one ravaged by an eco-disaster, war devastation, climate change that has destroyed nature, twisted it and corrupted the inhabitants of the planet. You could even see the magic of the sorceresses as the work of mad science creating destructive weapons, but the production leaves the work open to let such notions arise naturally out of the situation and have resonance in how they relate to the problems in the world that we are familiar with today.
There isn't a considerable amount of dramatic action in La liberazione di Ruggiero, as is the case with nearly all early and baroque opera, but it has moments of exquisite beauty in how the situations lend themselves to be presented and those situations and expression are enlivened by the musical arrangements and the urgency of the singing. Those in turn are made magical by the vocal harmonies and the musical dissonance or less familiar sounds of the harpsichord (played by musical director Jonathan Darbourne), viola da gamba and theorbo - not to mention the alto, tenor and bass 'sackbuts', which are early trombones.
Needless to say, it all sounded incredible, particularly in the arrangement of the orchestra to the left and right of the stage, providing an enveloping musical environment for those of us in the stalls - the main continuo and accompaniment played to the right of the stage supplemented by triumphal and ominous blasts of the sackbuts and additional recorders on the left of the stalls. The surround musical performance adds another dimension to the performance of this opera, drawing you into the island with sweet sounds and persuasive rhythms that beguile and entrap.
It looked and sounded magnificent, a rare treat and a pleasure to be able to get close to and hear a work performed to such a high standard, aiming towards a fresh interpretation while retaining authenticity of the original instrumentation and character. Those are qualities are brought out in the superb stage production with fine singers with the perfect sweet voices necessary for this. Jon Stainsby in particular was strong and resonant as Ruggiero, tormented by Camilla Seale's darkly brooding Alcina and revived by Phoebe Rayner's lighter voiced Melissa - their voices suited to the nature of the roles. Harriet Burns, Betty Makharinsky and Aina Miyagi had a variety of lyrical roles that blended beautifully with the score. Here's hoping Vache Baroque return to the Buxton Festival soon.
External links: Buxton International Festival
