Handel - Ariodante (Aix-en-Provence, 2014 - Webcast)

George Friedrich Handel - Ariodante

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, 2014 

Andrea Marcon, Richard Jones, Sarah Connolly, Patricia Petibon, Sandrine Piau, Sonia Prina, David Portillo, Luca Tittoto, Christopher Diffey

Culturebox - Live Streaming, July 2014

In an interview in the programme for the Aix-en-Provence production of Ariodante, conductor Andrea Marcon notes the unique character of this work as an Italian opera with French influences and adornments written by a German composer for an English audience. One would think that it would be difficult to reconcile all those different elements, but Handel of course makes it all seem perfectly fluid and natural. It only makes the challenge harder for the conductor and the stage director to make a production of Ariodante run as smoothly for a modern theatre audience.

Andrea Marcon clearly has the measure of the work, and a great love for it, making a strong case for it being the 'perfect' Handel opera in its structure, in the strength of its melodies and arias, and in the consistency of its melancholic tone. His work is made considerably easier, I would say, by the quality of the orchestra and singers he is working with here at the Aix Festival. The Freiburger Barockorchester keep that essential rhythm and tone that is in the piece, while the real musical colour is there in the range and the variety of singing voices. The musical performance is accordingly of the highest order.

For his part, stage director Richard Jones seeks to find a down-to-earth consistency of tone in a work that would appear have so many international influences, and he finds that in the Scottish setting of Ariodante. There's nothing to be gained from going right back to the 8th century period of Antonio Salvi's libretto, based on Ariosto's 'Orlando Furioso', but the Scottish character of the work is important. Jones' references would seem to come from Michael Powell's Scottish islands feature film 'The Edge of the World' (1937), with something of the flavour of 'I Know Where I'm Going' (1945). Jones also cites Lars von Trier's 'Breaking the Waves', which is in indeed much more in line with the dark, melancholic and sometimes cruel tone of Ariodante.

The production design by Ultz gives us a more familiar and essentially timeless character that is modern without being quirkily modernised, far as it is from a royal tale of knights in the age of chivalry. Jones, for better or worse, sees Ariodante as more of a community drama, and as such it has something of the appearance of his Peter Grimes for La Scala. The outdoor Théâtre de l’Archevêché in Aix-en-Provence might also have had some bearing on the choice to have a single multi-purpose set, a cross section of a humble manor with four rooms separated by invisible walls and nominal doors, the dress sense that of island fisherman, fairisle sweaters, tanktops and weatherproofs.

It doesn't quite have the magical, the historical or the regal quality that you might like for this work, but Jones is able to differentiate between the social status and class differences of the characters. The king is more of a laird, but still the most important figure in the community, commanding respect. Polinesso is a firebrand preacher, which doesn't really seem to fit with his position as the Duke of Albany, but it does give him a role where he is capable of manipulating and influencing the local island people, stirring them up and using them for his own purposes. For the most part, it works reasonably well, with there being little that detracts from the drama or its musical flavour.

The best touch is the use of puppet storytelling. Imaginatively and impressively staged, they succeed in lifting the production at precisely those right moments at the finale of each act. It's challenging enough to make the choral arrangements and French ballets fit in with the drama, but they are well choreographed here as a traditional dance-hall céilidh. The end-of act puppet shows however give us a bit more of an extension beyond the life on the stage, Act I imagining married life for Ariodante and Ginerva, Act II creating a nightmarish vision of Ginerva's downfall, Act III reinstating the hoped for return to the vision of Act I. In Jones' production however, there's a recognition that there's no going back after what has happened, that Ginerva's life lies out beyond the island and that Act II nightmare descent into pole-dancing and prostitution might still be a possibility.

Despite its short run on its London opening in 1735, which is not necessarily a reflection on the quality of the work, there is merit to the claim of Ariodante being a perfect Handel opera. There are other contenders that can claim to be Handel's best work - Giulio Cesare for example having a greater variety of moods, melodies and action. Coming just around the time that Handel was starting to switch over to oratorio writing but not quite jaded by the opera format (as can possibly be seen in Deidamia), Ariodante can certainly be said to demonstrate all of the composer's brilliance in the art of opera writing. For its perfection to be evident however it really needs the right kind of singers to do it justice, and you can't argue with the quality of the cast that have been brought together for this Aix production.

As Ariodante, you don't get much better than Sarah Connolly in this type of role. I wasn't actually sure the role best suited her voice in places during Act I, but I was totally convinced by her simply magnificent performance of 'Scherza infida' in Act II. In terms of performance and dramatic commitment, Connolly is at her best right now and hard to beat. Patricia Petibon takes on the challenging range and da capo ornamentation of the role of Ginerva, a testing role that she gets through it with verve, personality and strong technique. Her wild red hair is another advantage here in a Scottish opera, but she's also strong in terms of characterisation, her Ginerva not just a put-upon victim. There's no shortage of personality in the role of Polinesso, despite the strange firebrand preacher characterisation in this production. It needs a true contralto and Sonia Prina has everything that is required here, particularly impressive on the lower end of the tessitura and utterly convincing in the masculine role.

The other three leads were no less impressive than the main roles. Sandrine Piau in particular was just outstanding. Dalinda is an interesting character to work with - in the thrall of her passions for Polinesso, she becomes a betrayer to others and is ultimately manipulated and betrayed herself. Piau makes the most of this in her Act II aria 'Se tanto piace al cor', and in her Act III realisation of what she has done. Richard Jones is right to follow this right through to having permanent consequences, particularly when it's as powerfully drawn as it is here by Piau. Despite the opportunities afforded by Handel's writing, there's no vocal grandstanding anywhere here, just pure dramatic expression. Luca Tittoto gave a heartfelt performance as the King of Scotland, his 'Invida sorte avara' aria in particular just superb, and David Portillo's lyrical tenor voice gave Lurcanio a measure of sensitivity rather than simply hotheadedness.

Links: Culturebox, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence

Handel - Ariodante

Georg Friedrich Handel - Ariodante

Theater Basel, 2012

Luca Tittoto, Franziska Gottwald, Maya Boog, Nikolay Borchev, Christiane Bassek, Agata Wilewska, Noel Hernández Lopez

Basel, Switzerland, 17 May 2012

This is obviously very much a personal view, but the best approach to staging Baroque opera seems to be to avoid the traditional approach at all costs. By all means stick to the traditional in terms of singing and period instrumentation - there really isn’t any alternative that works better - but in my experience, if you want to find a way to engage a modern audience and take them through the rather static drama and the rather stiff conventions of the repetitive da capo arias of Baroque opera, it helps if there is some inventiveness and an imaginative approach to the staging. Done straight, it can be difficult to lift or support the emotions that are being expressed at length in the long arias between the few moments of dramatic content - although this obviously depends on the composer and Handel is certainly an exception - but until relatively recently, it was supposed that hardly any Baroque opera, not even Handel, could ever be presented to a modern audience.

Thankfully, through painstaking research, restoration and training in period instruments from Baroque musical experts like William Christie, Jordi Savall, René Jacobs and Christophe Rousset, have proved that these works are of much more than just interest to music historians. Staging these works however is another matter altogether, and it often requires a radical approach. I’m thinking of Doris Dörrie’s Noh-theatre inspired direction of Handel’s Admeto, the Royal Opera House’s 2010 production of Steffani’s Niobe or, as when I last visited the Theater Basel, the WWII updating of Gluck’s Telemaco, but as seen with William Kentridge’s production of Die Zauberflöte, there are also a wider range of tools that can be at service to a director of personal vision and imagination. In my experience - again this is very much a personal viewpoint - it’s surprising just how successful some of the more radical presentations can be in this respect, the more abstract conceptual stage approach tapping into the emotional content over and above the dry recounting of the narrative of the libretto. I don’t think however that I’ve ever seen anything quite as ambitious as director Stefan Pucher and the Theater Basel’s wonderful willingness to experiment with Baroque opera through modern theatrical tools in their extraordinary 2012 production of Handel’s Ariodante.

When you speak about the stage direction here however, it’s necessary to consider the input from the innovative and visually impressive set design by Barbara Ehnes and the costumes of Annabelle Witt, as Stefan Pucher’s stage direction is truly a multimedia event. It’s through these different layers - along with the lighting, the use of projected images and even filmed sequences projected onto the sets - that the different layers of the music, the interaction of the characters and the heightened emotions are fully explored, much more so than the usual static delivery of the long arias. It’s not that all the necessary qualities aren’t already there in Handel’s exquisite compositions that capture the sentiments of its characters so well, but the staging simply allows an audience to see them visualised and respond to those qualities from an older operatic tradition that would otherwise seem almost unfathomable to anyone used to a more modern or traditional approach.

There’s nothing particularly inspiring about Ariodante’s late-eighth century Scottish setting, but theatre director Stefan Pucher - in his first opera production - clearly recognises that this ancient setting and the opera seria music that accompanies it is so far removed from what we are familiar with as to be practically abstract anyway. What is still relevant is the opera’s human story of love, jealousy, deception and revenge, and that was given utmost consideration. Act I then accordingly provided a tartan overload in the most extravagant of colours and weaves that, if they might not relate to any specific clan, certainly gave each of the figures their own strong definition. The tartan stretched to the brightly lit and visually impressive set designs that seems to create an enhanced 3-D effect through the still images, gothic paintings (by 17th century artist Otto Marseus van Schrieck), slow moving projections and lighting effects on the foreground screens, while the singing platform was set back on a revolving stage within a wide inverted cross. The sets inside were rather minimal, with a few eccentric touches in keeping with the Schrieck imagery such as giant bugs and slugs in an orange room in Act 1, but the frequent refreshing of the set from scene to scene all contributed to keep attention from flagging.

Even this would eventually have become tiresome over the course of the whole opera, but the designers also managed to find a distinct visual look for each of the subsequent two acts, if it was never a look that related naturalistically to any location specified in the libretto. A kick-boxing match standing-in for the battle between Polinesso and Ariodante on the jousting grounds was perhaps the strangest sight in Act III. Showing that there was a complete understanding of the structure of the works however and the necessary impact that was written into the chorus and ballet finales of each of the acts, the director pulled out all the stops at these points, inviting the audience to sing along to ‘Sì godete al vostro amor’ from music sheets handed out to the audience when entering the theatre (a surprisingly invigorating experience), and using filmed outdoor sequences featuring the cast, which was also extremely effective in suggesting the depths of Ginevra’s madness and inner turmoil at the end of Act II. More than just being visually stunning, the whole multimedia experience encompassed the tone and the intent of the music score, as well as drawing in the viewer and involving them fully in the experience. It made the production - the finest I think I’ve seen during the 2011-12 season - absolutely riveting.

It was not so riveting however that attention wouldn’t occasionally be drawn to the wonderful playing of this magnificent opera on period instruments by the La Cetra Barockorchester Basel under the direction of Andrea Marcon. Even they were visually integrated into the spectacle, placed on a platform that would rise and sink at the start and end of each act like an old-fashioned cinema organist, allowing the music to take centre stage where appropriate. Just as importantly, there was full attention given to the direction of the performers, who were never allowed to become just singing props that fitted into the overall package, and with the kind of singing we were hearing here, there was even less likelihood of them being overwhelmed by the spectacle. 

Mezzo-soprano Franziska Gottwald demonstrated a breathtaking range and facility for the demanding arias assigned to Ariodante, and was particularly impressive in Act II’s ‘Scherza infida’. Maya Boog however was just as impressive as Ginevra, handling the arias with aplomb, but also acting with genuine emotional and dramatic conviction throughout. There were however no weak elements in the casting which also included Agata Wilewska as Dalinda, Luca Tittoto as the King, Nikolay Borchev as Lurciano and Christiane Bassek as a disturbingly moustachioed, long-haired villain Polinesso, and Noel Hernández Lopez as Odoardo.