Handel - Deidamia (Wexford, 2025)

George Frideric Handel - Deidamia 

Wexford Festival Opera, 2025

George Petrou, Sophie Junker, Sarah Gilford, Bruno de Sá, Nicolò Balducci, Rory Musgrave, Petros Magoulas

O'Reilly Theatre, National Opera House, Wexford - 22nd October 2025

For a festival that specialises in rare opera, it's not unknown for the occasional 18th century baroque and opera seria works to be performed at the Wexford Festival Opera, although to do so authentically usually requires a specialised early music orchestra or ensemble. Since the theme of this year's festival however is build around Myths and Legends - a mainstay of early opera - opera seria is the place to find plenty of great rarely performed operas, of which Handel's 1741 Deidamia is definitely a rarity. The composer's final opera before he turned his attention in later years to oratorio, it's perhaps not so great when measured alongside his next work Messiah, also in 1741, but all Handel's operas are worth exploring. If there was a brief from the Wexford Festival's artistic director that the focus of each of the operas should be on the human element to make the legend relevant to real people today, director George Petrou seems to have taken that brief literally.

Dealing with an obscure incident in Homer's Odyssey, where Odysseus travels to the island of Skyros searching for Achilles who is needed for the upcoming battle in Troy, it does seem a little bit strange just to overlay the Greek legend with some modern day tourists walking around the same Greek island taking selfies in the background, complete with projections of Wish You Were Here postcards. You would think the serious music of Handel wouldn't be able to sustain these two separate narratives, but by making some of the modern day travellers concerns similar to those of the ancient Greeks, it does succeed in making it a little more relevant, or at least sparks a little more interest. It's a good strategy since, taken on its own terms, Handel can often appear to be a bit dry, when - as David Alden recognised in the Dutch National Opera production of this work - there is actually quite a measure of humour built into the story and the music.

As both stage director and conductor, George Petrou is clearly aware of this and this concept consequently works very well, with both ancient and modern given equal attention. The little dramas of a bunch of privileged luxury tour holiday makers are perhaps not quite equal in importance (you might think), but Petrou strikes a balance where one gives equal emotional and meaningful weight to the other. The focus is of course on what is being sung and played out by the main figures in the ancient Greek drama, but essentially the concept emphasises the fact that the same concerns remain for all of us in the present day. Not that anyone today would start a catastrophic war with a nation over someone stealing their first lady. Or at least you would hope not, but you couldn't even count on that security in today's world.

If that were all that there was to it, presenting a necessary modern perspective on an ancient legend, it would be a valid approach, but Petrou doesn't settle for such simple parallels. Every scene ambitiously employs a new setting, using different special effects, new technology and projections in addition to traditionally impressive sets and effective lighting. All of it is in the service of making the production visually engaging, and if you engage visually as well as emotionally, you engage with the singing and the music, which can otherwise appear routine and repetitive. In reality, although Deidamia marked his retirement from writing opera, it is far from routine. Petrou, controlling the stage as well as the orchestra in the pit, knows how the music serves every scene with drama, emotion, tenderness and concern; all the necessary human qualities in the work, even if it is not the composer's most inspired or celebrated piece.

The plot and libretto don't exactly mark any important event in the story of the Odyssey. Well, it is based around the need to have the war machine that is Achilles join the assembled Greek fleet on its way to Troy, but since it has been foretold that Achilles will die on Trojan soil, his father has hidden him on the island, dressed as a girl under the name Pyrrha. Essentially the whole opera then is an attempt by two Greek commanders Odysseus and Phönix (both also going under assumed names) to discover the whereabouts of the warrior and get him to join the siege on Troy. Evidently, since there are disguises and cross-dressing involved and since Achilles is not great about hiding his manly interests in hunting and killing, this involves a few mishaps and misunderstandings, none of which in themselves are particularly original or humorous.

But George Petrou's Wexford production nonetheless makes the most of every situation. The sensitive direction, not without a sense of humour in where the two worlds cross over and occasionally interact, helps bring this out. The spectacular and inventive effects that set and costume designer Giorgina Germanou realises suit every mood from stormy seas, thunderous downpours, a classical vase design that turns out to be a modern fashion dress, animated sequences, an undersea scene and even a cheesy - and quite impressive - movie trailer. There is no end of inventiveness, none of it employed arbitrarily. The intention is to avoid static scenes, keep movement going and match the rhythms and moods of Handel's score without distracting from the essence of the dramatic flow.

In fact it actually supports the premise well. While all the plot revolves around Ulysses/Antilochus falling in love with a man dressed as a woman, or pretending to, and the (real) women trying to simultaneously fight off the advances of men while at the same time trying to woo them away from uncovering Achilles' true identity, (and in the case of Nerea falling in love in the process), the serious side is not neglected. It's the modern day inserts that help us to see this. At the end of the romantic comedy drama there is a long and brutal war that will take place and Achilles knows he will die in it. The duty and the solemnity of that hits home in the final scenes, again with projections contrasting the movie trailer epic seen earlier with the harsh reality of war that we are very familiar with witnessing at the moment.

Deidamia has two main roles that can be played by females dressed as men: one a man (Antilochus), the other a man pretending to be a woman (Achilles as Pyrrha). It avoids some confusion and disorientation - but not much - if both roles are undertaken as they are here by male countertenors, and we had two fine countertenors here with Nicolò Balducci as Ulysses and Bruno de Sá as Achilles. Balducci in particular was a standout performer here, but de Sá played up the badly pretend-female role well in an energetic performance. Rather than it being a showcase for singers, Handel actually balances out the roles well for the requirements of the drama, giving just as much attention to Deidamia as her friend Nerea, sung well here by Sophie Junker and Sarah Gilford. Likewise it provided the opportunity for Rory Musgrave and Petros Magoulas to make significant contributions as as Phönix and Lycomede.

Still Deidamia is perhaps not a great Handel opera or the most thrillingly plotted, but it's a masterful one nonetheless and one that was definitely worthwhile reviving (among many potential Handel and opera seria candidates) for this year's Wexford Festival Opera's Myths & Legends theme. Like all baroque opera, there is always the danger of three hours of da capo arias being a bit of a chore if not handled sensitively and respectfully, but the key is also not to do it too reverentially. The balance here in this production conducted and directed by George Petrou is ideal, with the music providing dramatic drive and tone that the visual extravagance and performances matched impressively. Very impressively indeed.

External links: Wexford Festival Opera, Wexford Festival Opera Streaming on RTE Lyric FM

Handel - Deidamia

George Frideric Handel - Deidamia

De Nederlandse Opera, Amsterdam 2012

Ivor Bolton, David Alden, Sally Matthews, Veronica Cangemi, Olga Pasichnyk, Silvia Tro Santafé, Andrew Foster-Williams, Umberto Chiummo, Jan-Willen Schaafsma

Opus Arte

There has been some terrific work done in recent years in terms of critical editions, in the development and playing of period instruments and through inventive stage productions, all of which have gone some way to revive even the most obscure of Handel’s operas and help restore the composer’s reputation to the place it deserves. There was however a reason why the Baroque form of opera seria went out of fashion, consigning all but a few of Handel’s operas to obscurity for several hundred years. They can be frightfully dull.

Even Handel, towards the end of career, moved away from the overly restrictive conventions of the form in preference for the oratorio, but even his late operas show a diminishing of interest and invention, and they would certainly have appeared as rather old fashioned by the time that Gluck’s reforms and Mozart’s invention took the form into a dynamic new direction. Written in 1741, Handel’s last opera, Deidamia - which only ran for three performances - is not the most involving work by the composer in its subject or treatment. With its classical theme, limited dramatic action and interaction, it might as well be an oratorio, composed as it is around da capo arias, brief recitative and the occasional duet. On the other hand, it’s still Handel, and with a little involvement and invention, even the driest of Handel’s opera serias can be enhanced with a strong and sympathetic production.

There’s a tendency to take Handel very seriously indeed, but his works are littered with comic references and many of his classical opera seria works - Flavio, Partenope and even Serse can be seen as playing with or even parodying the form. Robert Carsen recognised this in his Glyndebourne production of Rinaldo, and David Alden likewise approaches Deidamia the only way that would make it watchable for a modern audience, by exaggerating the humour that is very much a part of Handel’s musical palette and certainly a part of this opera. The influence of Neapolitan opera buffa shows clearly in the situation that Handel develops through a minor figure in the story of the Greek-Trojan war, and - much like Mozart would do in Die Entführung aus dem Serail and later to perfection in Le Nozze di Figaro - Handel recognises that there’s lots of humour to be derived from hidden identities and cross-dressing. It’s evident immediately from the moment that Deidamia, on the island of Scyros, expresses her frustration that her lover - the great hero Achilles - is unable to keep in character in his female disguise. Having been sent there by his father to hide - an oracle having warned him of Achilles fate should he join the war with Troy - Achilles is disguises as a young girl, Pyrrha. Instead of picking flowers and doing some needlework, Achilles is unable to resist his red-blooded masculine urges and is off in the woods hunting wild animals.

In David Alden’s production for the De Nederlandse Opera - beautifully stylised as well as humorously inclined - Achilles (a trouser role, just to add to the confusion and humour about the nature of the character) stomps onto the stage at this moment in a frilly pink dress throwing air punches, a bloody deer carcass slung over his shoulder with what looks like a few bits chomped out of it by the Greek warrior in his predatory zeal. It’s evidently not the image that Pyrrha should be projecting, particularly since Ulysses/Odysseus has just arrived in Scyros. Ulysses (disguised as Antilochus) has managed to gain the support and warships of the Scyros’ ruler Lycomedes in the war against Troy for the abduction of Helen, but he has heard reports that Achilles is on the island and is currently looking for him. Ulysses however is not blind to the charms of Deidamia (and with Sally Matthews sporting a series of attractive swimsuits in this production, it’s not difficult to see why), and Deidamia for her part is inevitably flattered by his attentions, which only enrages the headstrong Achilles when he observes them flirting with each other from his hiding place.

Deidamia then, apart from the classical Trojan war subject populated by figures of mythological standing, is an opera that is filled of lovers who express their woes in anguished da capo arias - “You are unfaithful, you do not love me” and “You have robbed me of my happiness” are sentiments expressed here and there are others along the same lines. That’s not to say that some of the arias aren’t exquisitely beautiful - it’s still Handel after all - and, to take Odysseus’ ‘Perdere il bene amato‘ as an example, capable of expressing genuine feeling and emotion, particularly when it is sung as finely as it is here by Silvia Tro Santafé. That’s the great strength of Alden’s production - it might look tongue-in-cheek and visually stylised with little concession to reality - but it doesn’t neglect to give Handel’s beautiful musical arrangements the expression they deserve, and with Ivor Bolton conducting the Concerto Köln wonderfully through this elegant score, there’s not much chance of it being anything but respectful and attuned to all the colours of the work.

And, despite being an opera seria, despite the repetition of the aria da capo arrangements, Deidamia is indeed a colourful work that blends the humour and parody of the situation with some genuine expressions of beauty and feeling. Appropriately then, the actual set designs are equally colourful, elegant and beautiful in their simplicity. You could even see the three main characters reflected in the three acts. Deidamia’s nature is exotic, based around a tropical island theme of Act I, the little island of Scyros an Aegean paradise surrounded by a limpid sea that reflects the sun-tinted blooms of cloud in its clear blue skies. Achilles’ wild and untameable nature is reflected in the jungle of Act II, while the Greek classicism and nobility of Ulysses is the theme of the third act’s developments. There’s maybe nothing naturalistic about the sets or the costumes - submarines that convey the Greeks to the island where they hop off and walk along the reflective surface of the sea - but it relates to the characters well and looks simply gorgeous from whatever angle it is viewed (and it is beautifully filmed here on this BD release). There are more than enough reasons in Handel’s music alone for this lesser work to be of considerable interest, but Alden’s stunning sets and the stylised costumes enhance the majesty and beauty in the music even further. And the comedy.

The combination of Handel, Bolton and Alden provides good enough reason alone, but the best reason for watching this production is for the singing performances. There are a few weaker elements in the cast - Victoria Cangemi’s Nerea isn’t always capable of sustaining a pure line and has a tendency to come apart on the high notes, and Umberto Chiummo’s Lycomedes isn’t the steadiest either - but in the three main roles where it counts, the performances are utterly delightful. There are considerable singing challenges in the roles of Deidamia, Ulysses and Achilles, which are compounded by the three of them having to find a way of bringing these character’s fairly routine sentiments to life and work together dramatically. Silvia Tro Santafé, I mentioned earlier brings a forcefulness of expression and depth of sentiment that is perfectly matched by beauty and lightness of Sally Matthews’ nonetheless robust singing and her eye-catching performance, each of them further contrasted by Olga Pasichnyk performance of Achilles’ impetuous masculine vigour and enthusiasm. Although the aria form doesn’t give much of an opportunity for these characters to interact, the strength of Handel’s work is in providing just such a contrast of personalities, situations and emotional tones, and this cast really makes that work in a way that is simply spellbinding.

Beautifully staged, with wonderful colour schemes and lighting, this spectacle looks outstanding in High Definition on Blu-ray, but the HD audio tracks are most impressive. There’s a brightness and clarity and luxuriousness of tone in both the PCM stereo and the DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 mixes that really highlights the qualities of the period instruments in a Baroque orchestra. Directed by Ivor Bolton, the qualities of the score, the construction and rhythm of the music are all the more apparent and impressive. The BD also has an interesting 24-minute featurette that looks behind-the-scenes at the music and stage rehearsals, interviewing those involved, as well as a Cast Gallery. The booklet examines the themes in Handel’s work in more depth and there’s a full synopsis. The disc is all-region, BD50, Full HD, with subtitles in English, French, German and Dutch only.