Handel - Orlando (Buxton, 2023)

George Frideric Handel - Orlando (Buxton, 2023)

Liberata Collective, Buxton International Festival, 2023

Adrian Butterfield, Christian Joel, Joanna Harries, Olivia Doutney, Susanna MacRae, Jolyon Loy

Pavilion Arts Centre, Buxton - 10th July 2023

Although I'm very much in favour of modernising and keeping opera productions relevant and meaningful to a contemporary audience, I'm not opposed in principle to historically informed productions. Like any production, it's how well it's done and how much it is in service to the work that counts, and if either approach means that you just get to hear more from Handel and other baroque opera composers - particularly with period instruments - then I'm all for it. The Liberata Collective certainly put an interesting spin on their production of Orlando for the 2023 Buxton International Festival by staging it in the authentic Baroque Gesture style.

I've never seen a Baroque opera performed in the style of the period, other than Pierre Audi's rather dull historical versions of Tamerlano and Alcina, so it was hard to know what to expect. With Baroque Gesture, there are strict guidelines on posture and stage position that might not even really be evident to a modern audience, but the acting and exaggerated signifying hand gestures risk being appearing mannered to a bemused audience rather than informative. Or silly even if it turned out to be anything like the odd period style acting I witnessed at the Opéra Royal de Wallonie, Liège's 2013 production of Grétry's Guillaume Tell, which was something of an acquired taste to say the least. On the other hand, if the period acting turned out to be as revelatory as hearing such early opera works performed using period instruments, this Orlando would be of great interest to anyone looking for as authentic a performance of Handel as possible.

And in some ways it was, although perhaps more for academic interest than for bringing out any other newly rediscovered dimension out of Handel's Orlando. The Liberata Collective helpfully provided a booklet with the kind of gestures to expect to see on the stage as well as and what they mean, and also gave some historical background on the practice. Since this opera would have been performed in the original Italian on its original performance at the King’s Theatre in London on 27 January 1722, surtitles would obviously not have been provided, but a translated libretto would have been handed out. The audience would also be familiar with the gestures operating like signifiers or pointers to what is being described on the text. So lots of swooning and pointing to the heavens, but the mannerisms are there just as much to serve the function of dramatic style and expression.

And, if this Orlando is anything to go by, they do hold the attention in a 'look at me, look at me!' kind of way, although translations displayed to the screens at the sides of the stage may have distracted from a focus on the performers and the gestures now and again. You could look at this as the best of both worlds, as there were moments to enjoy in the gestures and the performances as well as in the English translation without too much being compromised.

Orlando however is not the most exciting episode in Ludovico Ariosto’s epic poem Orlando Furioso, nor indeed the most interesting of the three Handel operas based on the work. To compete with the magic enchanted isles of Alcina and the romantic medieval melodrama of Ariodante, Handel even introduced the characters of Dorinda and Zoroastro, neither of whom appear in the original work and, unlike many of the works he created when he moved to England which reused elements from earlier works, composed entirely new music for Orlando. Nonetheless, it's still a challenge not just to hold attention as really invite you to care about the romantic drama going on on the stage. 

The premise in Orlando is laid out at the start. Zoroastro, unhappy about the complicated and unresolved love drama going between the Orlando, Angelica the Princess of Cathay, the prince Medoro and the shepherdess Dorinda, casts a spell on the knight to turn him away from effeminate love and get back to doing what he is best, which seems to be being prone to fits of madness and violence, taking up a sword and slaughtering Saracens in the Crusades. Thereafter, both women and Medoro are left rather confused about Orlando's attentions and quite keen to get away from him, until Zoroastro relents and brings him back to his senses.

The focus may be on gestural expression, but the production doesn't fail to recognise that nature also features in the libretto and suggests another dimension to the work. Two laurel trees decorate the stage indicating the bucolic setting, but the focus on nature and what it says about the nature of man is not emphasised or explored quite as successfully as it was in the direction of Mozart's Il re pastore which ventured deeper into that territory the previous evening at the Buxton International Festival. There's an interesting comparison to be made on the respective approaches to this kind of Baroque opera, and one wonders whether the Mozart would have gained anything from a Baroque Gesture style performance. As it is, each opera worked in its own terms, but it shows that for all their superficial simplicity there are many ways to bring out deeper aspects from such works.

Here of course, with Adrian Butterfield directing the Ensemble Hesperi from the violin and with the use of period instruments, the emphasis was on the quality of the music of Orlando and its ability to carry the dramatic intent of the opera. And being Handel of course, it's absolutely beautiful. With the small ensemble to the right of the stage, it was more than enough to spring this work into life. There was some fine singing as well from Christian Joel singing countertenor as Orlando, and Jolyon Loy's drop-in appearances as Zoroastro had the necessary impact. Despite the gestured mannerisms and the sometimes playful bemused response to Orlando's conflicted emotions, the quality of the performances of Joanna Harries as Medoro, Olivia Doutney as Angelica and Susanna MacRae as Dorinda all commanded attention. 

Attention is vital in Orlando, to feel involved in the drama and what the music brings to it. If there is one aspect that Baroque Gesture brought to this, it's some indefinable sense of balance and movement. The entrances and exits felt natural and timely, adding a sense of order and structure that suggests that this lost art is an essential element of Baroque opera. Everything felt in its right place to the extent that when Zoroastro steps in and repairs the harm that Orlando has done, it doesn't feel quite as much the deus ex machina that Baroque opera can often provide. That is something that Il re pastore could possibly have benefitted from, but each had their own merits in an excellent Buxton programme. I would have loved to have seen their production of La Sonnambula as well, but sadly missed that due to a very long flight delay on the way over to the festival.

Links: Buxton International Festival

Neuwirth - Orlando (Vienna, 2019)

Olga Neuwirth - Orlando

Wiener Staatsoper, 2019

Matthias Pintscher, Polly Graham, Kate Lindsey, Anna Clementi, Eric Jurenas, Constance Hauman, Agneta Eichenholz, Leigh Melrose, Justin Vivian Bond

Staatsoper Live - 18 December 2019

The subject and content of Olga Neuwirth's new opera Orlando is very much related to the fact that she is the first woman composer not only to write an opera for the Vienna State Opera, but is the first woman composer to ever even have an opera performed there. Neuwirth's choice of Virginia Woolf's influential and highly regarded 1928 novel 'Orlando', which follows the course of a young nobleman who lives through the political changes of the centuries, experiencing it from the viewpoint of a man and then changing sex to become a woman, is clearly a pointed commentary on this fact.

Following in the footsteps of Luigi Nono, a composer that she worked with as an assistant, Austrian born Neuwirth is likewise viewed as a 'political' composer, but rather than just seek to make a well-meaning gesture against the injustice of gender inequality in the world of opera, or even take the route of a superficial commentary on current affairs in the world today, in Orlando Neuwirth extends on Woolf's vision to seek to address a deeper problem that could be seen as having an underlying impact on how the nature of the world we live continually changes, but those changes have been shaped by gender inequality throughout the ages, women reduced to a footnote in history, if considered at all.

It's also notable, if purely coincidental, that the period covered in Orlando aligns very closely with the history of opera, which has also evolved and changed over the years. Even baroque opera however has until relatively recently also been a rarity at the Vienna State opera - a 50 year gap only broken in 2011 coincidentally (isn't it strange how much that word comes up, you'd almost think it telling) with a production of Handel's Alcina, a tale of another Orlando - so the history of change in opera is perhaps not something that many of the more conservative element of the audience in Vienna would recognise. I don't think Olga Neuwirth is going to convince them with her Orlando.

Being a well-educated man from a noble family in 1598, Orlando is well placed to be destined for greatness. He determines to be a poet and a great writer, but although he wins the favour of Queen Elizabeth, his ambitious work 'The Oak Tree' doesn't win favour with critics like Mr Greene. Disappointed in love, when he is betrayed by Sasha, a Russian princess, jaded by the politics of the land and war, Orlando falls into a deep coma and reawakens as a woman in a new age. Her experiences as a woman however bring her to recognise the fact that history is made by men and certainly written by them, meaning much the same thing.

Women don't get a whole lot of a look in and Orlando, now a woman, expected to do little more than make tea and marry, finds it unfair that someone can be rejected solely on the basis of the sex they were born into. Worse comes in the Victorian era, where Orlando encounters women and young girls who are victims of sexual abuse and destined for a life of abject misery. She decides to write and record their experiences from the perspective of woman, but finding a publisher continues to prove elusive, even in the age of eBook publishing.

What is interesting, and perhaps something I failed to appreciate in Woolf or in Sally Potter's filmed version of 'Orlando', is that living now in an era where gender reassignment and gender fluidity is relatively common (if not yet wholly accepted and viewed with suspicion in some quarters), it's now possible to see that Woolf was very much ahead of the game in terms of questions of sexual politics. This of course has a more contemporary application later in Neuwirth's updating of 'Orlando' beyond Woolf's time of 1928 up to the present day, Neuwirth thereby highlighting for a modern audiences how society and attitudes change over time. Significantly however, while that change is brought clearly to the forefront, it also makes evident just how far behind attitudes remain in relation to gender inequality.

It's inevitably a huge task to get all that across in a three hour opera and avoid sounding preachy, particularly when Neuwirth's musical approach to the subject is just as complex and all-encompassing, and modernist and dissonant in the most difficult way for an audience to engage with. Neuwirth doesn't entirely succeed in terms of making the case persuasive from the musical viewpoint, embracing early Tudor music, references to Purcell, religious choral pieces with live electronic layering and use of unconventional instruments in the total opera manner of Stockhausen with its spiritual leanings or Nono's direct political engagement, the conclusion featuring a cabaret band and a transgender singer - Orlando's child - does tend to push towards preachiness.

While it can be difficult to listen to - although I'm certain that it would come across with more detail and much more effectively in a live context rather than via the Wiener Staatsoper's streaming service - it's not hard to appreciate what Neuwirth is trying to do and admire how Matthias Pintscher conducts it, but over an extended period it does head towards sensory overload and cacophony. Certainly for the purposes of how it relates to and reflects the subject of embracing change and diversity however it's essential to employ the richness of musical options open to a composer. It's music that, like Orlando, recognises no distinction between past and present, is male and female all rolled into one, pushing beyond restrictive boundaries of convention.

The musical complexity and what it attempts to bring out only makes the challenges of mixing and blending all the historical scene changes even more difficult for director Polly Graham. Forced into a more linear narrative approach, with the passing years displayed in the background, the production design is perhaps a little more theatrically conventional in how it meets those challenges of keeping up, using moving screens and projections, but unless you employ La Fura dels Baus or Stefan Herheim, it would be near impossible to visually match the textural richness of the music, much less add another level of complexity to the work that in an ideal world the theatrical element should equally contribute.

Neuwirth and co-librettist Catherine Filloux succeed to a large extend in their aims of making Orlando relevant to the modern age, addressing the legacy of the male-dominated, war-hawking, money-making agenda that suppresses any possibility of true change in the world, raising again the spectre of fascism. As persuasive as the central performance of Kate Lindsey's Orlando is to standing up against the ways of the past, whether Neuwirth's Orlando aligned with and updating Virginia Woolf's vision makes an equal or greater historical impression seems unlikely, but it's certainly of the moment, another marker along the way to show that we've still a long way to go.

Links: Wiener Staatsoper, Wiener Staatsoper Live at Home

Handel - Orlando

George Frideric Handel - Orlando

Theater an der Wien, Vienna - 2013

Rubén Dubrovsky, Stefania Panighini, Rupert Enticknap, Cigdem Soyarsian, Gaia Petrone, Anna Maria Sarra, Igor Bakan

Sonostream.tv Internet Streaming, 31 May 2013

There are limitations to what you can do theatrically with a work like Handel's Orlando, particularly in a small venue like the Theater an der Wien.  The work itself doesn't seem to present many opportunities for dramatic action, and even the arias often seem to be poetically allusive and darkly melancholic, full of characters wrapped up in their own torments of anger, jealousy and fear.  Presented here in Vienna at the Vienna Chamber Opera and a young ensemble of singers from the JET, the intricacies of Handel's musical writing and the powerful imagery of the libretto were however fully explored and brought to the fore.

Much of the strength of Handel's Orlando lies not so much within the conventional beauty of the melodies as in how they meet the expressive qualities of the setting for the libretto.  It's not just an opportunity to string together a series of interchangeable arias expressing deep but generic emotional turmoil - even Handel would often reuse and recycle his own work - but an integral work with strong consistent imagery, symbolism and themes.  Even as a magic opera, the intentions are not to produce stage craft and spectacle, but to explore the extremes of the human condition.  Those themes are fully recognised in the stage production - directed by Stefania Panighini with sets by Federica Parolini - which is minimally dressed, but fully integrated with the tone and the intentions of the work.

The areas that Orlando explores then are very dark ones indeed.  There are the familiar Baroque opera themes of love, betrayal and jealousy, with unfaithful lovers or unrequited sentiments.  In Orlando however those sentiments take a darker turn into madness as Orlando, a knight in the Crusades, reacts with violence to the discovery that Angelica, the Queen of Cathay, doesn't love him but Medoro.  He discovers that they are in the house of the shepherdess Dorinda, and burns the house down.  It is only through the intervention of the magician Zoroastro that the situation is resolved and Orlando's mind put at ease, allowing him to return to the holy wars.

There are numerous references that express the conflict within Orlando's mind, his soul and his spirit in terms of the divisions between nature and science, between peace and war.  They are not the standard references of tumultuous raging of the soul - allowing the composer to whip up musical storm effects - but to "tender flakes of falling snow melted in the sunny ray", to streams, trees, flowers, "feather'd choirs" and balmy gales in a setting of fountains and gardens conjured up by the magician Zorastro in an attempt to give Orlando respite from the violence of war and the deranged thoughts that torment him.  It's even on a tree that Orlando finds the entwined engraved names of Angelica and Medoro that tips him over into madness.

The stage set used for this production at the Chamber Opera of the Theater and der Wien then is a simple one that reflects the division that has been introduced between man and nature, an outline frame representing Dorinda's house that can be reconfigured to look like a greenhouse or a birdcage depending on the context, the house adorned with plants that grow out of the heads of busts.  Zoroastro's domain is also alluded to through objects that suggest a temple to magic, science, time and learning, with an anatomy model that straddles the themes of science and nature, particularly in relation to the spiritual nature of the human heart and mind.  In many ways this represents the essential conflict at the core of Orlando, between the soul in love and the soul in torment.

The purity and simplicity of the stage expression of the work is reflected in the musical performance of the Bach Consort Wien conducted by Rubén Dubrovsky, and in the fresh singing of the young performers from the JET.  Countertenor Rupert Enticknap is a sweet-voiced Orlando capable of great expression, if not quite reaching the extremes of the Paladin's condition.  Cigdem Soyarsian, a green-haired Angelica (all the performers had punky-coloured hairstyles), also sang the role well, delivering a particularly good 'Così giusta è questa speme'.  The other roles were also well presented, Anna Maria Sarra's Dorinda combining sweetness and melancholy in regard to Medoro and anguish defeat at the hands of Orlando.  Medoro's role in the opera was slightly trimmed here, but Gaia Petrone made a very good impression, and Igor Bakan was a solid Zoroastro.

Handel - Orlando

George Frideric Handel - Orlando

La Monnaie-De Munt, 2012

René Jacobs, Pierre Audi, Bejun Mehta, Sophie Karthäuser, Kristina Hammarström, Sunhae Im, Konstantin Wolff

Internet Streaming, 12 May 2012

As conductor René Jacobs observes in the programme notes for this production of Orlando for La Monnaie-De Munt (watched via their Internet streaming service), Handel - like many other composers who have tackled the subject - must have felt somewhat inspired by the subject of Ariosto’s ‘Orlando Furioso’, for in contrast to some of his works for the Kings Theatre in London where he reworked music from other earlier pieces, Orlando is composed of entirely new music. It may even be the case that Handel took a hand in the writing of the libretto itself, drawing from a libretto by Carlo Sigismondo Capece, introducing some new characters and arrangements to suit his own ideas.

Ever the businessman, there is clearly a calculated approach to Handel’s arrangements for Orlando, which works within the strict conventions of opera seria that audiences and singers would have expected, but seeking to make Italian opera a success in London, Handel also ensured that there is something in it for everyone. Even within the limitations of dramatic action that you can expect from such Baroque work, Handel extended the frame of the unrequited love story between the great warrior Orlando and Angelica, the Queen of Cathay through the introduction of the characters Dorinda and Zorastro - neither of whom appear in Ariosto’s source work - bringing a lighter element and even some comedy with the former and a supernatural aspect with the latter. This gives Handel scope to extend the emotional range of the work to some extent, but the majority of the work is still based around the expression and hiding of feelings between characters who still conform very much to commedia dell’arte types.

The origins of the work extend back to ‘Le Chanson de Roland’, written by a monk at the end of the 11th century, which relates the tale of Roland (who becomes Orlando the story was developed into Italian by Ariosto) set against the background of Charlemagne’s campaign against the Saracens in 778. At the heart of the work is the supremacy of reason - symbolically shown with the appearance of an eagle in the third act - which helps quell the fires of passion that have been aroused during the romantic complications that have taken place. Dorinda is in love with Medoro, the wounded soldier she has been tending, but he is in love with Angelica, who shares his feelings. Orlando however is also in love with Angelica, but she can’t bring herself to admit to the heroic warrior who has saved her life that she is really in love with Medoro and, having been warned by Zorastro of Orlando’s jealous rages, she is somewhat frightened of the consequences should Orlando find out about her love for Medoro. And she has good reason to be cautious, for when Orlando discovers their names carved together on a tree, he burns down Dorinda’s house with Medoro inside and attempts to murder Angelica, until Zorastro’s intervention finally brings him back to his senses.

Concerned very much with inner feelings and emotions expressed and kept hidden, their force given expression through a descent into madness, Orlando does inevitably present a challenge when it comes to staging it. For Pierre Audi, the director of the De Nederlandse Opera, Orlando is very much a psychological drama, and his production accordingly uses the burning of Dorinda’s house as the key symbol of Orlando’s state of mind throughout. It’s certainly a valid way to approach the work, but Audi’s method introduces a few complications that don’t always seem to be entirely coherent or successful. The decision to portray Orlando as a fireman in Act I is a strange one - although one can see how it relates to a modern depiction of his heroism and the esteem that he is held in, as well as relating it to the notion of playing with fire, the fire of passion, and the pyromaniac actions that ensue later - but apart from the wearing of a helmet and some barrels and hoses on the stage, this occupation isn’t over-emphasised. Perhaps even more difficult to grasp however is the fluid approach towards the timeline of events that Audi sees as a reflection of Orlando’s perspective in his madness.

In Act I then, Dorinda’s house has already been burned, the charred remains of its frame are all that are left of it, and Orlando and his firecrew are gathering the hoses back in. An altered view of the destroyed house is shown in the second act, which is where the derangement of Orlando’s nightmare is most pronounced, believing himself to be on the banks of the Styx and drawn to the land of the dead. Projections are used to emphasise his delirium, with repeated imagery of Orlando walking through fields of fire. Act III, where the house is actually burnt down, instead focuses on reconstruction, with a new frame being built, although - in line with the open ending - the rebuilding is necessarily left incomplete. Audi’s other idea for the stage treatment is to often have the characters remain on the stage even after their have sung their aria and should normally be making their exit. This is a fairly standard Brechtian device now, revealing the construct behind the drama, and it has relevance to the psychological nature of the opera’s themes, reflecting the mindset of Orlando’s nightmarish descent into madness, the jumbling of timelines in his mind and his presence at scenes where he is not normally involved reflecting his imagining or reconstruction of events in his mind.

I’m not sure that this reorganisation of the events or their altered perspective really makes anything any clearer, whether it really gets into the mind of the character, or even that it makes the stage action any more compelling to watch, but it does seem to work well with the rather complex psychology and inner turmoil that is sung about and reflected in the score. That is brought out wonderfully by René Jacobs and the playing of the Baroque Orchestra B’Rock, Jacobs making the most of the freedom open to the conductor and the resources at their disposal by expanding the instrumentation for the basso continuo for the brief excerpts of recitative for a more fluid arrangement. The casting for this production is also very strong for all five main roles. Bejun Mehta sings Orlando with an otherworldly quality that doesn’t however always seem to get to the heart of his passion and rage, but he is a very fine countertenor. Sophie Karthäuser is a marvellous Angelica and mezzo-soprano Kristina Hammarström handles the role of Medoro well, but again, you never feel any of them completely get to grips with the characters. In line with Handel’s revisions of the character dynamic in the work however, Sunhae Im displays the most personality as Dorinda, singing with a light beautiful Mozartian voice, and Konstantin Wolff adds the necessary weight as Zorastro.

Orlando is available for viewing free online on the Internet streaming service of La Monnaie-De Munt until 2nd June 2012.