Prom 55: Thursday 25th August 2011 (Handel - Rinaldo)

[longinus]

Aeolium:
But if you're a director, what do you do if the whole mind-set of the piece which you are directing is utterly foreign to all but a tiny fraction of your audience? The vast majority of pieces before 1720 (arbitrarily chosen date) are instrumental or sacred. Sacred we have no real problem with - since the common currency of the mass or ave maria/ave maris stella etc etc is easily assimilated (begging a lot of questions there). And instrumental music, though it presents all kinds of problems in terms of instrumentation, ornamentation, tempo and so on stirs little controversy outside academia. But baroque opera is like Jacobean drama - we can try really really hard to adopt the conventions, vocabulary, world-view of the age, but actually we can't - only a tiny tiny handful of academics can do this. So it's bizarre to pretend that any of us could sit through a totally "authentic" performance of any Handel opera. We just don't have the equipment. I saw the Glyndebourne production of Rinaldo on Monday and thought it worked brilliantly - and the key word is "worked" (and this is a very sophisticated audience). It managed to get the audience to commit to what was going on, and it didn't traduce any of the characters' emotions, so Lascia ch'io pianga was still heart-rending, as was Cara Sposa - (though if that was less affecting, that was to do with the singer, I think, excellent though she was in every other respect). So fundamentally I ask you - would you prefer Handel operas to exist solely on CD, or would you prefer them to be vital, involving dramatic events? (Yes, I know, that's a very slightly loaded question - but I hope you see what I'm driving at.)

[Chris Newman]

longinus,
I think it is merely a case of (forgive the cliché ) suspending your disbelief. It is some years since I watched a Handel opera but I used to love ENO under Charles Mackerras or Noel Davies when they presented works like Semelé and Julius Caesar with tongue in cheek directors. About twelve years ago my eleven year old son and I watched a production of Semelé and he thought it a mixture of "very lovely but very sexy with it, Dad". That was clearly a successful production. Involving conventions of Handel's day with happenings like Jupiter entering on a cut-out cloud it worked perfectly. If bicycles are used instead of horses in Rinaldo, so be it. Many fine productions use hobby-horses...Handel usually wins unless we have a frightened director out to shock with every movement and gesture for fear we don't notice his contribution.

[aeolium]

longinus, those are all good points and you have the great advantage that you have seen the production and I have not. I certainly would not want a "totally authentic performance" of this or any other Handel opera, even if such a thing were possible - I don't think the word 'authentic' is helpful at all about musical or dramatic performance. I agree that the mind-set of the piece is very foreign to most if not all the audience, but I think that's also true of many other even better-known works such as many Shakespeare plays, Rossini or Weber operas, Greek tragedy. And the historical setting of Rinaldo, though far distant in time, is not so detached from the world of Western incursions in the Middle East that we see in our own time - I would have thought it would not have been beyond the wit of a director to provide a contemporary update which did not require lashings of comedy to make palatable or comprehensible (perhaps a touch of magic realism for the sorcery). Shouldn't audiences use some imagination as well?

My main worry was that Handel's powerful and intense writing for the soloists would not be trivialised by the comic scenes, but you have said that in the staged production that didn't happen, so I am somewhat reassured.

I was reading Jonathan Keates' biography of Handel in which he records how the first London performances of Rinaldo drew the ridicule of Steele and Addison's Spectator: 'the Opera of Rinaldo is filled with Thunder and Lightning, Illuminations and Fireworks; which the Audience may look upon without catching Cold, and indeed without much Danger of being burnt; for there are several Engines filled with Water, and ready to play at a Minute's Warning, in case any such accident should happen'. They pointed out that the birds in Act 1 flew into the pit and shat upon the audience, and backdrops were not properly moved so that the sea suddenly appeared among the trees. At least the Glyndebourne production seems to have worked much better!

[pilamenon]

Very interesting posts.

I can see where aeolium is coming from on this, and of course by "humour" we're certainly not talking about rolling in the aisles. Equally, it would quickly become both tiresome and a travesty if every staging of a baroque opera had to be played for as many laughs as possible. However, as longinus says, this production definitely worked. I arrived in a rush (as usual :doh without time to study the synopsis or purchase a libretto for the lengthy Act 1 - but the story made pretty clear sense; yes there was a welcome injection of humour, but not at every turn, and most importantly, the integrity of the big arias wasn't compromised by any of the comedy turns. An insistence on being deadly authentic to the spirit of the age every time might in my view diminish the potential audience for this wonderful music four centuries on, so the kind of generous interpretation seen here is in my view most welcome.

I would have loved to see it in its full splendour at Glyndebourne, as there were inevitably some rather clunky moments (and the odd trip!) in adapting it and particularly the bicycles to the RAH.

[pilamenon]

aeolium, I hadn't seen your last post when replying to the earlier ones, so it might seem as if I'm labouring the point.

[aeolium]

No, pilamenon, it's good to hear that the semi-staged production seemed to work for you and doubtless many others. It was hard for me to judge as when I was listening there just seemed to be laughter at incongruous points (including during the lengthy harpsichord solo) but to be honest I wouldn't be too concerned what setting was used for Rinaldo as it is such a ludicrous plot, and I don't think it's by any stretch of the imagination one of Handel's better operas (dashed off in 2 weeks).

An insistence on being deadly authentic to the spirit of the age every time

I suppose my point is that this is so far from being the case - isn't virtually every opera production nowadays teeming with anachronisms and updated to any other historical setting than the one intended? - that it would be a novel experience just once to see a production of an opera that attempted to re-imagine a setting that its contemporaries would have understood. Not for the purposes of being authentic, which as I said I think is a pointless enterprise, but for the purposes of trying to get into the thought-world of those distant writers and composers. Perhaps I am perverse in being interested in those very differences, that complete 'foreignness' of mind-set that longinus felt would be so off-putting to audiences. Just once, in a performance by an opera company prepared to lose some money

[pilamenon]

it would be a novel experience just once to see a production of an opera that attempted to re-imagine a setting that its contemporaries would have understood. Not for the purposes of being authentic, which as I said I think is a pointless enterprise, but for the purposes of trying to get into the thought-world of those distant writers and composers. Perhaps I am perverse in being interested in those very differences, that complete 'foreignness' of mind-set that longinus felt would be so off-putting to audiences. Just once, in a performance by an opera company prepared to lose some money

Agreed, though I suppose it's unlikely to happen. At least baroque opera does seem to be enjoying a revival, albeit with the compromises and anachronisms that you have pointed out. I wouldn't have predicted that a couple of decades ago.

But this review totally overstates the audience reaction in my view:

What was the audience on? Nurofen Plus? They tittered when the bicycles came on, nearly cried when the whip was unleashed and virtually pissed themselves when the warring sides in Handel's crusader fantasy Rinaldo started fighting it out with hockey and lacrosse sticks

http://www.theartsdesk.com/index.php...pera&Itemid=27

And he's got it totally wrong about Dantone. "Unmusical"?

[Richard J.]

I was listening to Rinaldo on R3 last night, thinking "this is really good - why didn't I book tickets for it?". Having read this thread and the references to bicycles et al, I'm rather glad I stayed at home. Surely the point of semi-staging is to enable the singers to interact with each other while they're singing to each other. The odd prop on stage can help this, but bicycles?? In what way does this sort of anachronistic intrusion help one's appreciation of Handel's music?

My ideal for music of this period is what William Christie and Les Arts Florissants do at the Barbican. They put the orchestra at the back and use the front of the stage for the action, with no attempt to "modernise" it in ways that conflict with the context of the plot.