Agrippina, HGO, 13 May 2023

Jacksons Lane Arts Centre

Agrippina – Astrid Joos
Poppea – Biqing Zhang
Nerone – Katie Macdonald
Claudio – George Robarts
Ottone – Francesco Giusti
Narciso – Hamish McLaren
Pallante – Gheorghe Palcu
Lesbo – Sonny Fielding
Giunone – Lydia Shariff

Ashley Pearson (director)
Sorcha Corcoran (set design)
Alice Carroll (costumes)
Catja Hamilton (lighting)

Douglas Baker (projections)

HGOAntiqua Orchestra
Thomas Payne (conductor)

Claudio (George Robarts), Poppea (Biqing Zhang)
Images: Laurent Compagnon

Cannily marketed as ‘the coronation that goes wrong’, HGO’s Agrippina proved quite the tonic for a May that has still seemed hesitant to acknowledge the coming of spring. Handel’s early opera, written in 1709 for the Venice Carnival, emerged as a considerably stronger work than it did in a starry, somewhat irritating production I saw four years ago in Munich. (Later that year, it came to Covent Garden.) In the small theatre of Jacksons Lane Arts Centre in Highgate, HGO presented a work which, whatever its flaws, cohered and remained open for the audience to bring to it what it would.  

I say ‘whatever its flaws’, because they seemed far more apparent in Munich than in Highgate, so perhaps the flaws lay more with this listener than with the work. Not all the arias are top-drawer Handel; some, in light of the composer’s notorious ‘borrowings’, are barely Handel at all. Few, however, outstay their welcome—or did here, whereas the leaden conducting I heard in Munich led to more than a little consulting of my watch. There, redistribution into two acts had seemed a mistake; here, if perhaps not ideal on paper, it really did not matter in practice and proved an eminently practical solution to a real problem for a modern company, especially one with limited reserves. One must take the genre for what it is, of course, and I doubt I shall ever be convinced that Handel as dramatist is not better deployed in his oratorios, but here the story was told clearly and with intelligence and wit. If I find it impossible to banish Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea from my mind when considering these characters, that is my problem rather than Handel’s. Ashley Pearson and her team’s resourceful production made a little go a long way, projections of social media both conceptually framing the action and marking its progression through time and changing circumstances. Poppea’s following through the power of the image and Ottone’s public esteem on account of acknowledged valour were conveyed with uncanny fidelity through (post-)modern means. Above all, though, the accent in a small theatre lies on Personenregie, and this was keenly, powerfully accomplished throughout.

Agrippina (Astrid Joos), Nerone (Katie Macdonald)

Every member of the young cast contributed to that sharpness of individual characterisation and its place within a greater whole. In the title role, Astrid Joos’s vocal portrayal reminded us that, beyond the scheming, this is a woman fighting with what she has—and who would doubtless be fighting in quite a different way under a different gender dispensation. Biqing Zhang's Poppea presented a similarly rounded portrayal, making her way as she could and, arguably, must. Katie Macdonald captured well the sulky immaturity of Nerone through tone and gesture, deploying coloratura equally well to highly dramatic effect. George Robarts offered a nicely ambiguous Claudio: one never knew quite what to make of him, which was surely the point. Gheorghe Paicu and Sonny Fielding’s sharply etched Pallante and Lesbo, as well as Hamish McLaren’s countertenor Narciso, rounded out the intrigue and its sharply (not in pitch!) shifting terms. For me, though, the more ‘continental’ countertenor of Francesco Giusti as Ottone made perhaps the greatest impression. Fine stage presence was married to a more earthy, even masculine tone and projection than often you will hear, conveying valour and vulnerability in equal measure. Juno’s was very much a guest appearance, perhaps an ‘also starring’ moment. Lydia Shariff a goddess and she knows it—as do the mortals, however elevated, before her. It was a splendid thing to have and enjoy this moment, rather than regret its excision, but then one could have said the same of so much else.

Ottone (Francesco Giusti)

Thomas Payne’s direction of an excellent small band of period instrumentalists both drove and reflected the action. My preference may lie with a modern orchestra, but such were the excellence and commitment of playing here, I could for once quite appreciate the arguments for this alternative. With every player essentially a soloist as well as an ensemble member, there was, moreover, an almost modern sense of music theatre to the enterprise, heightened by proximity of orchestra and stage. For, whatever my particular favourites, this was above all a company effort, company extending beyond those performing to all involved in HGO’s collegial enterprise. As David Conway, HGO’s chairman, said at the beginning, it is here, not in the Arts Council’s absurd vision of opera in car parks, that the future of the art lies.

 

Ensemble, headed by Juno (Lydia Shariff)

L'Egisto, HGO, 5 June 2021

The Cockpit

Egisto – Martins Smaukstelis
Climene – Astrid Joos
Lidio – Alex Pullinger
Clori – Caroline Taylor
Hipparco – John Holland-Avery
Amore – Helen Lacey
Semele, Bellezza, Hora Seconda – Charity Mapletoft
Venere, Dedra, Hora Quarta – Oliva Carrell
Dema – Emily Kyte
Volupia, Didone, Hora Terza – Helen Daniels James
La Notte – Laurence Gillians

Marcio de Silva (director, lighting)
Madeline de Barrié (assistant director)
Christian Hey (designs)

HGO Baroque Orchestra

Marcio da Silva (music director)


HGO (formerly Hampstead Garden Opera) led the way after the first lockdown with opera’s return to London, in the guise of an outdoor performance of Holst’s Sāvitri at Lauderdale House. Five miles or so away, at Marylebone’s Cockpit Theatre, it proved if not quite the earliest, then one of the earliest, to return to the fray this time round, with Francesco Cavalli’s (and Giovanni Faustini’s) L’Egisto of 1643.


The second of Cavalli’s collaborations with Faustini, L’Egisto proved influential and popular beyond Venice, travelling to Naples and many other nascent centres of opera across the Italian peninsula. It even travelled with Cavalli to Paris, to be performed in 1646 at the behest of Cardinal Mazarin, determined yet frustrated in his every attempt to establish Italian opera on a permanent basis in the French capital. (Mazarin would later commission Cavalli’s Ercole armante for Louis XIV’s marriage to Maria Theresa of Spain, though neither opera nor théâtre à machines was ready in time. It would be performed two years later, in 1662, Cavalli’s Xerse quickly substituted—and highly popular.) The renaissance in Cavalli’s fortunes, if not quite initiated by Raymond Leppard, then nonetheless incalculably in his debt, saw L’Egisto among the earlier Cavalli operas to return to the stage, Leppard realising the work for Santa Fe in 1974 and Scottish Opera eight years alter. Marcio da Silva, acting both as stage and music director, now gives a reading for our time, doubtless less lavish than Leppard’s, but our moment is hardly one given to lavish operatic presentation. Rightly or wrongly, it tends to favour ‘original instruments’ and a less ‘interventionist’ approach than what Jane Glover described, in her review of Leppard’s score, as ‘look[ing] upon the surviving material rather as a lump of modeller’s clay, which he [Leppard] moulds skilfully into shapes which he knows will please modern audiences. In so doing, he departs from original practice, often quite violently.’


There was certainly no such violence here, whether in the pit or on stage. Given in the round, the boundary was not in any case entirely distinct, though there was no dramatic mixing of function to match that combination of roles in our dual director’s case. The ebb and flow of the score and its realisation—or whatever we want to call it—by Marcio da Silva and Cédric Meyer very much complemented the scenic action, presented in some ways simply, yet far from neutrally. A small yet colourful band—harpsichord, organ, lute, baroque guitar, two violins, gamba, cello, two recorders, and sparingly employed percussion—did not suggest, at least not in this small, socially distanced theatre, that Cavalli’s music cried out for more. Rather, it furnished a crucial harmonic backdrop of imagination, against which the human voice could be heard and human gesture seen. If I cared less for the folk-like excursions now expected in early opera performances of a certain school, they were rare and clearly relished by the players, whose pleasure it would be churlish unduly to begrudge. With Sebastian Gillot, assistant music director, at the keyboard, much was possible and realised in aural tapestry, but also much was offered in support to the singers, the continuo ensemble flexible enough to be reinforced with a minimum of fuss where necessary.


A staging that relied on distance, on separation, and on mischief and anguish in their wake was doubtless developed with our current predicament in mind, yet fitted very well with a plot in which two couples, separated, must find, recognise, and learn to love one another again (though do they?) The passing of a single day, respecting the old dramatic unities, is symbolised by the passage of the sun above (this Egisto a descendant of Apollo, not the Aegisth we know from Elektra). Curtains of separation that could be seen through, or not, did much that was necessary. Singing to and past each other, touching or, more often, failing to do so, spoke to us clearly yet far from clinically. Touches of blood-red brought colour with dramatic impact predicated on an overall economy of means. Elements of cross-dressing reminded us of where Cavalli, much to Leppard’s sorrow, ended up: ‘plots … of such a ridiculous complexity that it is doubtful if anybody could ever have known, or cared, what was happening on the stage once the disguises had got under way’. But with Faustini, as Leppard remarked in the liner notes to his recording of L’Ormindo, Cavalli ‘responded to the best libretti with his best music’.


To make it so, of course, requires not only sensitive continuo realisation but also sensitive—and dramatic—vocal artistry. Here a number of singers excelled, showing considerable stage gifts too. Martins Smaukstelis was first among equals as Egisto, wounded, external heroism and inward anguish expressed by all manner of subtle gradations. Astrid Joos as Climene and Caroline Taylor as Clori offered complement and contrast in their soprano roles, expression lying very much within the precision of their performances. Helen Lacey’s Amore schemed and sulked by turn, vocally and visually. This was, however, very much an ensemble piece, with all involved, musical and directorial teams alike, contributing to the musico-dramatic whole. Recommended—even without the bonus of drinks brought to your seat. There are two, alternating casts; I saw the second.