Rinaldo, Royal Academy Opera, 19 March 2026

Susie Sainsbury Theatre, Royal Academy of Music

Almirena (Abigail Sinclair) and Rinaldo (Ella Orehek-Coddington)
Images: Craig Fuller

Goffredo – Owen Lucas
Rinaldo – Ella Orehek-Coddington
Almirena – Abigail Sinclair
Argante – Tom Butler
Armida – Grace Hope-Gill
Eustazio (Cupid) – Theodore McAlindon

Director – Julia Burbach
Designs – Bettina John
Lighting – Robert Price
Choreography – Cameron McMillan

Royal Academy Sinfonia

David Bates (conductor)

Rinaldo, Handel’s first opera for London, received a bright, enjoyable, and – more surprisingly – succinct new production at the Royal Academy of Music, directed by Julia Burbach and conducted by David Bates. As ever, with conservatoire opera, the ultimate point is to afford young singers experience, but that can never, should never be the only point: unless there is positive musical and dramatic reason for an audience to attend, the singers will gain no meaningful experience. The virtues of a small theatre, in which all are close to the action, are many; but again, they will be as nothing without excellence in performance. As so often, that was forthcoming, a fine young case requiring no apology and proffering many grounds for praise. 

Goffredo (Owen Lucas)

Handel’s operas are no stranger to cuts. A standard version in the modern sense is arguably an anachronism in such opera seria, as is a modern conception of the ‘musical work’—in some ways, more so than it might be for Monteverdi (in others, less so). The music we heard was expected, though not all of it was heard. For to compress almost three hours of music into a two-hour span including a twenty-minute interval required radical surgery—much, though far from all, lying in elimination, as opposed to pruning, of recitative. That is not to say there was none at all, but there were a good few cases when aria simply led to aria. There are losses to such a path, of course; one can tell that even when one does not know the work so well. To an extent, the production helped fill in the gaps, but there were narrative elements that came to seem underdeveloped, even arbitrary. Most smaller parts, sung or merely acted, were dispensed with. 

So far as I could tell – I shall happily be corrected by those more deeply acquainted with the opera – the music heard was essentially from the ‘original’ version, including some of that later cut. However, Goffredo was sung by a tenor, as in the major 1731 revision – damned by Anthony Hicks as ‘in effect … a pasticcio’ – a decision I could not help but think marking an improvement. In any case, the 1711 ‘original’ includes so much earlier music from Handel’s Italian period, it is unclear to me how meaningful such a distinction might be, in theory or in practice. There is much I believe we still do not know about what was sung for revivals in between 1711 and 1731; there is ever reason to choose pragmatically, according to singers available and other performing conditions, just as Handel would have been. 

That out of the way, the abridged version had much to offer musically—and more dramatically than one might have expected. Ella Orehek-Coddington gave an impressive account of the title role, truly growing into the part as it progressed, which seemed to be a dramatic strategy rather than simply warming up. Her tone was both bright and warm, her coloratura secure; to an age in which countertenors are more often preferred in this repertoire – the RAM’s double-casting offered both – she reminded us of the distinct virtues her vocal type can offer here (which was, after all, a signature role for Marilyn Horne). Grace Hope-Gill presented a fiery sorceress Armida, one with whom one could not but help sympathise, ably complemented by Tom Butler’s Argante, both singers employing technical command as a spur to greater emotional commitment—on their part and on ours. 

Argante (Tom Butler), Almirena

Owen Lucas offered model Handel singing, clarion-like as Goffredo, leader of the First Crusade, looking the part in Bettina John’s costume too and employing it to suggest compromising vanity. Abigail Sinclair’s Almirena was sweetly sung, blending well almost as if a member of the orchestral wind in that aria, ‘Lascia ch’io panga’, whose ornamentation was relatively lavish from all concerned, yet in no sense excessive. Eustazio, a role which, unless I am mistaken, was written for contralto, was here sung by bass Theodore McAlindon, doubling up (slightly confusingly) as Cupid. Not that doubling of roles is necessarily confusing, but presenting this newly invented role as one and the same was a little. I suspect the reasoning was its relatively thankless nature as it stood; indeed, it was omitted in revivals later than that of 1713. The dual role gave McAlindon more to do, his acting accomplished as well as his vocal artistry.

Eustazio (Theodore McAlindon)

Bates led the Royal Academy Sinfonia and singers alike in a warm and spirited performance that, whilst often swift, only occasionally seemed rushed. This was excellent playing indeed from the orchestra, whose variety in timbre, colour, and much else suggested a larger and more varied ensemble than was actually the case, the composer’s resourcefulness showcased in the pit as well as onstage. Concerning the latter, Burbach trod in the best sense a fine line between straightforward telling and framing of the action – all the more necessary given how much it must fill in or even invent – and creation of a world in which strange fantasies might germinate, take root, and surprise. Cameron McMillan's choreography added considerably to the sum of the parts. If, at times, I might have preferred a production that took more of a ‘view’, not least with respect to the Crusader setting, I can equally see why one might not wish to do so. The work is not ‘about’ that, of course, and we return to the ultimate point of conservatoire opera. In that and in much else, this Rinaldo succeeded very well indeed.

Hercules, Komische Oper, 3 March 2024

Hercules – Brandon Cedel
Dejanira – Paula Murrihy
Iole – Penny Sofroniadou
Hyllus – Caspar Singh
Lichas – Susan Zarrabi
Priest of Jupiter – Noam Heinz
Choral soloists – Martin Fehr, Taiki Miyashita

Director – Barrie Kosky
Designs – Katrin Lea Tag
Dramaturgy – Zsolt Horpácsy, Johanna Wall
Lighting – Joachim Klein
Assistant director – Tobias Ribitzki

Choral Soloists of the Komische Oper (director: David Cavelius) 

Orchestra of the Komische Oper

David Bates (conductor)

Images: Monika Rittershaus
Dejanira (Paula Murrihy), Lichas (Susan Zarrabi)

Handel’s ‘musical drama’ – an interesting term, though we can sometimes make too much of such things – Hercules has never proved especially popular. The composer’s public at the time and for a long while after tended to prefer his Biblical oratorios. Since the revival and, latterly, the craze for his Italian opere serie, they have ruled the roost. Semele, another ‘musical drama’, ‘after the manner of an oratorio’, has fared better since its modern stage revival in Cambridge in 1925. Handel never intended it to be staged, though the librettist (William Congreve) and original composer (John Eccles) had. It perhaps comes closest to Hercules, whose first staging was also in 1925 – the very beginning of the modern Handel revival – though in Münster. Whilst perhaps not the most compelling, dramatically, of all Handel’s works, Hercules, to a libretto by the Anglican clergyman Thomas Broughton, is certainly not the least either. This new production from Berlin’s Komische Oper affords a valuable opportunity, certain shortcomings notwithstanding, for news audience to see and hear it for themselves—many doubtless for the first time, the present writer included. 

In a programme interview, Kosky tells how and why he has long found Handel’s oratorios, to which he reasonably assimilates Hercules, more compelling than his operas. Me too, though we seem to stand nowadays in a minority. One question presented by staging the oratorios (broadly considered), though, relates to how to treat the chorus. Its dual role in participation and commentary dates back to Attic tragedy, of course, as well as holding an obvious point in common with Bach’s Passions. There remains the question of how to stage this, especially when the chorus is being asked to sing some notably difficult music conceived for singers standing with their scores rather than darting around the stage. (Insofar as the Italian operas have ‘choruses’ at all, the music is far simpler, and in general we might consider them simply to be the cast coming together.) One needs an excellent chorus, of course, which was certainly the case. Its singers and their director, David Cavelius, deserve much praise; audience appreciation was rightly enthusiastic on the opening night. Kosky involved them directly in the action where required, including a disturbing scene of largely implicit violence when Iole is brought home (for Hercules, not for her) as spoils of war. There is also mesmerising choreography for the reflective role in which singing and movement combine to evoke and perhaps even provoke the deadly jealousy forming in Dejanira’s fevered imagination.

 

Chorus and Dejanira

For, as Kosky points out, Handel focuses everything not on Hercules but on his wife, Dejanira. ‘Everyone is constantly talking about Hercules,’ as is typical for a hero, or an idea of a hero, ‘but all one sees is one theme – and that is jealousy, which the chorus also sings about at a central point. What is jealousy, what does jealousy do, what is fantasy, what is projection, what is reality? Dejanira spins herself through jealousy into madness,’ in her obsessional belief, quite unfounded, that her husband has deserted her for the foreign princess Iole. Kosky’s suggestion that Broughton probably read Othello strikes me as eminently plausible, and certainly makes its way in here, with a good touch too of Ovid. This unfolds in an unsparing visual environment, situated at the dramatic trisection of antiquity, its eighteenth-century revisitation, and our twenty-first-century revisitation of both. Glaring light and whiteness impart a sense of nowhere to hide. We may not wish to watch at times, but we must—just like those taking part. Katrin Lea Tag’s designs here play a crucial role; indeed, one cannot imagine the action without them. A statue of Hercules, ever present, make Kosky’s point about constant reference when the drama is not really ‘about’ Hercules at all.

Dejanira, Hercules (Brandon Cedel)

We knit our own heroes, Dejanira to extremes, and in this respect Paula Murrihy’s performance must be accounted a striking success. Murrihy has much to do and not only did it very well indeed, but functioned, as she must, as the dramatic lynchpin. As Hercules, Brandon Cedel has a somewhat thankless part, but presented it with conviction and due collegiality, doing just what was required of him to have the apparently strange focus of the drama work. Kosky has an inventive solution, which tightens the bonds of family loyalty further, to the question of the role of the messenger Lichas. Handel made it an oddly large role; that is, oddly, until one knows that it was on account of the popularity of its creator Susanna Cibber. For revivals, it was cut. Kosky elects to make the herald, always sung by a woman, Hercules’s younger sister. It works well, I think, and helps make sense of something that can otherwise seem a little odd. Susan Zarrabi’s heavily accented performance might have been a little much for some English speakers, but it was certainly animated and dramatically committed; we should remind ourselves that German- and Italian-speakers face similar distractions frequently. Penny Sofroniadou’s Iole was beautifully, sparklingly sung, with just as keen an eye and ear for drama, her initial, well-nigh regal disdain for Hyllus, Hercules’s son, duly wounding. Caspar Singh offered a subtle, often moving performance of that difficult role: very much in his father’s shadow, his mother’s too, in need of space to become his own person. The small role of the Priest of Jupiter was well taken by Noam Heinz, from whom I shall likewise be keen to hear more. 

Hyllas (Caspar Singh), Dejanira, Lichas

The one significant drawback for me was David Bates’s direction of the orchestra. Clearly intent on making it sound as little like a modern orchestra as possible – in which case, why use one? – Bates often sounded as if he were presenting a caricature of rebarbative ‘early musicking’. Not only was there no longer line; there were barely orchestral phrases at all, which made for a peculiar contrast with such excellent singing. If it was, alas, too much to hope for even the slightest manifestation of string vibrato. The orchestra doubtless did as it was asked, but lunging extremes of tempo only highlighted the strange assumptions underlying Bates’s performance. Quite how we have backed ourselves into a corner where all manner of explorations are permitted on stage, yet a single, highly questionable idea of ‘correctness’ (or otherwise) in instrumental performance is all that can be allowed, I really do not know. One can only hope that, some day, wiser, more humane counsels will prevail. There are certainly far more alluring Handel performances on period instruments, let alone the all too rare occasions when more properly ‘modern’ readings are permitted.

Hercules, Hyllus

It would doubtless be an exaggeration to describe Hercules as an ‘Anglican work’, but it chimes well enough with a broadly Christian yet latitudinarian outlook. If part of the reason for the work’s ‘failure’ – it received only two performances in its initial run at the Haymarket – was, as has been claimed, its lack of moral and spiritual uplift, then it is tempting to conclude the audience was not paying as much attention as it might. From a modern standpoint, it might all seem a bit clean, the deus ex machina in need of questioning or undercutting. Kosky does not opt to do so too overtly, letting the work speak largely for itself. Yet in continuing his focus on Dejanira, for whom this is certainly not a happy ending, one can continue, as it were, to hear her pain, renewed and intensified by the sounds of rejoicing that surround her.

BBC Proms (7) - Britten Sinfonia/Bates: Rameau, Bologne, and Mozart, 20 August 2021

Royal Albert Hall

Rameau: Hippolyte et Aricie: ‘Bruit de tonnerre’, ‘Ritournelle’
Rameau: Dardanus: Tambourins I & II
Rameau: Castor et Pollux: ‘Tristes apprêts’
Joseph Bologne: Symphony no.2 in D major
Rameau: Dardanus: ‘Lieux funestes’
Rameau: Platée: ‘Orage’
Rameau: Les Indes galantes: Chaconne
Mozart: Requiem in D minor, KV 626

Samantha Clarke (soprano)

Claudia Huckle (contralto)

Nick Pritchard (tenor)

William Thomas (bass)

The National Youth Chamber Choir

Britten Sinfonia

David Bates (conductor)

A peculiar concert, this: much to enjoy and indeed savour in a first half of eighteenth-century French music, followed by, not to put too fine a point on it, the most bizarrely, downright perversely conducted performance of any sacred work by Mozart I have had the misfortune to hear. Let us begin, however, at the beginning, with selected extracts from operas by Rameau. That his stage works are not staples of our opera houses says everything about the latter—including their public—and nothing about the works’ intrinsic virtues.

Hippolyte et Aricie, Rameau’s first opera, was represented by two orchestral movements. Thunder-clap and wind machine both evoked the eighteenth-century theatre and, in the very different setting of the Royal Albert Hall, underlined our distance from it. A vividly pictorial and dramatic string ‘Bruit de tonnerre’ was followed by a ritournelle written for the opera’s 1742 revival, Britten Sinfonia woodwind adding colour and counterpoint, and a proper sense of leading us somewhere, of connecting. What a joy it was already to hear Rameau from a decent-sized orchestra, in such enlightened performances. Likewise, with added percussion, in the first of the tambourins from Dardanus. If the second were a bit breathless, it would be churlish to complain too much. 'Tristes apprêts', Télaire’s celebrated air from Castor et Pollux once more brought bassoons to the forefront, in a particularly Baroque use of orchestral colour that readily crossed national and stylistic boundaries. (Think of Handel, Zelenka, even Bach…) A plaintive performance, splendidly slow, from soprano Samantha Clarke and conductor David Bates truly made the words’ point—and went beyond them.

Next up was the short D major Symphony by Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges. The Britten Sinfonia offered cultivated playing, which might have been richer of tone, but they were clearly acting under orders. (Why such puritanism for music of a decidedly non-puritanical age? Must we still labour under the yoke of sub-Stravinskian diktats concerning a certain, long since discredited brand of ‘authenticity’?) At least there was none of the exhibitionism fashionable among some self-declared ‘specialists’. If it would be silly to make excessive claims for this music, it is pleasant and has just enough in the way of playing with expectation to hold one’s attention. The ebullient finale, for instance, lacks symphonic direction but retains a nice line in incident, clearly enjoyed by players and audience alike.

Nick Pritchard joined the orchestra for 'Lieux funestes' from Dardanus. Unfazed by sometimes tricky tessitura, Pritchard shone in another gloriously unhurried account, tbasking in its moment. Rich bassoon-writing again made its mark; the orchestra in general seemed, not unreasonably, more committed to Rameau’s music than to Bologne’s. Harpsichordàwind machineàpizzicato strings: a vivid storm from Platée worked its magic nicely. Finally, for this half, the closing Chaconne from Les Indes galantes functioned rather as it does in Rameau’s opéra-ballet itself, culminating and closing. If a grander vision would not have gone entirely amiss, there was much to delight in colour and rhythmic detail.

After the interval, bassoons and other woodwind took up hints from much of that music and plunged us into the very different world of Mozart’s Requiem. The opening ‘Introitus’ had plenty of clues as to where Bates might lead us, though I could hardly have guessed at the extremity of his nullifying anti-vision. Although it was taken swiftly, lightly, and merely bar-to-bar—no real phrasing, let alone longer-term thinking—there was choral and orchestral detail to admire, though peculiar mannerisms from the violins already gave pause for thought: far more ‘period’ in the pejorative sense than anything we had heard from Rameau. The following ‘Kyrie’ was clear enough, I suppose, though rushed. Quite what Bates thought, or thought Mozart thought, of its tripartite invocation was anyone’s guess.

The ‘Sequenz’, though, left one in no doubt as to travesty this would continue to be. A ‘Dies irae’ that was merely fast, quite without terror, and a peremptory ‘Rex tremendae’ that suggested a King of dreadful majesty incongruously rushing for the bus, came either side of a considerably superior ‘Tuba mirum’, which at least gave us opportunity to hear each of the vocal soloists in turn. William Thomas’s dark, characterful bass proved especially welcome, his peculiar cadenza less so. He was not, alas, the only soloist to follow such dubious practice. If the ‘Recordare’ was predictably fast, voices were well balanced, responsive, and sincere. The orchestra, alas, went for naught, relegated to the status of an end-of-pier band. By the time we reached the ‘Confutatis’, it was less a matter of rushing for the bus as the vehicle freewheeling downhill, brakes having failed. Bizarre.

The decision suddenly to perform the ‘Lacrimosa’ at a reasonable tempo, welcome though it was, spoke in context more of sentimentality than anything more elevated. There was, to be fair, splendidly fruity woodwind playing and the National Youth Chamber Choir, at last permitted to sing freely, took its chance to shine too. The rest, alas, was more of the same: a ‘Domine Jesu’ live from the Tokyo Olympics, a ‘Hostias’ whose inconsequentiality ought truly to have shocked anyone attentive either to words or music, and so on. There was fine conversation between the soloists in the ‘Benedictus’, though ornamentation might again usefully have been eschewed. As for the bald, unqualified assertion in the programme that the movement was written by Franz Xaver Süssmayr, I can only suggest that the person concerned actually listen to its material—and then some of Süssmayr’s own church music. After a double-speed—well, almost—‘Agnus Dei’, nothing could have saved either this disposable Requiem, or the poor souls on whose behalf it was supposedly sung. Requiem for a fashion victim, as someone once said in a different context.