ABSURD, TRANSCENDENT, JOYFUL
Forget Ancient Greece and the films inspired by the suitors of royal Parthenope, this is Handel in comic-opera mood (one can’t always be writing Zadok or Messiah). He hurled himself cheerfully into the absurd, and Christopher Alden’s joyfully barking-mad production from 2008 throws itself further still. Right into 1920s Paris absurdism, the world of Dali and Picasso and the photosurrealist Man Ray.: the latter wanders on before anyone, with camera and light and sunglasses peering gloomily through a rectangular sheet of paper stuck to his face. He shortly becomes Emilio, the invader-suitor.
It starts in, on or under a great sweeping white staircase, suitably Deco and just right for the countertenor Jake Ingbar as Armindo to fall down, rolling slo-mo, and to hang off the banisters by one leg while lamenting the torments of Cupid and the fierce embers of thwarted passion, while of course never missing a note. His rival Arsace – a nicely gloomy Hugh Cutting – is having more luck with the queen, though constantly reproved by Prince Eurimine, who is actually his betrayed loved Rosmina in disguise (Katie Bray) ; and by Nardus Williams’ magnificent, slinky Parthenope herself: the kind of 1920s queen who prays to the god Apollo while lying half on a poker-table . To complicate the artsy bohemian atmosphere laced with crossed love- stories, William Thomas’ bass Ormonte in an unforgivable beard at one point thunders out a martial air while peeling a banana and – skilful timing here – getting a couple of bites of it down him during a few bars rest.
Emilio arrives with his camera, adds a slightly rude triangle to the scrawled Picasso lines done on the wall by a despairing suitor a few minutes before, and lays them all out corpselike in the floor,being sure to rearrange Armindo’s leg as a good surrealist photographer would. As he departs, the felled quartet deliver a musical squabble from this position, before Rosmina sings a hunting song while the curtain blows wildly and Armindo has more trouble with the stairs.
Roll your eyes if you must, at both the glorious prodigality of opera itself and at 1730’s broad notion of Cupid’s arrows : every cry of despair, adoration or rage is a thing of poetic wonder: soaring and sweeping , every melodious trill and slide and Handelian swoop sung with apparent birdlike ease over music rising warm from the pit. The cast are musical athletes every one, showpiece after showpiece sparkling with feeling and a bright, precise Enlightenment orderliness transcending the absurdities of story and action.
By the second act all are in top hats and tails, giving way to nightwear as their confusion increases. Even when Emilio (Ru Charlesworth) is trying to escape from a lavatory through the fanlight while singing of the despair of the vanquished; even when Arsace taking refuge in the same facility festoons himself in bog-roll and Man Ray Emilio carries on with his giant photomontage; even when Rosmina is down to her sock-suspenders, the music throws its unrelenting serious enchantment at us.
As for the third act, hardly had I scribbled the line “operatic vaudevillians” and reflected that all it needed now was a tap-dance break, when Armindo obliged with one, melodiously assured as ever, and departed on a cartwheel. Oh, and Ormonte had a brief blast on a kazoo before emerging as duel-master in crinoline and spiked helmet. The famous denouement brings two contradictory morals – that contentment can only be found in calm, but that life is boring without Cupid’s pains and joys.
It’s a riot, a great treat, three and a half hours long, and I would not have missed a minute. Honour to the conductor Christian Curnyn, who stormed through the first act before being unwell and replaced at short notice for the rest by the equally storming, hugely applauded William Cole. None of the nonsense, I swear, took any of the dignity from the music. And sprinting towards the late bus, I kept reflecting that it is , if you think about it, among the best qualities of humanity to find beauty in the ridiculous, and consoling peace and orderly reflection in sorrow and confusion. See? Both philosophical satisfaction and a counter-tenor rolling downstairs mid-aria. What the hell more do you want?
eno.org. five more performances before 6 December.
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