Ariodante Review – Dysfunctional Royals and Designer Dresses at Handel with Separate | Opera

HAndel was at the top of his game when he composed Ariodante, gently pushing the boundaries of operatic tradition and writing some of his most engaging music. It was first performed in 1735 at the Theater Royal, Covent Garden, where the Royal Opera House now stands. Composers and librettists were then asked to create a happy ending to even the most tragic stories, sending audiences away with joy, and Handel duly achieved this. However, audiences of the Royal Opera’s new production – a surprisingly first since that premiere, unless you count the concert broadcast during lockdown – may come away with more ambivalent feelings.

Director Jetske Mijnssen, making her debut at Covent Garden, is unconvinced by this forced happy ending – which, after staging Wagner’s Parsifal at Glyndebourne this summer, wouldn’t be a huge surprise. Like the last piece, here again is a dysfunctional royal family. We are in the modern palace of a sick and dressed king. The five wedding children playing around the dining table during the introduction reappear as adults, becoming his two daughters and three fiancés.

The spoiled princess Ginevra, who poses in designer dresses (courtesy of costume designer Uta Minene) for her sister Dalinda to pick up, initially seems to deserve the gruff Paulinso rather than the playful, serious Ariodante. But they all have some growing to do. In the end, when Ariodante sings his joyous final song while comforting his traumatized brother, it is as if Meggensen is making a dramatic point at the expense of the music, widening the gap between drama and music even further.

Mijnssen’s detailed work shows, and there’s a level of intensity maintained by everyone, right down to the silent, uniformed staff who endure the indiscretions of the young royals.

The cast has no weak link. Countertenor Christophe Dumo, the only singer left from the premiere of this production at the Opéra National du Rennes last year, is the playful and predatory Polyneso, with Ed Leon as Ariodante’s obsessive brother Luciano and Elena Villalon as Dalinda. Peter Kilner, his baritone voice exuding heaviness and vulnerability, plays the King.

Mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo as Ariodante and soprano Jacqueline Stoker as Ginevra have the long, lonely scenes of introspection that are the centers of the opera’s gravity and both have the brilliant tone, technique and magnetism to carry them. However, neither of them feature much text: it’s almost as if it’s instrumental music.

The disjointed feeling is heightened in the soaring pit, where Stefano Montanari conducts the Royal Opera House Orchestra, sometimes from the violin. With the chamber organ and theorbo prominent, and with Montanari weaving his own ornaments over the orchestral violins, it is inventive and dynamic but often self-conscious, not always allowing the singers to breathe.