As if from a children’s book

At least as far as opera was concerned, the Handel Year 2009 proved to be rather disappointing. Although almost every opera house marked the 250th anniversary of the composer's death with a production, none was able to provide the masterstroke that would have given impetus for a fresh, new approach to Handel's work. There was however one glimmer of hope: “Anaesthesia”, a pasticcio opera developed for the Halle Festival by the Berlin-based independent theatre director Nicola Hümpel, who created an array of poetic images which led you to wonder whether her uninhibited and imaginative methods could be equally well applied to an entire opera. Clearly this impression also prevailed in Halle, since it was Hümpel who was entrusted with Orlando, this year's major new production. The result may just signal a way to divert Handel operas off the current one-way street of baroque merriment and flat dramatic realism. Hümpel steers clear of any attempt to place the characters of Orlando in our everyday world or to justify their extreme emotional outpourings with recourse to information about their social background or mental stability. The pastel-coloured and well-lit semicircular stage of her Orlando constitutes a dream world, whose inhabitants in their fetching costumes look to have stepped out of a children's book. The glamorous Princess Angelica in her silver dress, whose skirts she can spread out like a fan if and when required, the cowering and mousey Medoro, whose little face almost disappears behind his oversized grey collar, and of course the eponymous hero, who looks out at the world from under his Russian fur hat with such a saucer-eyed expression that he would be perfectly cast in any Astrid Lindgren film adaptation. Within this setting it is the two performers from Hümpel's Berlin-based theatre troupe, Miyoko Urayama and Patric Schott, who set the rules of the game. With boundless energy they stimulate and illustrate the action on stage, like two children who happen to have ended up in their own dream. One moment they may simply take up the impulse to move that an aria induces and spin around in a circle with arms outstretched like a windmill, the next they may indulge in pretend sword fights, play with props that the revolving stage has dropped off, or strike poses with the long shepherd's crooks and shaggy furs which serve to remind us of Orlando's pastoral setting. The idea of viewing Handel's opera through the eyes of a child also solves the biggest problem faced by every production of Orlando: how to make plausible the knight's love delirium and, even more critically, his sudden recovery a few minutes later, without diminishing the music by relativising the on-stage action. Orlando's love mania is as boundless as the disappointment of a boy for whom a world has just fallen apart. And his recovery is as abrupt as the turnabout in mood of a child who forgets the grief he just now felt in the face of a new and appealing toy. Only the shepherdess Dorinda rises up above this poetic fracas: when at the end they all come together for a happy group picture, she instead stands to one side and douses herself with the water that previously turned Orlando's head – to no avail, since her earnest pursuit of love marks her out as having definitively outgrown this carefree children's world. The success of this feather-light evening of Handel is largely down to a well-balanced cast which convinces both in terms of singing and acting ability: the young Brit Owen Willetts depicts Orlando as an overgrown boy, the dark timbre of his countertenor having within its range both the substance required for the flexing of muscles of the Fammi combattere as well as the heartbreaking sadness of the madness scene. The young Russian Dmitry Egorov, whose Medoro is a true king of hearts, is another revelation: his uncommonly mellifluous countertenor voice lets the oscillating cantilenas of his arias blossom into rich and colourful beauty. It is a level that Marie Friederike Schöder as Angelica never quite attains – which is a shame, as her soprano voice reminiscent of The Magic Flute's Queen of the Night constitutes a vocal polar opposite to Sophie Klußmann's soft and girlish Dorinda. The fact that on this his debut as opera conductor, Bernhard Forck refrains from much risk-taking or dramatic escalation is excusable. In a way, this pleasant-sounding, well-rounded rendition of Handel's music even complements Hümpel's laid-back approach, and the impressive solos serve to demonstrate the long-developed competence of the Halle festival orchestra.

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