Handel with dulcimer and tuba

HANOVER. Handel would have loved it: the singers and actors prowl around the stage with relish, they drift about quite lost in themselves and focused solely upon themselves. “Anaesthesia”, a name that takes some getting used to, is a music and drama fantasy performed by the Berlin-based theatre ensemble Nico and the Navigators and the Austrian musical ensemble Franui. At the Herrenhausen festival they offered up a sensual operatic experience in honour of the 250th anniversary of Georg Friedrich Handel’s death. It takes as its theme the spiritual and emotional nature of the baroque era, which is itself revived in many images, often with great wit. This pasticcio opera uses the baroque form of the medley, with twenty-four of Handel’s pieces being fused with the Franui orchestra’s idiosyncratic compositions and freshly stirred up by means of the dulcimer, saxophone and tuba. Dancer Yui Kawaguchi moved seductively, beguiling singing from soprano Theresa Dlouhy and countertenor Terry Wey. Enthusiastic applause.

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