Heroes in a love delirium

The Handel festival opened in Halle on Friday with the brilliant premiere of Nicola Hümpel's “Orlando” What an odd hero! A narrow-chested fellow in a nondescript grey suit comes on stage wearing a ridiculous Cossack hat and carrying an empty suitcase. His facial features suggest simple-mindedness. OK, so he has fallen in love – but to what degree? His mentor, the wise magician Zoroastro, is not the only one to take issue with him: is this supposed to be Roland, the warrior? The most noble of Charlemagne's knights? Yet Handel, the astute musical magician and opera strategist, did in fact create just such a skewed Orlando figure, and he conceived the opera of the same name, first performed in 1733 during his London heyday, as a comedy built around this travesty of a hero, one blinded by love, whose excessive character causes him to work himself up into a jealous rage and, ultimately, into a state of delusion, of mania even. The renowned Farinelli, Handel's preferred castrato, was not amused. The same could not be said of the festival audience in Halle. The new artistic director Clemens Birnbaum entrusted the festival premiere to Nicola Hümpel, a cult director known on the independent theatre scene, who has already shaken up Berlin with "Nico and the Navigators". A risky choice? - A real find! For Nico cannot and will not identify with those grand exaltations associated with the baroque. She opts for a cool, ironic distance and keeps the characters, whether in delirium or in raptures, suspended from the strings of their emotions like mechanical puppets. The production is complemented by an understated stage design (Oliver Proske) laid out before a blue-green cyclorama, as well as unostentatious costumes (Frauke Ritter). The video sequences (Tom Hanke) have both an illustrative and commentarial role. The facial expressions and gestures of the actors correspond to their schematically dictated range of feelings. Hümpel certainly delivers a coup de maîtrise with the introduction of two of her Navigators, Miyoko Urayama and Patric Schott: they steer and undermine the action with their clever hullabaloo; the round dance of inflamed passions is performed in a manner akin to a street ballad. In this way anyone who goes off into ecstasies is presented as a fool. So it goes with Medoro, Orlando's rival for the favours of the lovely Angelica, and with the naïve shepherdess Dorinda. As soon as she begins to confess the agony of her longing in grand terms, the cheeky mimes unpick her bright red knitted stockings. In the meantime, Medoro, in a similar situation, takes matters in hand himself, in the form of an attack on his grotesque crocheted tie – an exposure of himself, in the literal sense, as the recompense for his shame. When Dorinda makes eyes at Medoro, it rains wads of cotton wool. And when the pastoral student of love is left standing as the only unfortunate in love at the production's end, she is deservedly sheepish. No over-excited sloppy sentimentality goes unpunished. A battle of voices at the highest level Even if back then such a baseness bordering on the quite absurdly spiteful was unimaginable, by today's standards it is the perfect interpretation of what Handel had in mind. Members of the aristocratic audience were not necessarily supposed to identify with these heroic play-actors against their will, but rather to revel in their singing. And what Halle's soloists had to offer musically was a real joy. It is a rare thing to have the opportunity to experience such a first-rate and well-balanced ensemble. Local hero Christoph Stegemann captivates as Zoroastro with his stable, clearly contoured bass. Only at times did Marie Friederike Schöder, a Mozart specialist, have a hint of trouble with Angelica's airy coloratura, whereas Sophie Klußmann fulfilled all of the promise of innocently arcadian sweetness. All three are part of the Halle Opera ensemble. The duel between Owen Willetts as Orlando, and Dmitry Egorov as Medoro, two wonderfully fruity diverging altos, ended with a draw at the very highest level. Director of music Bernhard Forck conducted the festival orchestra, which played upon authentic instruments with great relish and assurance, as well as real poise and a professional feel for delicate emphasis as well as dramatic urgency. The result was a nicely taut, crisp Handel sound. The audience took delight in what was a highly artificial, heartily humorous performance, both musically and on stage. This "Orlando furioso" did not attract the usual applause at the end of the performance. It came as a veritable storm.

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