More a little prince than a big hero

In Halle, Orlando, who has been given an opera by many composers, is not so much a raging Roland, an Orlando furioso, as in Vivaldi's work, for example. In the festival production, he is rather a little prince who loses himself and his mind. Which is no wonder in the confusion of who-loves-who and especially who-loves-not. Georg Friedrich Händel, born in Halle, also made use of the Orlando furioso material, which goes back to Ludovico Ariosto's epic. In 1733, Handel even used a libretto that Domenico Scarlatti had already set to music 20 years before him. Handel relies less on dramatic action peppered with bravura arias than on the melodious emotional states of the lovers, the disappointed, and those who have despaired to the point of madness (Orlando himself can only be brought back from madness by a rather drastic intervention that resurrects all the dead and magically straightens everything out). The arioso verbosity becomes a template for the singers' virtuosity. Handel had written the title role for his castrato star Senesiono, after all. Halle's Handel Festival can boast two excellent countertenors in Owen Willetts as Orlando and Dmitry Egorov as his rival Medoro. Marie Friederike Schöder finds dramatic verve as Angelica, and Christoph Stegemann also contributes a rock-solid magician Zoroastro as the leader. Only Sophie Klußmann, in her Dorinda, was still too clearly alienated from the challenges of baroque singing. Once again the Händelfestspielorchester proved its rank as a special ensemble with an internationally competitive level. The part of the Staatskapelle Halle playing on period instruments, under the baton of its new director Bernhard Forck, a specialist in early music, was in true festival form. Magic opera reinvented New (and overdue) for Halle was a scenic daring. After a trial run the year before, Nicola Hümpel and her Berlin off-theater team staged "Nico and the Navigators," the Festival's main production, which, in keeping with tradition, the Halle Opera House contributes. Hümpel reinvents the magic opera, so to speak, by playing associatively around the core of the plot on various levels. In front of the semicircular projection screen (stage: Oliver Proske), she adds two performers, Miyoko Urayama and Patric Schott, to the singing personnel. They comment on the action pantomimically, occasionally acting as imaginary contact persons in the arias or playing practical jokes. In addition, there are the freely associating videos by Tom Hanke and the costumes by Frauke Ritter, inspired by Robert Wilson's productions. All this gives the relationship chamber play a cheerfully restrained opulence. Orlando doesn't have to be the belligerent hero. Here he is simply the sad little prince that is also inside him.

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