The best Handel has to offer

Bregenz Festival - The spirit of the Baroque in shrill images and metamorphoses of Handel's music - Thunderous applause for Franui and Nico and the Navigators. Handel's greatest hit was not heard. His "Hallelujah" was presented to the audience only painted in notes on a poster. Otherwise, however, the music banda Franui made ample use of George Frideric Handel's operas and oratorios for the program "Anaesthesia", which they performed together with the Berlin ensemble "Nico and the Navigators" on the two sold-out evenings of Wednesday and Thursday in front of a total of almost 600 spectators on the workshop stage of the Bregenz Festival Hall. With their slightly ironic homage to Handel, the consistently outstanding dance, vocal and instrumental artists traced the spirit of the Baroque. One cannot say that Franui would not take George Frideric Handel seriously. On the contrary: the Tyrolean musicians search for and discover the best the master has to offer, dissect and dust it off, and then assemble it into a ravishing pastiche. Quite irreverent In their tinkering, of course, they proceed rather irreverently. A soprano saxophone takes over the first violin, an accordion sneaks into a sonata, syncopations bounce through chamber music passages, and blue notes get involved every now and then. Sometimes this rousing flow of sound leads to subtle and beguiling compositions of new music. Amazingly, all of this fits the 17th-century stories Franui tells in the language of Handel. Just as Musicbanda Franui presents Handel's works in dazzling metamorphoses in "Anaesthesia," the singers and dancers of Nico and the Navigators perform Baroque scenes in metamorphoses. The colorful picture arch reminds a bit of Midsummer Night's Dream, a bit of "Shakespeare in love". Debauched festivities at royal courts and wild goings-on in dusty streets in front of baroque castles increase to intoxication. Animalism, majesty, a coronation, decadence, creation and death are celebrated. Crazy, orgiastic or even lyrical are the dances - amazing especially Yui Kawaguchi, who elegantly and snake-like forms the most dazzling creatures and shapes with her body. Dreamy, poetic are the arias of the warmly colored countertenor Terry Wey, the soprano Theresa Dlouhy with her naturally radiant voice, and the baritone Clemens Koebl, who accomplishes the amazing feat of singing a long solo while hanging upside down from the ceiling. Thunderous final applause The question of how far director Nicola Hümpel and the musical directors of Anaesthesia Markus Kraler and Andreas Schett are right with their unusual characterization of George Frideric Handel and his time - under historical aspects - does not arise. With their brilliant performance "Anaesthesia" they have raised Handel's hits to a surprising but quite comprehensible new level and were rewarded with thunderous final applause.

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