Review – Alcina

‘For pulling together such a professional and expensive-looking production, no doubt on a relative shoestring, Molinari deserves the Victoria Cross. Or something.

Another heroine is music director and founder of Thoroughbass, Diana Weston: her chamber orchestra handled the fragile score with the utmost sensitivity’

(see below for full review)

Crikey REVIEW: La Liberazione Di Ruggiero Dall’Isola D’Alcina | Parade Playhouse, Sydney

Crikey

AUG 09, 2012

by Lloyd Bradford Syke

La Liberazione Di Ruggiero Dall’Isola D’Alcina. The Liberation of Ruggiero From The Island of Alcina. It’s quite a title, no? A comic opera, composed by Francesca Caccini in 1625 (that’s right, Francesca). It might’ve been first performed in Florence, February 3, 1625, but it’s taken not much change out of four-hundred years to premiere in Sydney.

Nevertheless, it’s had a bit of a history here; excerpts having been performed by the all-girl baroque vocal ensemble The Tall Poppeas (Hester Hannah, Danielle Grant and Inara Molinari) and it having been a longstanding obsession of producer, Inara. These tidbits subsequently showed-up in, of all things, a comic cabaret, Troppo Amore, directed by Leonie Cambage, which toured the festival circuit in both Sydney and Melbourne. Thus, it’s debut at the NIDA’s Parade Playhouse is the realisation of a longstanding dream.

The Tall Poppeas are worthy of some preliminary reflection in themselves, for there’s even a slightly feminist bent in their aspiration to research, explore and present baroque vocal music written specifically for women, as well as the work of obscure, if not entirely unknown, female composers. This all resting on the inspiration provided by a trio piece, Aure Volanti, from Caccini’s opera. The current, fully-fledged presentation represents a meeting of hearts minds and two groups: the aforementioned Tall Poppeas and instrumental ensemble Thoroughbass.

Molinari is on a mission to bring Ruggiero to the attention of educators, producers and performers, in the hope Caccini and her work is adopted and nurtured in the popular canon. And why not? After all, what is favoured can be largely, or entirely, the result of capricious, arbitrary historical decisions by major companies. Alcina isn’t dissimilar, in many ways, from the commonplace Dido and Aeneas, for example: both set on an island and involving fantastical elements sourced from myths and legends. Sorceresses. Singing trees. Monsters. Dolphins. Fiery Seas. What were their composers on?

Technically, as I say, La Liberazione is a comic opera, but it’s difficult to reconcile this intention with Caccini’s sublime score, which tends to invoke responses other the laughter. Being a wartime love story, it finds relevance and poignancy (more’s the pity) in almost any age, including our own. Ruggiero and Bradamante are cleft apart by circumstance, which provides an opening for the lascivious Alcina to ply her seductive stock-in-trade and prey upon the vulnerable Ruggiero. (Men are of low resolve, you know.) A bit like Dicky Branson, she has her very own island on which to coax and perpetrate betrayals, with her willingly complicit bedroom recruit. It’s not only that Ruggiero has been lured from Bradamante, but he has also been distracted from military service: AWOL on two counts. Luckily for him and for happy endings, the good witch Melissa mesmerically intervenes, inspiring Ruggiero to straighten up and fly right. In the telling, however, even with subtitles for those of us tragically challenged in fluency in Italian, this can all be a little hard to discern without some prior knowledge, despite the best efforts of all involved. Set (Kate Shanahan), costume (Molinari) and lighting (Matt Cox) have conspired to create an atmosphere of cloying tackiness and downright kitsch. It works very effectively in communicating a bordello-style sordidness. You’ll almost feel like showering after.

But seriously. The sidelight in this story has been brought more into the limelight in this production and it’s as engaging, if not moreso, than the adultery. We see and feel the grief of Alcina’s handmaidens, whose lovers have been taken captive. So not only is this an opera written by a woman, this is, in many ways, an opera for women, above all; paying homage to their sacrifice, devotion and loyalty, in good times but, especially, in bad. And clearly, for all its fantastical accoutrement, it’s got both feet firmly planted in the earth: women are hostages, not least to that very devotion.

Former Opera Australia singer Cambage deserves first-class honours for raising all of these spectres. While there are narrative uncertainties, these tend, perhaps, to be intrinsic to the opera as written and difficult to clarify for a first-time audience. There could be a little more theatricality, at times. And a little less, at others. There’s a slightly awkward clash between the comic and dramatic elements. Again, it could be inbuilt, or an outcome of trying to subvert the work insofar as relating to the rigours and impacts of war in our time. Either way, the difficulties are worth the effort and, as the opera becomes more familiar (and I sincerely hope it will have that opportunity) such trifles will become just that.

For pulling together such a professional and expensive-looking production, no doubt on a relative shoestring, Molinari deserves the Victoria Cross. Or something.

Another heroine is music director and founder of Thoroughbass, Diana Weston: her chamber orchestra handled the fragile score with the utmost sensitivity; (‘though unless my ears deceived me, the baroque viola sounded just a little awry later on in the program). But the ‘hey, nonny-nonny’ quality of the ensemble is so easy to like, with its warm, intimate sound, which takes your ears, at the very least, all the way back to the dawn of the 17th century. Visually (the orchestra was just off-stage and in full view) and aurally, The Ondine Sinfonia, as they’ve been named for this production, are captivating.

The jury may still be out on whether size matters or not, but Tommie Andersson’s archlute is certainly a boastful instrument, while his baroque guitar provides subtle string textures, superbly complementing Weston’s harpsichord; as, of course, does Cathy Upex’ treble viol. The basso continuo accompaniment provided by Helen Byrne’s period violoncello affords a wonderful hearth-like closeness; augmented by Angus Ryan on second ‘cello. Fiona Ziegler’s baroque violin lends rich overtones, which I’m convinced has something to do with more relaxed posture. Prue Gibbs’ chamber organ looks like the ‘stereograms’ that were around when I was growing-up, but with pipes. It has a quaint, boxed-in, lost humorous, but nonetheless very attractive sound. Even the much-maligned recorder is ennobled in this context, thanks to Alana Blackburn and Alicia Crossley. Steve Machamer sounded to be having fun with his assortment of percussion, for which Caccini has written some highly inventive parts.

Vocally, the landscape was uneven,with a range of distinctive, characterful voices. As much as anything, it came down to taste and personal preference. Things began exceptionally well, with Richard Sanchez, as Nettuno, performing an opera, within an opera, before royalty (the visiting Polish prince). He’s well-known in the choral community, but it beggars belief that he hasn’t made, or enjoyed, more of a showing as a soloist, as he has a beautiful tenor. It didn’t necessarily make sense to me that Richard Butler had the lead as Ruggiero, since his voice sounded a little sandpapered (on the night). Personally, I might’ve transposed the two. Some of the best, clearest, most pleasing and productive voices lurked in the background: from memory, Sophia Mitchell, one of several damigelle, assigned by Alcina to wait on Ruggiero, was a case-in-point, along with another damsel, played by Alice Girle, who also proved one of the more compelling actors. Sarah Sweeting’s Melissa didn’t really sound classical, but intensely appealing and accessible.

The foregoing isn’t to say there was any real lacking, from any of the performers, just that there was surprising virtuosity in unlikely places. Hester Hannah, as Alcina, was notable for her consistency, but didn’t scintillate, while Inara Molinari, lurking in the chorus, seemed to make up in subtlety what she lacked in projection. As I real, Anna Fraser and Joshua Rogers sounded particularly distinguished.

I’m not convinced the set and costume, which seemed to hit some indistinct midpoint between modernity and classicism, entirely worked insofar as transporting the narrative to a contemporaneous frame. Alcina’s kit looked rather severe, like a kind of whitewashed Grace Knight and, as such, more intimidating through style rather than substance and despite revealing very long legs, somehow missed the no good, vampish mark.

Which leaves Caccini’s wondrous music. Not a big, overblown ‘look at me’ score, but one notable for its harmony and  ornaments, especially by way of melismas; one which is wholesome, satiating, refined and understated, in the way of a repast lovingly prepared at leisure, with the freshest of ingredients. Its preponderance of high voices give it a spacious and auspicious feeling, in keeping with the morality tale it describes. Textually, the work has roots in an epic Italian poem, Orlando Furioso (The Frenzy Of Orlando), by Ludovico Ariosto, which won immediate acclaim when first published, in 1516. The words are as sumptuous and edifying as Caccini’s music; a veritable linguistic banquet. To quote from it, ‘there never was such beauty in another man: nature made him, and then broke the mould’. It seems to me similar adheres to this inexplicably ignored opera: there never was such beauty in another.

Caccini made it. And then broke the mould. High time it was recast, which is precisely what the fortitudinous Molinari and co have sought to do and have succeeded, admirably, in doing. For mine, chamber opera, in its intimacy, is a form which deserves more exposure generally. In a decent theatre, it offers an opportunity to experience vocal, theatrical and instrumental nuance; something impossible in larger, more familiar opera venues.

The details: La Liberazione Di Ruggiero Dall’Isola D’Alcina played the Parade Playhouse, NIDA on July 28.