Given the high profile attention the Handel 250th anniversary has generated,
with all his operas relayed on Radio 3 and
heavy Proms programming,
there have been surprisingly few opportunities to see his operas staged in the theatre. Glyndebourne revived its
excellent Giulio Cesare, while Opera Theatre Company performed Orlando at the Buxton Festival.
True, there have been some concert performances, but staged Handel operas have been rare in 2009. Enter
English Touring Opera who kicked off their Handelfest last night at the Britten Theatre with a new
production of Flavio, a real rarity both on stage and on disc, the first of five (yes, five!) Handel operas
they are touring this autumn.
A brief glance at the plot of Flavio is enough to induce panic in the average operagoer; love triangles, feuding fathers, star-crossed lovers…how on earth can one take it all in? Yet once the overture is done, the story unfolds relatively clearly. Joanna Parker’s set design is very simple, a striking electric blue set with doors and windows cut into the back wall, whilst the singers wear elaborate period costumes – a stylistic mix which works surprisingly well. James Conway directs an energetic production, establishing the characters clearly, using minimal props to tell the tale.
The opera opens with a hint of Rosenkavalier. Vitige, a courtier and the only trouser-role in the opera, is in a post-coital embrace with his lover Teodata, daughter of Ugone. They share a brief duet, one of only two in the score. Otherwise, Handel presents his characters in the usual sequence of arias, setting up the plot in Act 1. Lotario and Ugone are both counsellors to King Flavio; their offspring, Emilia and Guido, exchange wedding vows. Flavio takes a fancy to Teodata and shares his infatuation with Vitige (setting up the semi-comic love triangle element to the plot). He also appoints Ugone to become governor of Britain, thereby upsetting Lotario, who considers he should get the job. A feud develops which escalates events on the tragic side of the story, leading to Guido killing his father-in-law in a duel resulting in a tricky marital situation! In the end, Flavio helps to reunite Emilia and Guido, as well as conceding Teodata to his courtier, which would be a magnanimous gesture were it not for the existence of Flavio’s wife, who we do not meet in the course of the opera!
That Act 2 was more enjoyable than Act 1 is largely because Handel composed much finer music for it; Act 1 is pleasant enough, but is mainly about setting up the plot. Act 2 builds towards its climax where Guido kills Lotario in a duel, leaving Emilia to discover his body by candlelight and offer her lament as she wonders how revenge can be achieved. Emilia is the chief soprano role, a part written for Francesca Cuzzoni, for six seasons a Royal Academy prima donna, who created several important Handel roles. Charles Burney described her voice thus:
“a most exquisite performer, having been endowed by nature with a voice that was equally clear, sweet and flexible. It was difficult for the hearer to determine whether she most excelled in slow or rapid airs.”
Well, ‘exquisite’ was certainly one of the words in my notes on Paula Sides’ portrayal. Emilia is given arias to close both Acts 1 and 2 and was clearly a key role for Handel in this work. Paula Sides sang beautifully throughout, but deserves special mention for her closing aria in Act 2, ‘Ma chi punir desio?’ (‘How shall death be meted’ in Andrew Jones’ English translation sung here) This is a truly dramatic number where the audience is genuinely touched by the character’s predicament and her response to it. She scaled down her voice to an exquisite pianissimo at its climax which was breathtaking.
Guido, a bit of a wet blanket, was the role created for Senesino, performed here by James Laing, who has an attractive counter-tenor, which is quite small but could technically manage the florid coloratura of his Act 2 aria where he girds himself to challenge Lotario to the duel. Flavio is another role written for a castrato, here taken by counter-tenor Clint Van Der Linde, whose warm voice and comic timing made him suitable to play the king, who’s largely involved in the light-hearted business of courting Teodata until he turns to the more serious business of bringing together the estranged lovers at the end. The timbres of both counter-tenors contrast well.
Teodata is a soubrette mezzo sort of a role and is played with relish by Carolyn Dobbin, who has a powerful voice but a light, comic touch where required. Her scenes were an absolute delight, playfully toying with Flavio’s orb and sceptre in her Act 3 aria to successfully incite the wildly jealous Vitige, sung by Norwegian mezzo Angelica Voje, making her British operatic debut. She both looked and sounded the part, although there was a tendency to push her voice in trying to emphasise the dramatic interpretation, such as when Vitige took part in the obligatory ‘room trashing’ display of petulance which seems to be a flavour of the month in operatic circles at present. Still, a most promising debut and a career to watch with interest.
The two fathers/ counsellors are perhaps the least interesting roles here. Tenor Joseph Cornwell did a nice line in bluster as the outraged Ugone, comic in his over-reaction to the slap Lotario inflicts upon him. Lotario himself, sung by bass-baritone Andrew Slater, is a slightly more sympathetic character – he also blusters when he’s overlooked by Flavio for the role of British governor, but has a fine Act 2 aria where he tells Emilia she must reject Guido, where the bassoon gruffly doubles the vocal line at points. Jonathan Peter Kenny conducts a fine period orchestra who can provide the fire and fizz needed for high adrenalin numbers, whilst lavishing tender care on the more introspective ones.
On this basis, Flavio deserves more attention as an attractive work, well worth staging, and is a suitable curtain-raiser for the other four operas to come. A mention for the superb programme – one that covers the entire Handelfest with a synopsis and brief essay for each opera plus some interesting articles on Handel and London and an explanation of the shape of Handel’s arias. The production has a second performance at the Britten Theatre next week before the tour takes it to Malvern, Exeter, Snape and Cambridge.
Mark Pullinger
Opera Britannia
You can read the rest of our reviews from the ETO Handelfest by clicking below on the title of the opera:
To read an interview with James Conway, artistic director of ETO, please click here.
invited to join composer Anna Meredith, sound designer Sam Godin and the classically trained Indian singer Falu, in an evening where they can record Satyagraha-inspired loops that will form part of the “Remix”. 
even as warmly as they did to Thomas Adès’ The Tempest. Both these works were broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, and each of these broadcasts has been cleaned up and recently issued on double CD (Adès on EMI, 2009; MacMillan on Chandos, 2010). Both operas also have composers who enjoy successful careers as conductors, but while Adès conducted The Royal Opera House forces at Covent Garden, it was unfortunate that on the night when The Sacrifice was broadcast from the Wales Millennium Theatre with Welsh National Opera, MacMillan was unwell and was therefore forced to hand over the reins to Anthony Negus.
of recession by the magnificent margin of point squit of a zillionth, it was nice actually to encounter something quite so uncomplicatedly positive as her recital. Opera singers, in the up-close and personal context of a recital room, fall into extremely contrasting categories, ranging from the all-singing, all-dancing Ethel Merman-esque firecrackers (Cecilia Bartoli) to the half-barmy and catatonic (um, better exercise some discretion here, I suppose) by way of sassy, sweet ‘n simple, straightforward or sepulchral, the raunchy or the reverential, the bullish or the businesslike. 
Covent Garden, the Metropolitan and, as preserved on this DVD, the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, each of the original directors was no longer around to supervise his show's latest outing. This matters less, of course, in stagings that cleave close to the scenic and theatrical givens of the work as conceived by Hofmannsthal and Strauss in microscopic detail, than in ones like that under consideration here that avail themselves of varying degrees of liberty and licence.
