Since its inception in 1978 a crucial part of the London Handel Festival’s self-imposed brief has been the promotion and performance of Handel’s little-heard works. That first year Il pastor fido was the opera chosen for performance, and now three decades on it returns as this year’s fully-staged production.

While revision and re-writing was an all-too common practice in Handel’s world of fast-paced operatic supply and demand, there are few works to have undergone quite so substantial a facelift as Il pastor fido – the subject of no less than three separate performing editions spanning just over two decades. Having made his London operatic debut with the wildly popular Rinaldo in 1711, Handel attempted – perhaps rashly – a move away from grandeur and heroics, opting for a simpler pastoral subject. The result in 1712 – Il pastor fido – was a failure, and provoked diarist Francis Colman to the characteristically bland observation; ‘Ye habits [costumes] were old. Ye opera – short’.

Short it may have been, but preparations for the first production of 1734 saw the work stripped back even further, leaving a mere seven of its existing arias. The deficit was padded out with arias and choruses harvested from earlier works, and this, together with the casting of star castrato Carestini in the role of Mirtillo, helped the work achieve new popularity. Unfortunately success was short-lived. Following a stressful season in 1733-1734, in which rival company The Opera of the Nobility poached many of his leading singers, Handel was also ousted from the King’s Theatre, forced to relocate instead to John Rich’s new theatre at Covent Garden. This relocation coincided with the arrival of a resident French dance troupe, led by the celebrated Marie Salle. Understanding the need to capitalise on this new attraction and recapture a much-needed audience back from The Opera of the Nobility, Handel once again returned to Il pastor fido, reworking it for a third time to include an unprecedented novelty for the London stage – an opera-ballet prologue, Terpsicore.

It is this second 1734 version – complete with ballet – that the London Handel Festival have opted to stage, returning to the 1712 edition solely for the music of villainess Eurilla, whose music was substantially shortened and rewritten for contralto in the opera’s later incarnation. Here she is restored both to her soprano status and to her original arias.

No less convoluted than any Handelian plot, Il pastor fido is a tangled Arcadian skein – though in this production the sheep are still very much woolly and alive – of shepherdesses and their swains, hunters and their prey, and of the course the Gods – fickle and petulant as children. It is in the realm of the divine that the opera’s prologue opens. Apollo arrives at the temple of Erato – muse of lyric poetry – to do her homage. Joined by Terpsicore – muse of dance – the Gods are delighted by a display of her skill and that of her followers. The action then shifts to Arcadia, but this is not the uncomplicatedly green and pleasant land of legend. The goddess Diana has grown angry with the people of Arcadia, demanding a virgin sacrifice each year and the death of every unfaithful woman. To appease her wrath a wedding is planned between two Arcadians of noble descent, Silvio and Amarilli, but Amarilli is secretly in love with shepherd Mirtillo and he with her. Pride keeps Amarilli from confessing her true love, and a rejected Mirtillo contemplates suicide. He is prevented by the scheming Eurilla, who – in love with him herself – promises to help him win his love. Silvio meanwhile cares for nothing but hunting, pledging himself solely to Diana’s service, pursued by the affections of the shepherdess Dorinda. Eurilla conspires to bring Mirtillo and Amarilli together, plotting to have them discovered and to see her rival executed for adultery. The plot is successful, yet at the last moment Diana’s oracle appears and pardons them, demanding that Mirtillo and Amarilli, and Silvio and his faithful Dorinda marry, and thus lift the curse that she has placed upon Arcadia. There is general rejoicing, and even Eurilla begs for pardon and is forgiven.

The Britten Theatre at the Royal College of Music really is the perfect London venue for Handel, its dimensions and classic structure lending an appropriate intimacy to period drama. It also works well as a showcase space for the College’s young singers who, with the support of Laurence Cummings and the London Handel Orchestra, made up the opera’s cast. Coming hot on the heels of an intensely frustrating first night of Tamerlano at the Royal Opera House, in which neither vocal technique nor dramatic ability were up to scratch, the overflowing energy and skill of this production’s young musicians was a joy. What was shared by the two productions however was a heavy-handed approach to staging that interpreted every instrumental interlude or da capo as a call to directorial action, placating the supposed ADD tendencies of the audience with a constant barrage of visual stimulation that left the music little space to breathe. While the 1734 score of Pastor is admittedly not Handel at his very best, it is thoroughly solid (aided by its numerous operatic borrowings), and deserves a little more respect in performance than director John Ramster afforded it.

Leaning heavily upon the classic ENO period-with-anachronisms concept (patented by David McVicar’s Alcina and David Alden’s Ariodante), Ramster’s production remained essentially traditional, using the prologue as a contemporary framing device, and rewriting his Gods as contemporary artists in a parallel world; a screen initially divided the stage in two, with period action directly mirroring the contemporary action taking place on the other side. While this offered a good opportunity to engage the rather redundant prologue figures of Apollo and Erato in the action that followed, and offered an interesting thematic reading of the dramatic function of the Gods within a pastoral, it did feel a little fussy in its execution and, dare I say it, a little pretentious.

Bridget Kimak’s set was atmospheric, if a little self-consciously post-modern. Hers was what an acid-fuelled vision of Arcadia might resemble, complete with neon-bright hillsides and strangely technological silver trees. And that’s before we even get started on the sheep. I had been warned, and was thus prepared for the anthropomorphised sheep-policemen who cavorted and pranced their way around the stage throughout. The concept of a Never Never Land gone wrong, where placid pastoral animals have become the despotic enforcers of ‘human’ law is an interesting one, but in practice felt both laboured and a little gratuitous.

Reinstating the opera-ballet Terpsicore was a bold decision, adding a good half hour to proceedings before the real action even begins, and not entirely a successful one. Unfortunately the music is not Handel’s best (although the interjected arias are rather lovely), which caused the episode to feel somewhat laboured. A champion of a more natural dancing style, Handel’s original Terpsicore, Marie Salle, apparently both scandalised and delighted London audiences in 1734 by appearing ‘without pannier, skirt or bodice, and with her hair down’. It is perhaps unfortunate that Mary Collins did not follow suit, choosing to dance in full eighteenth century dress, complete with precariously piled-up wig. For all her grace and skill, the result was inevitably rather stodgy and, at times, more than a little comedic to a contemporary eye. Luckily there was much to enjoy in the singing; Suzanne Shakespeare’s Erato was deliciously winsome, and funny in all the right ways – the wide-eyed novice to Jake Arditti’s world-weary Apollo. There was nothing amusing about her singing however, which grew in assurance through the prologue, delivering a full and attractive tone and plucking some impeccably tuned top notes from the air in ‘Di Parnasso i dolci accenti’. Arditti’s opening showpiece, ‘Gran Tonante’ (whose delicately rippling arpeggio-driven accompaniment belies its tremendous vocal challenges) was well handled, if a little delicate at times in the lower registers. The coloratura was secure throughout however, and what is not yet a huge voice nevertheless demonstrated moments of considerable power at the top of the range.

Among the main cast it was Christopher Lowrey’s Mirtillo who really commanded attention. One to watch (or listen) out for, his is a lower countertenor voice with a striking depth and resonance. His opening aria ‘Sento brillar’ demonstrated impressive control and legato which only became more evident in the opera’s most beautiful aria, ‘Caro amor’ (otherwise known as ‘Deh! V’aprite’ from Teseo, and adapted originally from Mary Magdalen’s ‘Ferma l’ali’ from La Resurrezione). Equipped with some dazzlingly secure coloratura technique and an ear for ornamentation, he romped his way through virtuoso numbers such as ‘Torni pure un bel splendore’, drawing spontaneous applause from an otherwise fairly demure audience. He also demonstrated a dramatic commitment that was by no means common to all the cast – taking risks and daring to overdo things where necessary.

By contrast, his beloved Amarilli (Eleanor Dennis) gave one of the most frustratingly wooden performances of the evening, settling into a default furrowed-brow expression that while applicable for most of the opera could have benefited from a little variety. Fortunately her singing was a much more dynamic affair, showcased particular in her two nautically-themed numbers (somewhat unexpected, given the verdant pastoral context), and the epic ‘Ah! Non son io che parlo’, whose dimensions and sheer intensity rival ‘Scherza infida’ from Ariodante. Her powerful voice shows signs of becoming something really special, yet still occasionally comes off the breath, allowing unnecessary air to escape and diluting the focus of her tone. Also impressive among the sopranos was Annabel Mountford’s wonderfully psychopathic Eurilla, who delivered some of the best recitative singing of the afternoon, combining some powerful characterisation with a real sense of vocal line. Her triumphant aria of anticipated victory, with its high tessitura, suited her perfectly, and anyone who can delivery singing of such quality while maintaining a one-legged Cupid pose, deserves respect.

As Silvio, tenor John McMunn’s Silvio combined a warmly secure tone with some (perhaps unnecessarily) athletic movement, looking at times a little uncomfortable with the dancing portion of proceedings. Audrey Kessedjian as Dorinda sadly lacked sufficient power to project the beautiful tone of her mezzo voice, but compensated with some nicely-judged comic acting.

Things in the pit were kept sprightly and energised throughout by Laurence Cummings, with some particularly beautiful moments from the upper wind, compensating for more than one moment of jarring rusticity from the horns – less than desirable, even in the context of a pastoral opera. The whole production however had a polish to its ensemble and musical presentation that many professional companies would do well to emulate.

Combining scholarly curiosity with contemporary staging, youthful energy with mature skill – as Arcadian shepherds go, this one is about as classy as you get. Just please, lose the sheep.

Alexandra Coghlan
Opera Britannia

Photographs: (1) Laurence Cummings; (2) Annabel Mountford; (3) Suzanne Shakespeare; (4) Christopher Lowrey