There's more to Handel than 'Messiah'– a new production of his comic opera 'Xerxes', opening in Dublin today, shows another facet of the great composer, writes EILEEN BATTERSBY
KING XERXES IS singing to a tree, Ombra mai fu, one of the loveliest arias in all opera. Not that he is crazy – he merely has a great deal on his mind. Though obsessed, manipulative, cunning, potentially dangerous and intent on his brother Arsamene's beloved, Xerxes is no fool. After all, he has constructed a bridge out of his own ships to facilitate his invasion of Athens.
As fate would have it, he hears a beautiful voice in full song and promptly falls in love. The voice belongs to Romilda, his brother’s fiancee, so the king, having unintentionally become a rival, is exiled. There are further problems: the king’s long-suffering fiancee, Amastre, a foreign princess facing social embarrassment, is prepared to take drastic action, while Romilda has no interest in Xerxes, although her rapacious little sister, Atalanta, would be thrilled if the reverse was the case, as she wants Arsamene for herself.
With a cast of characters mostly unhappily in love with each other and sufficient confusion to match any Shakespeare comedy, the opera Xerxes is high-speed chaotic fun laced with potential tragedy. Handel’s score is magnificent, with a series of gorgeous arias, of which Ombra mai fu, known as Handel’s “largo”, is but one.
As the first of four Opera Theatre Company (OTC) productions (including a UK touring revival of Orlandolater this year) honouring the 250th anniversary of the death of George Frideric Handel, the Irish premiere of Xerxesin Dublin tomorrow marks the beginning of a national tour. First performed in Italian at the King's Theatre, Haymarket, on April 15th 1738, where it ran for only five performances, Serse (Xerxes), adapted from Stampiglia's version of Minato's 1654 libretto, has defied its early critics by becoming one of Handel's most popular operas.
"I was a bit daunted at first," says Anglo-Italian director Michael Moxham, who was completing a long theatre stint and "missing opera" when he was approached by OTC to direct Xerxes. "It is my first Handel, but I have to say that once I began discussing it with Sarah , the richness of it just took over."
Their combined imaginations have taken the opera out of its original classical setting and fast-forwarded it in time, placing it during the Napoleonic period.
Xerxes, generally played by a female mezzo, is the king of Persia in the original, preparing to invade Athens. Moxham – whose mother, now an opera coach, used to sing mezzo and was one of the nuns in the original West End version of The Sound of Music– confirms that the king in this new version is still intent on invading Athens. "We've taken the Napoleonic theme and used it for the costumes," he says. Xerxes, played by Irish mezzo Imelda Drumm, "is not Napoleon, he's just a bit like him".
Moxham explains how this happened: "I was thinking about the power thing and then remembered a book I had. It's called The Madness of Kings. I can't remember who wrote it, but it's all about kings and leaders, dictators and so on, and how they reacted to power, what the pressures and stress did to them. Some had seizures, in some cases the stress led to tumours . . . There were a lot of case histories, like Nero, Edward II, Julius Caesar and so on."
Xerxes quizzes Romilda as to the exact location where his brother kissed her. The setting becomes an obsession. “Where did he kiss her?” says Moxham. “The king insists on knowing. This opera is not about stand and deliver, it’s not really a narrative. It’s more reflective; it’s about a society that is repressed and repressive. It’s philosophical and is commenting on humanity and how people behave.”
IN WAYS, it predates Mozart's approach to male-female relations, and it is worth pointing out that it was composed almost 50 years before The Marriage of Figaro (1786) first took to the stage. There are even flashes of Così Fan Tutte(1790), although it is far less cynical.
“Handel is never cynical,” agrees Moxham. “He has far too much humanity for that.”
Describing the research he did in preparation, Moxham adds: “I looked at the Marx Brothers, Chaplin. I wanted to open up the wealth of moments, the psychology, the theatricality. And make the most of the many set-pieces.” These include Amastre’s attempted suicide, which she tackles with a range of props such as a gun, a rope, a knife. Having cut an hour from the original, Moxham stresses that nothing is lost of the characterisation.
“We’ve really concentrated on this, allowing the characters to develop, become rounded and make the most of all their little foibles.”
The music director, OTC regular Andrew Synnott, conducts a quartet from the harpsichord. Moxham admits that “I have an agenda: I want people to come and enjoy this, particularly young people. It looks good; the set is like a luxury spa with a lot of wood. I remember being struck by how handsome the cast is.”
That agenda reiterates Opera Theatre Company’s long-held artistic manifesto of providing accessible quality opera at affordable prices. Moxham is in a hurry; his singers are waiting, so is a radio interviewer, but he sounds like a boy about to unveil an amazing project he wants to share. He is particularly pleased about the way this production has interpreted the character of Elvino, Arsamene’s servant – the only completely comic character in Handelian opera. “Usually he is portrayed as an idiot” but, according to a gleeful Moxham, Irish baritone Brendan Collins is playing him as “merely confused”.
Opera Theatre Company has an international reputation for achieving the full emotional and psychological range of Handelian opera. “We took Handel out of powdered wigs and into modern life,” says artistic director Annilese Miskimmon. Ironically, in Ireland Handel suffers from being almost exclusively associated with Messiah. But the German composer who was born in 1685, a month before his great late baroque contemporary JS Bach, completed a huge body of work, including operas, oratorios, additional sacred vocal music, secular vocal music including more than 100 cantatas, orchestral music, chamber works and keyboard music. Assessing his achievement is like examining at the very least three different artists: the operatic composer, the writer of sacred music and the instrumental composer.
Opera Theatre Company has already served Handel well with productions of Tamberlane (1992), Flavio (1994), Ariodante (2003) and Orlando(2007); this production, funded by Culture Ireland, will travel to the Buxton Opera Festival in July. Unlike Bach, who aside from some early periods at court spent most of his life as a church cantor, Handel was an international entrepreneur who composed for specific singers. The son of a surgeon who had wanted him to study law, Handel soon abandoned his legal studies and became a violinist and harpsichordist with the Hamburg opera orchestra. Following the completion of his first opera, Almira, in 1705 when he was 20, he set off to Italy to study opera, where he met Vivaldi, Alessandro Scarlatti and his son, Domenico. Handel remained there for three years.
BY 1711 he was in London, where he was to pioneer Italian opera, introducing the form with Rinaldo(1711). When Queen Anne died, her successor George I was none other than Handel's employer in Germany, the Elector of Hanover. Handel settled in London and through works such as Water Music (1717) was soon part of the music scene. He became a British citizen in 1726. Bach had made three attempts in vain to meet him.
In choosing the works for this season, Miskimmon was mindful of Handel's operatic range. "I wanted to show the three sides to him as an opera composer," she explains. Xerxes, although not Handel's first comic opera, is the funniest, and OTC has tightened it into two fast-moving acts with only one interval. As part of the Dublin City Council Handel Festival in April, Miskimmon is directing a site-specific production of the masque or miniature opera, Acis and Galatea(1718), at the Guinness Storehouse.
Based on a mythological tale concerning the love of the shepherd Acis for a nymph goddess, Galatea, it was Handel’s most-performed work during his lifetime and made effective use of the pastoral convention already well established in poetry. OTC is reinterpreting it making use of the brewery setting.
October will see Alcina(1735) an ambivalently cautionary tale based on Ariosto's poem, Orlando Furioso, which contrasts predatory sexuality and a more idealised romantic love. It is, says Miskimmon, "a psychological sex thriller with elements of the occult for good measure." Featuring British counter tenor Stephen Wallace as Ruggerio and Sinead Campbell as Alcina, it was intended by Handel from its inception as a theatrical spectacular. Alcina is a sorceress and is, according to Miskimmon, "one of the most magnetic women in opera, the equal of Poppeaand Carmen." Costly to produce in its day, Alcinawas followed by Xerxes. By 1740 Handel was depressed and bankrupt; his mood would change with the success of Messiah which established his enduring Dublin context.
MISKIMMON SEES 2009 proving to be one of the most satisfying years of her artistic career to date: "In directing Acisand Galateain collaboration with the Guinness Storehouse – Arthur Guinness Sons is also marking a 250th anniversary – there's a unique merging of three quintessentially Irish things – OTC, Handel and the pint of the black stuff. In the piece Acis turns into a waterfall; incredibly, the storehouse has its own waterfall. It will be interesting to see if the water turns to Guinness on the night."
Opera Theatre Company's Handel celebration climaxes in October with Alcina. Outliving Bach by nine years, Handel survived the rise and fall and rise again of his fortunes. In 1759 he collapsed during a performance of Messiah and died a few days later on April 13th. His funeral was attended by 3,000 Londoners and he lies in Westminster Abbey.
Xerxesopens at the O'Reilly Theatre, Belvedere College, Dublin today and tours the country (Galway, Tralee, Limerick, Cork, Kilkenny, Skibbereen, Omagh, Sligo and Belfast) until Mar 7