Handel: Admeto (mcgegan)

Admeto is such a rarity in performance that it needs no themed production to give it a new light and life. This production has nevertheless become famous, and will be identified for years to come, as the Japanese Admeto. With staging directed by Doris Dörrie, an expert in the drama of the Far East, and the Mamu Dance Theatre to add a further dimension, the little-known opera was a memorable feature of the 2008 Handel Festival at Göttingen and was revived in Edinburgh the following year. There, the visual element, I thought, was over-praised and the musical (the score itself as well as the performance) underrated. Filming acts as something of a leveller; perhaps it is that the previous acquaintance made it easier to accept the disparate-seeming features as an entity. The score is wonderfully rich simply in its provision of one fine aria after another, though study (I’m sure) would reveal more in the way of formal balance and inter-relationships. The closely matching soprano roles of Alceste and Antigona (not to be confused with their better-known namesakes) are sung with a modest endowment of tone and volume by Marie Arnet and Kirsten Blaise, who compensate with skilful acting, unfazed mastery of the technical difficulties and a silvery purity which, if memory serves, made more difference in the theatre than it does in the recording. As the King (originally a role for the great Senesino), Tim Mead too often spoils the singing-line with uneven emission, but the voice has warmth and he sings with feeling. The Göttingen audience clearly loved William Berger’s Japanese wrestler of a Hercules, and amid all these high voices his well schooled bass-baritone is gratefully heard on each entry. Nicholas McGegan conducts the Festival Orchestra with a sure sense of style and no exaggerated stylisation. The Japanese imposition (for, however gracefully managed, it is an imposition) works in ensuring that the production shall have a distinct identity. Handel’s operas present a real problem: the eye has to have more than a succession of solo singers to engage its interest. Under modern conditions, they give open invitation to producers to devise distractions. Miss Dörrie’s personal interests have found an unlikely channel there but they are genuinely brought to bear on the work; and to an exceptional degree she has succeeded in creating a distinctive setting, satisfying the eye and yet allowing the music to speak for itself from its due place at the centre.

Price: $57.98

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