Handel was at the top of his game when he composed Ariodante, pushing gently at the boundaries of operatic convention, and writing some of his most captivating music. It had its premiere in 1735 at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, where the Royal Opera House now stands. Then it was positively demanded that composers and librettists magic up a happy ending from even the most tragic story, sending audiences away uplifted, and Handel duly delivered. However, audiences for the Royal Opera’s new production – surprisingly, its first since that premiere, unless you count a streamed concert during lockdown – might come away with more contradictory feelings.
The director Jetske Mijnssen, making her Covent Garden debut, is not convinced by that forced happy ending – which, after her staging of Wagner’s Parsifal at Glyndebourne this summer, won’t come as a big surprise. Like the latter piece, here again is a dysfunctional royal family. We’re in the modern palace of a besuited, ailing king; the five children playing at weddings around the dining table during the overture reappear as adults, becoming his two daughters and their three suitors.
Spoilt princess Ginevra, who throws designer dresses (courtesy of costume designer Uta Meenen) around for her sister Dalinda to pick up, initially seems to deserve brattish Polinesso rather than playful, earnest Ariodante. But they all have some growing up to do. By the end, when Ariodante is singing his joyful final aria while comforting his traumatised brother, it feels as though Mijnssen is making a dramatic point at the music’s expense, stretching the disjunct between drama and music just too far.
Mijnssen’s detailed work shows, and there’s a level of intensity that’s maintained by everyone, right down to the silent uniformed staff enduring the young royals’ thoughtlessness.
The cast has no weak link. The countertenor Christophe Dumaux, the only singer to remain from this production’s first run at the Opéra National du Rhin last year, is the jovial yet predatory Polinesso, with Ed Lyon as Ariodante’s nerdy brother Luciano and Elena Villalón as Dalinda. Peter Kellner, his bass exuding gravitas and vulnerability, plays the king.
The mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo as Ariodante and soprano Jacquelyn Stucker as Ginevra have the long, lonely scenes of introspection that are the opera’s centres of gravity and both have the gleaming tone, technique and magnetism to carry them. Yet neither projects much text: it almost feels as though this is instrumental music.
The disjointed feeling is reinforced in the raised pit, where Stefano Montanari conducts the Royal Opera House orchestra, sometimes from the violin. With chamber organ and theorbo standing out starkly, and with Montanari weaving his own embellishments on top of the orchestral violins, it’s inventive and dynamic but often self-consciously so, and doesn’t always let the singers breathe.
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