Midsummer madness

Handel’s Orlando is one of three operas Handel based on episodes from Ariosto’s best-selling sixteenth-century epic, Orlando Furioso. The story was, in 1733, well known throughout the Mediterranean world, and everyone set it to music—Vivaldi’s and Haydn’s settings have enjoyed recent revivals, and the libretto Handel set had originally been devised for Domenico Scarlatti. Intricate character description was not required: Everyone knew Orlando and Angelica as well as today’s audiences know Batman from Spider-Man.

Orlando, nephew of Charlemagne, falls under the spell of the enchantress-princess Angelica of Cathay. She, however, prefers a Moor named Medoro, whose life she has happened to save. There is also a kindly wizard, Zoroastro, to straighten things out and a pretty shepherdess, Dorinda, to complicate them once more. Orlando being a major league bruiser, no one wants to tell him the awful truth unless they’ve got an escape route lined up. Orlando goes mad (and what singer doesn’t love that?) but is recalled to his warrior self. Angelica and Medoro shuffle off to Shanghai. There are five singers and no chorus or ballet, so the piece is a gift to hard-up producers. For an opera seria, it’s pretty straightforward, hence its popularity in the baroque revival.

Forty years ago, when that revival was in its infancy (at least as far as opera was concerned) a conductor who shall remain nameless gave a series of four Handel performances at Carnegie Hall, including Orlando for perhaps its first New York outing. This was not a success. Castrato roles were taken by women in pantsuits and no one had been trained in anything resembling baroque ornamental style. The conductor had a plodding beat that killed Handel’s merry dance tunes, and he led a nineteenth-century-ish orchestra. The audience was bored by endless, lifeless da capo repeats. Handel opera was pronounced unrevivable.

It was amusing to recall that occasion at last Sunday’s charming Mostly Mozart premiere of the score by the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra at Tully Hall by Nicholas McGegan’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. In the intervening years, Peter Sellars earned his first notoriety by staging Orlando in Cape Canaveral, with Mars standing in for the landscape of madness, and there was a famous stream-down-the-center-of-the-stage production at BAM (Orlando threw himself into it when crazed), and the City Opera produced it with Bejun Mehta, New York’s first countertenor Orlando.

Today, audiences know their baroque opera, what sort of ornamentation to listen for and what plot devices to accept. Too, a whole school or two of professional Handelians fill the ranks of the singers and players for such occasions. The Philharmonia modulates the texture its strings with a lute, recorders, oboes and the occasional valveless horn. Our Early Music ears delight in it.

The five voices chosen were unusually well-matched and ornamentally able. Dominique Labelle, a Canadian soprano, possesses what sounds like a genuine dramatic coloratura, a clear and gleaming voice, easily produced to fill a far larger hall than Tully without fudging delicate ornaments, trills in various sizes, tasteful ornaments. She fits herself far more naturally into such parts than, say, Renee Fleming or Angela Meade— it would be a delight to hear her as Rodelinda in the Met, which she could easily fill, or such later roles as Semiramide (Rossini’s or Meyerbeer’s). She is a famous Donna Anna; that role, too, would suit her dignified stage presence.

The other soprano was Yulia Van Doren, whom I noticed in Steffani’s Niobe in Boston this spring. As was entirely appropriate (Angelica is a princess, Dorinda a shepherdess), her light, fresh, bell-like sound made a proper contrast to Labelle’s dramatic soprano. Van Doren’s knack for these lighter roles should make her a winning Zerlina, Blondchen, even Susanna in time. (She has sung Handel’s Galatea.) Dorinda doesn’t get what she wants—a man, and she’s not too choosy. This makes her sad but not malicious or vengeful. She’s too winsome not to find another. Van Doren’s skill is poignant not tragic.

Diana Moore, a tall mezzo soprano with a dulcet voice and a soothing vibrato, sang the less than heroic Medoro, whose charm for the ladies is precisely that he’s not the he-man warrior Orlando is. Wolf Matthias Friedrich, a gruff bass, sang the puppetmaster Zoroastro is a pleasurable if not exactly high style—he seems more the type for buffo roles than mysterious ones.

The title role was sung by Clint van der Linde, a South African countertenor of the full-bodied sort, his voice sometimes indistinguishable from Miss Moore’s—Orlando contains more duets and trios than most Handel scores. His Orlando came across as more neurotic than manic (no stream to jump into), his threats and amorous insecurities a bit vacuous—but perhaps that’s because our age is less sympathetic to vacuous he-men than Handel’s was.

Clarity was enhanced by uncredited costumes: Angelica and Medoro (the visiting non-Europeans) wore long robes in glowing gem-colors; Orlando and Zoroastro wore something closer to suit-and-tie office drag. (Orlando’s shirt came untucked when he went mad.) Dorinda wore a maid’s uniform, with apron.

A delicious afternoon. One hopes Mostly Mozart, having seen how easy it is to bring off such a success with a baroque opera, will repeat the experiment, perhaps with less familiar fare.