Handel’s oddity

Partenope
English National Opera

In his introduction to Handel’s Partenope in the programme book of ENO’s new production, John Berry, artistic director of the company, writes: ‘Partenope is full of wonderful music and a perfect vehicle for the gifted director Christopher Alden.’ We see where the priorities are — some dead metaphors are quite interesting, and ‘vehicle’ is among them: for what is, or should be, important is who the vehicle is for, and in this case it’s made clearer than usual that it’s the director who is having the fun, the work itself being what enables him to enjoy himself. Most opera-goers are probably more interested in enjoying themselves by an encounter with the work they are seeing, but many contemporary directors are making sure that we realise how crucial is the part which used to be played by someone called a stage manager. Sometimes it works. Writing in the Guardian last week Alden reflected on commuting between Leeds, where he has been working on his brilliant production of Tosca, and London for Handel. The Tosca is, as I wrote a fortnight ago, amazing in the fresh light it casts on a piece routinely dismissed as tired and merely nasty. But with Partenope it’s a matter not of casting fresh light, but of winning an audience for Handel’s operas without distorting them so that their music and what we see happening collaborate to yield a satisfying and unified experience.

That is very emphatically not what happens at the Coliseum. Handel’s admittedly odd opera is up to a point comic, but we need illumination about what the focus of the comedy is. Queen Partenope, founder of Naples, is wooed by an assortment of men, has fluctuating feelings about them, and surprisingly ends up with the least interesting (but that isn’t the point). Alden has naturally updated the action to the 1920s, as is the present-day vogue. For Alden it is surrealism that is the big turn-on, specifically the photography of Man Ray. If any fairly large-scale movement in the arts ever seemed dead beyond resuscitation, and welcomely so, it is surely that one. Who now can take an interest in the posturings of this collection of phonies, and anyway what has it got to do with Handel?

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