Long evening with Handel

Tamerlano

Royal Opera, in rep until 20 March

Handel’s Tamerlano is rated extremely highly by the cognoscenti, indeed routinely listed as being among his two or three greatest operas. I have only seen it twice, once at Sadler’s Wells nine years ago in a production by Jonathan Miller, conducted by Trevor Pinnock, and now at the Royal Opera in a production by Graham Vick, with Ivor Bolton conducting. On both occasions I have been bored to the verge of paralysis, but more so by the present one. It lasts from 6.30 until 11 o’clock, with two relatively short intervals. So it is as long as Die Walküre or Tristan, though they are always scheduled to start at 6 or even earlier. That does mean that the finishing time will put off anyone who doesn’t live in London and is dependent on public transport — an incidental blessing. But as I made my dazed way back to my King’s Cross Travelodge, I wondered why the Royal Opera does so resolutely restrict its possible audiences.

Where does one start? With the work itself, I suppose, but that is problematic: I have an old recording of it on LP, which is of course laughably inauthentic and shockingly cut, both of those being virtues in my book. At the Royal Opera it is complete, and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment ensures authentic sounds so far as they can be ascertained. I have no idea how much is known about the speed at which recitatives were taken in Handel’s day, but Bolton has them at dictation speed, and since they are exceptionally copious in Tamerlano that accounts for a considerable amount of the pervasive lack of momentum, as they are musically mostly quite without interest.