Alcina (review)

This crusty, tradition-bound reviewer undertook multiple viewings of this 1999 production of Handel's timeless opera in a mission to try to comprehend, understand, and assimilate the ultra-Euro, ultrapseudosymbolic, ultrabusy, ultracontemporary intentions of the stage directors, Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito. Verdict: mission failed, owing to mission being hopelessly impossible. Lacking neurotic tendencies, I will resist the temptation to feel dull and stupid for having failed to grasp the "totally rad," "innovative" conception of the directors—and instead take the possibly startling position of stating: This misguided, goofy production makes no sense. It reaches the rock-bottom nadir of what has often aZicted opera in current times, whereby the premise of the story has been completely reinterpreted in a now-tiresome, clichéd trend of conspicuously attempting to be daring, arty, and different.

The production bears absolutely no resemblance to any story purporting to be Alcina, which concerns an enchantress on a magic island who weaves spells on her hapless victims. Various lines and references have no correspondence with the action or tableaux seen onstage. (The booklet's synopsis reflects the director's interpretation more than the librettists', and amounts to an incomprehensible mess, completely obscuring the story's complex weave of hidden and mistaken identities.) More crucially, the contemporary setting is jarringly at odds with the Baroque sensibilities, expressions, and musical style inherent in the work. Combining a Lulu-like setting with a 400-year-old musical genre needs a coherent rationale for coalescing, and it isn't to be found here. If the attempt was meant to try and make the opera "accessible" and "playable" for modern, short-attention-span, marginally interested season subscribers, it succeeds; there's enough forced action, gimmickry, and titillation to keep viewers from falling asleep—how could anyone nod off at anything as fixatingly senseless as this?

The mise-en-scène is a single set, a large wallpapered room whose back wall is dominated by a picture frame, behind which occur various segments of panoramic "back action." Various pieces of props, furniture, bric-a-brac, and other sundry items are piled in a heap on the left side of the stage—many of which are pulled out and perplexingly employed in the action. The characters and artists are repeatedly upstaged by all these bits—guns are freely bandished and fired, anachronistic (to the production) swords are flung around, furniture is tossed, characters are tied up and blindfolded, a plate of fruit is dispersed upon and then retrieved from the floor during an aria, clothes are torn off, bric-a-brac is smashed, and French horns are carried and "played" for no discernible reason. One has to admire the artists, who cope bravely while trying to perform their music. For titillation, we have an Alcina who sports several see-through blouses (notwithstanding the fact that lovely Catherine Naglestad is not unflattered by them), plus a Ruggiero who, in the first fifteen minutes, makes a lusty pass at practically every character—both male (including the add-to-the-confusion castrato roles now performed by women) and female. For the easily excitable, we have crotch rubbings, pawing fondlings, and floor-rollings-arounds; for an extra sadomasochistic kick, there are bondage scenes, smackings, kickings, and free-form physical abuse.

The most bizarre sequence takes place during the four dances closing act 2, characterized as Dances of the Good Dreams, then of Bad Dreams, then of Frightened of Good Dreams, then of Battle of Good and Bad Dreams. During these the characters are all lined up behind the back-wall...