Well, the height of the festival season is upon us, and what do I find? Not just two performances I'd quite like to see, but two rare Handel music dramas, on the same night in London. I decided to go for Hercules at St James's (the old college tie and all that) -- I hope Dave and Barbara Hall will report on Atalanta at St John's. Alastair Miles Hercules Susan Bickley Dejanira Mark Padmore Hyllus Nancy Argenta Iole Catherine Wyn-Rogers Lichas Julian Clarkson Priest of Jupiter Choir of Clare College, Cambridge St James's Baroque Players Ivor Bolton Conductor Hercules is nominally an oratorio, but it's closer in both form and content to a Senecan drama. It's ambiguous whether it's best performed or read/listened to without spectacle. Although sometimes put in the same category as Semele, the libretto isn't nearly as good, and I'm not sure whether it's a full strength dramatic work that fails in some ways, or a poem that lacks imaginative depth. A part of the problem is that Thomas Broughton, the librettist, uses the structure of Sophocles' Trachiniae intact in spite of its famous imperfections. He then adds and adapts to suit the taste of his times. He takes Hercules' non-adultery (Iole is just a trophy of war, and Deianira is paranoid) from Ovid, adds a romance between Heracles' son Hyllus and Iole, and trims everything with Senencan cosmological imagery. Ruth Smith, in her excellent book on Handel's librettos, suggests that Hercules flopped because it sent the wrong messages about monarchy and conquest for its moment of performance. The program notes suggest that it was too reflective, with too many slow arias. My feeling after seeing it is that it isn't well structured, and needs an imaginitive production to deliver the dramatic interest that is definitely there in the music. A part of the problem, aparent in this performance, is inherited from Sophocles. There is too much talk at the start: Dejanira, Hyllus and Lichas seem to spend an age wondering where Hercules is. Handel compounded the tedium by pumping up the role of Lichas for a star contralto, and for me it was made worse by the fact that I can't get excited about Catherine Wyn-Rogers. (This is a recurring dilemma in Handel dramas: the role of the character who sets the scene doesn't require a big league voice but still has to get the show moving.) A related problem is that the big guy arrives late and leaves early. You need a charismatic voice for Hercules to have a heroic impact with comparatively little music. Alistair Miles certainly delivered the goods here, especially in his death aria and the following scene. But I wanted to hear a lot more of him. The rest of the cast were almost as impressive. Susan Bickley held everything together as Dejanira. She has a fine sense of drama, and sang Dejanira's mad guilt aria, Where shall I fly, in style. I think Bickley suffers a bit from the fact that it's tempting to compare her to both Janet Baker and Ann Murray, in her personal style and repertoire, and she's not quite in the same league vocally. (She also had to follow Lorraine Hunt in the Glyndebourne Theodora and nearly made it.) I'd love to see her in this role in a staged production. Nancy Argenta was the singer the Lufthansa Festival assumed everybody would be interested in. (This is a brilliant festival of baroque music, by the way, including some premium Bach this year. The adverisements assume that we're interested only in the performers, not the works, or even the composers.) Argenta has a luscious voice, superb for the beautiful but sympathetic Iole, though with perhaps the beginning of a wobble. I couldn't see her during the performance as there was a pillar in the way, and I was amused to find that her appearance, though very attractive, is wholesome verging on matronly, and quite different from her gorgeous voice. Mark Padmore looks uncannily like dear Mr Blair from some angles, though without the stupid grin. But he's a very reliable Handel tenor, and also did a fine job. The choir of Clare College were fine in some comparatively brief and undemanding choruses, and excellent in the more demanding chorus on jealousy. I'm not sure whether Handel aimed for rustic effects at some points (the chorus celebrating Hercules' return, Crown with festal pomp the day, for example) or whether the orchestra was occasionally a bit clodhopping with a strange balance. I suspect Handel, as most of the time they were fine. I started the evening wondering whether Hercules is rarely performed for a reason (like Alexander Balus, recently given in a concert version which was quite enough, thank you). The fact that it was a major commercial failure doesn't necessarily mean anything, but I think (unlike Theodora) the work had some internal problems. However, this performance was generally superbly sung, and showed how much dramatic potential there is in it. Maybe Quentin Tarantino would like to have a go?