Orlando     Louise Mott
Angelica    Geraldine McGreevy
Medoro      Sally Bruce-Payne
Dorinda     Anna-Clare Monk
Zoroastro   Matthew Hargreaves

Conductor   Christian Curnyn
Director    Sarah Alexander

Early Opera Company

This production of Orlando is part of Heavenly Harmony, a weekend festival
of early music under the presiding genius of Philip Pickett. Other events
include talks on renaissance music theory, the mediaeval imagination, and
early music instruments, and concerts of Italian keyboard music, Spanish
music, Italian vocal music, Islamic-influenced music of the period and
mainly English viol music. The putative entertainment in the foyer of the
Queen Elizabeth Hall before this performance involved a stuffed racoon and
a hurdy-gurdy, which is much worse than supermarket muzak.

Orlando is the first of Handel's three operas based on Ariosto, and clearly
does groundwork for the later two, Alcina and Ariodante. As well as two dry
runs for Verdi prati (both with first lines beginning with verdi) and a
fanstastic scene at the end of act two, there's also the general working
out, in both plot and music, of the themes of illusion and reality, and the
problem of personal integrity when you can't know what to believe. It's
comparable with the other two, and in some ways more innovative (though
Ariodante still gets my vote as Handel's operatic masterpiece).

Orlando is an attempt to do Orlando furioso without the war. In a pastoral
landscape, Orlando is in love with Angelica, and is awol from Roncevalles
trying to find her. Angelica is in love with the African knight Medoro, as
is the shepherdess Dorinda. Medoro loves Angelica. Orlando's minder,
Zoroaster, makes him mad to help him regain his sense of honour and return
to the war.

(In Ariosto, Orlando goes mad when he learns of the horrible murder of
Angelica and Medoro by the psychopath Rodomante. He gets his wits back when
Astolfo, a terribly decent, chinless English knight, goes to St John on the
moon to find them. The moon is where ballpoint pens, the other sock and
prayers go. St John tells Astolfo he might as well take his own wits while
he's there, though he never realised that he'd lost them.)

This production was advertised as semi-staged, but in fact was pretty much
fully staged with a minimal set and costumes in shades of white and ivory.
It seemed under-rehearsed theatrically, though it's going on tour and might
improve. Musically, it was very good indeed, with generally excellent
singing and playing.

The weakest point was probably Louise Mott as Orlando. She has a beautiful
voice, but for some reason didn't have the musical and dramatic punch she
had as Ariodante last year. Perhaps the role lay too low for her -- her
strong point as Ariodante was the high coloratura. And she may have been
under directed, needing a lot more input to deliver the mad scenes
effectively.

The rest of the cast was impressive. Sally Bruce-Payne was a jolly
games-captain Medoro. She has a striking butch mezzo, and sang in a
precise, down-to-earth way that somehow got the music exactly right. Think
Carolyn Watkinson and Ewa Podles. Another one to watch. Geraldine McGreevy
was a big Angelica, vocally and in presence, and did a good large-and-cute
soprano double act with Anna-Clare Monk as Dorinda. The trio at the end of
act one in which Angelica and Medoro console Dorinda for her doomed love
was beautifully sung.

Matthew Hargreaves as Zoroastro (a nod to the masons? not in Ariosto, I
think) was burdened with a silly wild-man costume, perhaps meant to evoke
anachronistically Blake's Ancient of Days. His singing was fine, and Surge
infausta was impeccable.