Radamisto            Emma Bell
Polissena            Natasha Marsh
Zenobia              Rahel Wagner
Tiridate             Mark Guerin
Tigrane              Jennie Smith
Fraarte              Ee-Ping Yee
Farasmene            Jose Gallisa

Conductor            Denys Darlow
Producer             Rober Chevara

London Handel Orchestra

Another comparatively obscure Handel opera produced for the London Handel
Festival (which otherwise seems to specialize in the religious and
patriotic side of Handel), and a good one. Handel's first "proper" Italian
opera for London has a rather schematic opera seria plot based on a French
play by George de Scudery, but it provides a platform for some superbly
characteristic Handel music.

Radamisto and his wife Zenobia are devoted to each other. Tiridate is
married to Radamisto's sister Polissena, who loves him loyally. But he is
in love with Zenobian, and invades the kingdom of Farasmene, Radamisto's
father, in order to capture Zenobia. Tirgrane, one of Tiridate's generals,
is idealistically in love with Polissena, and Fraate, another general, is
also in love with Zenobia. Tiridate captures Farasmene at the start of the
opera, and the action consists of the characters' various conflicts of love
and duty as they try to get what they want. In particular, Zenobia keeps
asking to be killed rather than be unfaithful to Radamisto, and Fraate and
Tigrane (who are great pals) help Radamisto by faking his death. The themes
and plot are really not too far from Xerxes, but with no comic overtones.

This production was fairly basic, with cutout arches and a general
brownish-orange colour scheme. The costumes were eighteenth century. The
direction consisted of arranging tableaux for the arias and duets, and
(presumably) work on the characterizations. The main point was getting the
singers to sing the music, and they generally did this to good effect.

The dominant figure is really Polissena, whose misery introduces the opera,
and whose heroic devotion knocks Tiridate into shape in the end. Natasha
Marsh, in a striking red dress, was suitably forceful, and also sang very
well. Someone on the stairs described her as "the lovely red lady who
sorted everybody out", which about said it. Tiridate is both a typical
Handellian thuggish idiot and a Very Stupid Tenor, and Mark Guerin made him
both sinister and obtuse. Emma Bell was notably unheroic as Radamisto, but
she has a good lightish voice and did the virtuoso bits in style. Ee-Ping
Yee was very cute as the romantic Fraate, who is (musically as well) an
optimistic but unsuccessful version of Arsamenes in Xerxes. Rahel Wagner as
Zenobia was accurate but underpowered. She is in the other cast, but stood
in for Miriam Murphy who had a throat infection. Maybe there's a
mezzo-specific virus around, or maybe Wagner was holding back in case she
had to sing four performances in a row. Only Marsh and Bell seemed to have
the voices for Handel, but all the singers were fully engaged, and the
orchestra was pretty good as well.

I suspect that Radamisto isn't in the standard repertoire mainly because
it's one of about half a dozen Handel operas that aren't quite Ariodante,
and there's no easy way to choose between it and (say) Flavio if you can be
flexible about casting. It's strictly operatic in that the action
essentially consists of the emotional development that occurs during the
arias, but the theme of the conflict between love and other obligations
isn't exactly an obscure one. I could imagine Woody Allen doing the same
plot, maybe in a corporate setting. Now there's a thought...