Baroque charm OPERA
Handel’s ‘Alcina’ a tale of enchanted island ruled by sorceress
Alcina waves her magic wand across an enchanted island wrapped in Handel’s arias. George Frideric Handel’s baroque opera “Alcina” opens at the Santa Fe Opera on Saturday, July 29.
Most of today’s audiences know the composer from “The Messiah.” But if you asked an 18th century music lover about Handel, they’d name opera as his biggest hit.
The composer penned more than 40 operas during the baroque period. These early works were characterized by solo arias sung while the rest of the cast left the stage. Twentieth century listeners dismissed the pieces as “untheatrical,” SFO conductor Harry Bicket said.
“It was also part of the diva culture,” he continued. “No soprano wanted anyone else on stage when they sang an aria.”
Today, conductors are reviving what some critics call the composer’s best works.
Mozart was obsessed with them. “Beethoven said he was the greatest of them all,” Bicket said.
In “Alcina,” the magic unveils on an island ruled by the sorceress Alcina, who casts spells with an orb and a wand, turning her lovers into stone, trees, animals and a wave when she’s through with them.
The South African-born soprano Elza van den Heever sings the title role. It’s a part she’s also sung at France’s Opéra National de Bordeaux.
“I always like being the interesting girls; the evil girls,” she said with a laugh. “I go from being super-elegant to fall-down drunk and kind of disheveled.”
Once Alcina falls for the already engaged Ruggiero ( played by Irish mezzo-soprano Paula Murrihy), her control disintegrates.
“I think she’s a love addict,” van den Heever said. “I think she likes to be admired. She likes pretty young boys.”
Alcina’s younger sister, Morgana (played by the Denver-based soprano Anna Christy), admires her elder sibling.
“She’s a lesser sorceress,” Christy said. “I think she just wants to be Alcina. She’s a wannabe.”
Christy made her Santa Fe debut in 2003’s ‘Madame Mao.’” Van den Heever last sang here in 2009’s “Don Giovanni.”
“I just think ‘Alcina’ is such a masterpiece,” she said, “because it’s one Handel hit after another. If you just close your eyes and listen, you’d be in heaven.”
The characters represent a little piece of us all, Bicket said.
“The biggest compliment people say to me is, ‘It feels so modern.’ ”