A magical mystery tour: Santa Fe Opera’s ‘Alcina’
George Frideric Handel’s Alcina, which opened at Santa Fe Opera on Saturday night, is a fantasy about how people distinguish deception from reality when they are enchanted by love and magic. Whether or not viewers of Handel’s time — the work premiered in 1735 — gave credence to magic per se, they accepted it as a theatrical convention. The composer crafted this piece to capitalize on surprising stage effects, and the audience tacitly agreed to suspend expectations of realism and go along for the ride to the magical island of a sorceress.
Director David Alden asks the same of today’s audience in his hyperactive, lightly surreal take on this classic work. The principal stage-set comprises (on the audience’s left) a miniature proscenium theater of ornamented Classical design and (on their right) a mural of Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa, part of a seascape that extends across much of the real stage. These elements signal the intersection of the enchanted isle of Handel’s opera and the theater in which Alden’s conception unrolls. Odd artifacts decorate the scene, including animal skeletons that suggest a natural-history museum and a chandelier consisting of a spinal column culminating in a claw, from which a lightbulb is suspended. Dur-
ing the Overture, members of the new-circus troupe Wise Fool New Mexico bustle about the stage and auditorium performing handstands, climbing walls and getting into brawls.
The catalyst of the action is the sorceress Alcina, who manipulates the amatory passions of mortals in a quest to find true love for herself. She enchants her romantic prey, but when they cease to please her, she turns them into wild beasts, rocks or streams. The current object of her affection is Ruggiero; under her spell, he has neglected his fiancée Bradamante, who (disguised as her own brother) arrives pursuing him. Alcina’s sister, Morgana, has a crush on the cross-dressed Bradamante, as she makes very clear in the opening scene, where she partners him/her in a tango. Subplots present further entanglements. Unless viewers cement the narrative in their minds beforehand, they may find themselves sometimes wondering what on earth is going on. In that sense, they will be handicapped much as the characters are, forging on through uncertainty hoping to find solid footing — which, in the end, they may.
Alden says in a program commentary that this production (an earlier version of which was mounted in Bordeaux and Madrid) was “loosely inspired by Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo, in which Mia Farrow’s character escapes her drab existence by watching the same film day after day, until the characters on screen join her in her reality.” He goes relatively easy on that correlation, although he does underscore it by viewing Ruggiero as seeking Alcina’s embrace in order to escape Bradamante’s domestic aspirations. Those hopes are represented here by a third-act scene in which Bradamante appears as an idealized 1950s housewife in a development of tract homes dominated by a Mad Men-style billboard promoting Dreamsville, “where dreams become reality!” For Alcina’s part, she takes an alternate ’50s route and gets drunk. Then, too, the action is tied to a theater, as in Allen’s film. Morgana is portrayed as a lusty usherette and a number of scenes take place in a corridor lined with seven doors that suggest the entrances to theatre boxes.
You can be sure that when a set has seven doors, they will be used. Sometimes characters exit through one during an orchestral episode of an aria and re-emerge a few seconds later from another, or different characters appear from behind the doors while the soloist is singing. The stage is almost never devoid of extraneous action. Among the attractions are a half-skeletonized hippo to ride on, beasts eating bananas and an ape with a disco ball. Scenes that, in the opera as written, involve just one, two or three characters are very often populated by a multitude.
It’s all entertaining, but it also tends to distract from the music, which you might expect to be the dominant aspect of an opera. That, of course, is the predicament with “Regieoper” like this, in which a director’s vision (with studiously outré and campy aspects, in Alden’s case) replaces the composer’s text as the prevailing feature. Alden has modulated every inch of the piece to a fare-thee-well, and his creative associates (Gideon Davey for sets and costumes, Malcolm Rippeth for lighting, Beate Vollack for choreography) all underscore his ideas through Easter-basket colors, atmospheric illumination, and energetic movement. By the time this long opera ended, three hours and 40 minutes after it began, I found the visual onslaught diverting but exhausting.
There was a good deal of excellent singing. Mezzosoprano Paula Murrihy, in her house debut, was superb as Ruggiero. She brought the total package to the part both vocally and dramatically: beautiful timbre, gorgeous phrasing, sophisticated singing technique, sensitivity to what we understand of Baroque style. Her aria “Mi lusinga il dolce affetto” was a showstopper of an Andante (or an Andantelarghetto, as Handel called it), so captivating that one could almost ignore Alden’s overlay of extraneous activity. Ditto her top-drawer performance of “Verdi prati,” which confirmed her mastery of sustained line. She was splendid in florid singing, too, as in her aria “Sta nell’ircana pietrosa tana,” where she negotiated challenging coloratura and even inflected some of it with surprising staccatos.
Soprano Elza van den Heever infused the role of Alcina with dramatic commitment. She drew on an unusually broad dynamic spectrum, from the almost inaudible to the very loud; I found her voice to be piercing at high volume, to which she swelled not infrequently. Extreme manipulation of rhythm was also part of her arsenal. She stretched the phrases of her slow aria “Sì, son quella” like a taffy-maker, but it did prove affecting. She also managed her fast music well, although it was difficult to focus on her performance of the Act 3 aria “Ma quando tornerai” with an onstage crowd jerking about as if infected by Saint Vitus Dance. Soprano Anna Christy was kept busy as Morgana, bringing a pert soubrette style to the part and realizing the vigorous directorial demands with aplomb. Her dramatic enthusiasm was unflagging, her vocal facility was spot-on for the part, and she proved both outrageous and oddly endearing in her usherette guise and as a plucky burlesque dancer.
Mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack, as Bradamante, sang fast indeed in her coloratura segments — astonishingly so in “Vorrei vendicarmi” — but one wished for a richer tone behind that agility. In the part of Alcina’s general Oronte, tenor Alek Shrader made fine use of his distinctive tenor (pleasant to hear, energized by a quick vibrato) and proved a natural comic actor, whether in or out of his gorilla costume. He got extra credit for singing the opening part of one aria with a cigarette fixed in his mouth, which I think is not something they teach in conservatory. Bass-baritone Christian Van Horn brought a gravelly but engaging tone to his role as Bradamante’s tutor Melisso, a rather thankless part for which Handel did not rise to quite the heights he did for most of the other singers. The role of Oberto (a boy searching for his father) seems somewhat superfluous — indeed, Handel added it as a last-minute overlay to the score — but soprano Jacquelyn Stucker was an endearing presence in the part, which she infused with earnest energy and a sweet sound.
Harry Bicket, the company’s chief conductor, led an alert orchestra with stylistic insight and attention to instrumental balance. The work’s Overture and the bristling Sinfonia introducing Act 3 were among the evening’s highlights. Bicket molded the accompaniment to the soloists with unswerving fidelity.
It was, however, Alden’s direction that was front and center all evening. The finale seemed underbaked. Did I miss the destruction of the urn containing Alcina’s magical powers? I would have thought it would be a climactic moment, but maybe I was just watching something else just then. All evening I supposed it would involve the chandelier — but no. And I missed the sense that there was emotional connection between the characters. Yes, we had lap dancing and episodes of simulated copulation, but real emotional connection — not so much. I respected many things about Alden’s production without greatly loving it, but it did get under my skin and after the house lights went down I found myself obsessing about it and liking it more. There was probably too much to take in at one sitting.