Handel
Xerxes (DVD)
Gaëlle Arquez, Tanja Ariane Baumgartner, Lawrence Zazzo, Louise Alder; Frankfurter
Opern- und Museumsorchester/ Constantinos Carydis; dir. Tilmann Köhler (Frankfurt, 2017) C major DVD: 747908;
Blu-ray: 748004 180 mins
It’s remarkable what a producer can do and still make sense of a masterpiece like Xerxes. In this thoughtful production from Frankfurt there’s not a wig nor a silk-embroidered dress in sight, and certainly no breastplates or swords or plumed helmets. And you’ll look in vain for a bridge across the ★ellespont. Just a simple room and a cast in modern dress.
Tilmann Köhler stages the emotional rollercoaster of the first two acts around a huge dining table, as Xerxes entertains in the grand style. Step by step, or rather dish by dish, the table becomes a battle ground. The idea of the broken feast perfectly captures the disruptive nature of Xerxes’s tyranny, and it’s also emblematic of the emotional chaos that engulfs ★andel’s characters as they struggle with their thwarted passions. Who could resist Arsamene clutching a cooked pheasant to his breast as he bemoans his fate, exiled by his brother Xerxes who has his eye on his beloved Romilda? Or Atalanta, the opera’s bad girl, throwing salad around the table as she preaches deceit? When the room is cleared for the final act, there’s nowhere for the characters to hide. Xerxes is revealed as a very modern double hero, full of feeling when he serenades his plane tree, but arbitrary and violent in his pursuit of Romilda. And it is impossible not be moved when the tyrant’s cruelly used wife Amastre discards her male disguise to become a woman again and forgive her husband.
French mezzo Gaëlle Arquez is magnificent as Xerxes, and Elizabeth Sutphen makes a touching Romilda, feisty as well as tender.
For once the put-upon Arsamene has an inner life of his own with the countertenor Lawrence Zazzo making a feast of his Act II aria ‘Quella che tutte fè’. In the pit Constantinos Carydis never lets pace or musical imagination flag. Christopher Cook
PERFORMANCE
PICTURE & SOUND