The Daily Telegraph - Features
An imperious romp through the funniest Handel opera
Serse The English Concert, St Martinin-the-Fields, London WC2
★★★★ ★
With its airy spaces and lively acoustic, St Martin-in-the-Fields, James Gibbs’s 1720s church at the corner of Trafalgar Square, is an attractive venue for music. It gave its name many years ago to Neville Marriner’s famous ensemble, the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields, but in recent times their musical offerings have been much diminished and confined to tourist-orientated candle-lit classical pops.
That has suddenly changed, however, with a new policy that evidently aims to revive the church as a major player among London’s classical music venues, alongside its essential charitable work for the homeless. The line-up is impressive, including a residency for John Eliot Gardiner’s ensembles. Such events, like this full-scale concert performance of Handel’s opera Serse, cannot come cheap: it is difficult to know how a business built on this super-high level of concert-giving in a modestly-sized venue can work over time. But we are not complaining: Serse was ideal for the space, thoroughly prepared and splendidly done.
When the opera was staged in English just a few yards up the road at the Coliseum in Nicholas Hytner’s celebrated 1985 production, Serse was called Xerxes, and the stylish wit of that staging justly became a Handelian landmark. First staged in 1738, it is the funniest of Handel’s many operas because, although based on a traditional libretto, it seems at every point to subvert the rigidity of serious opera, introducing comic scenes, cutting recitative into ensembles and shortening the long repeated sections of arias, to make something that sounds surprisingly fluid and modern.
This Serse, now in the original Italian and with period instrumentation, was the latest in a series of annual Handel opera performances by the English Concert (under Harry Bicket) that have tapped into the skills of a generation of singers ever more skilled in the repertory. In this case, there was a new name in the team – the Canadian Emily D’Angelo, leading the cast as Serse – and she swept all before her in a viscerally commanding, authoritative account of the part.
A little anxious at the start, perhaps understandably – she has to open the opera with that most familiar aria, known as “Handel’s Largo” – D’Angelo blossomed into an imperious figure, her emotions buffeted by the plotting and scheming around her. She finally exploded in her appeal, Crude furie degl’ orridi abissi. This she delivered with magnificently focused fury, every note in place. We will hear much more of her.
D’Angelo led an outstanding cohort of singers: the astonishing Lucy Crowe as Romilda, who can make of a simple aria such as Nemmen con l’ombre d’infedeltà something infinitely touching, while at the same time joshing with Mary Bevan’s dazzlingly skittish Atalanta. Paula Murrihy’s fine Arsamene and Daniela Mack’s dark-hued Amastre completed the female dominance in the cast, nobly supported by the male voices of Neal Davies as Ariodate and William Dazeley’s comic Elviro.
Though the opera was not staged, and there was discreet use of scores, there was plenty of movement. Bicket directed from the keyboard with his customary scrupulous care and attention to detail. His band plays this music with consummate sophistication – so much so that I wonder whether it might not be time to loosen the constraints a little. That would free up the expressiveness, and let the sheer audacity of Handel’s inspiration blossom in this most freely-flowing of baroque operas.
Further concerts: stmartin-in-thefields.org