As Handel steadily moves into the operatic mainstream with ever more high-concept productions and increasingly glamorous casts, Carnegie Hall's concert presentation of Alcina on Sunday showed why these works should never lose their special occasion status.
Away from the repertory treadmill with musicians who have the idiom in their bones, Alcina much more readily showed the world why it is one of opera's highest pinnacles. As part of the Perspectives series curated by mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, the Alcina concert version had the historically-informed expertise of the English Concert under Harry Bicket, with DiDonato in the title role, Alice Coote in the equally massive trouser role of Ruggiero, plus the lesser-known but equally distinguished Anna Christy and Anna Devin as Morgana and Oberto, respectively. The nearly uncut performance unfurled over four hours, partly because the audience was cheering as if the singers were hitting home runs. Which they were.
The 1735 work shows the composer in one of the few good opera years he had left, working with a libretto based on the epic poem Orlando furioso that combines several archetypes – Medea with her merciless vindictiveness, Dido in her vulnerability when her lover Ruggiero departs, plus a foretaste of the H.G. Wells story "The Island of Doctor Moreau" with Alcina's ability to turn people into beasts. Unstaged (and without the needless physicality of so many Handel productions), Alcina grew ever more vocally and emotionally intense, making the performance something like a singing competition with an excellent plot, the vocal thrills doing double duty – great singing plus psychological specificity – while character relationships cunningly supplied a competitive spirit (if it didn't exist already in the egos of the singers).
With the subliminal impetus of Handel's tonal planning (most apparent in uncut form), the opera almost felt like a suspense novel that wouldn't let you stop turning the page. Yes, Handel operas can seem shorter when not cut. What monuments the composer was creating on a yearly basis! One could argue that Alcina has more moving parts than, say, Lohengrin.
The singing-contest comparison doesn't do justice to the artistic sensitivity that was apparent at every turn. We all know that the repeated sections of Handel's da capo arias were meant to be varied with vocal ornaments – which was the case here – but as part of a larger palette of interpretive techniques such as subtly varied orchestral colors. These conspired to avoid musical redundancy and to establish an intra-aria narrative.
While Christy and Devin were ideal mid-weight Handel voices, Coote brought darker colors and swaggering physicality to the role of Ruggiero with a fast but delicate coloratura whose inaccuracies didn't stop her from nailing arias when they really counted. I loved the way she used her soft singing to differentiate her true thoughts while deceiving Alcina. Softer still were her more private ruminations. I didn't know such quiet could still be heard at Carnegie Hall.
DiDonato's artistry continues to burgeon. Now a more thoughtful artist, she had two arias that began with a long held note, colored so effectively that, in a few seconds, she delivered most of the necessary emotional content of what was to come. Her coloratura technique is beyond accurate. What's important is that she makes it speak to the aria's psychological state. As a stage presence, her conspiratorial self irony was immediately inviting: Making her first entrance in an extravagant gown whose padded shoulders would've terrified Joan Crawford (and removed after Act I), DiDonato shared the "Will you get a load of that?" reaction with the audience – setting the scene for Handel's mythical plot to convey elemental truth through wonderfully artificial means.