A fast and witty satire that every fan of Handel must rush to see
Opera Berenice Royal Opera/linbury Theatre
Berenice dates from the rocky final chapter of Handel’s career as an opera composer. Commissioned
in 1736 for the first theatre on the Covent Garden site, it was composed in little over a month while he was recovering from a stroke and it flopped into oblivion after only three performances. Today scholars rank it very low in the catalogue – Jonathan Keates bemoans its “platitudes” – and it has seldom been revived.
Burdened with such knowledge, I suspected that the sound of a barrel being scraped would be heard during this co-production between the Royal Opera and London Handel Festival. Not at all: this is one for every Handel lover. It may not be a masterpiece on the level of its predecessors Ariodante and Alcina, but it is fast, witty and satirical, following a typical opera seria plot as it charts romantic and political intrigue at the court of an Egyptian queen infatuated with a prince who prefers her sister. One superb aria for Berenice, “Chi t’intende”, accompanied by a virtuosic oboe obbligato, stands out: otherwise the score is notable for a number of pretty duets and an overall perky energy that belies Handel’s enfeebled health and compensates for the lack of much original inspiration.
Or was this the impression left by draconian cuts? Whatever the cause, the performance here was first-rate, benefiting from the Linbury’s intimate dimensions and its generous acoustic, as well as the crisp playing of the London Handel Orchestra sparkly conducted by Laurence Cummings. A decision to translate the libretto paid off: Selma Dimitrijevic has done a fine job of providing idiomatic English without inappropriate vulgarities.
Adele Thomas’s staging, colourfully costumed by Hannah Clark, strikes a comparably fine balance between period decorum and theatrical vitality. Seated during the overture on a semicircular banquette sipping tea, the cast play scratchy 18th-century opera singers rather than the historical dignitaries specified by the libretto. The farcical moments are tastefully reined in, with just enough sincerity to keep the audience emotionally engaged. After a dry and cautious start, Claire Booth soon warmed up to give a stylish and commanding performance as the scheming Berenice. James Laing as her counter-tenor beloved and Rachael Lloyd as her beleaguered sister were admirable too, but the star of the show was the American mezzosoprano Jacquelyn Stucker – one of the Royal Opera’s exceptionally strong current crop of apprentices and clearly a name to remember.