Author: Natan Zamansky

Somewhere between an opera and an oratorio sits Handel’s dramatic musical work Semele. And for that reason, I will hereafter call it an “operatorio.” A generally well-liked musical retelling of the Greco-Roman myth of Semele, who, at Juno’s urging asked to see Jupiter in his fully divine form, promptly died, and the resultant child became Bacchus. You know. Standard Olympus tabloid fare. Semele was performed last night at Hill Auditorium, by the English Concert, conducted by Harry Bicket, along with the Clarion Choir, and a cast of world-renowned singers.

Semele was an unusual work for Handel in 1744. With one abstract exception, all of his previous oratorios had dealt with biblical subject matter, from the strictly-narrative Esther to the more innovative Messiah. Semele has more clearly defined characters than previous oratorios, and presents more dramatic situations that are explored within aria rather than recitative. Tellingly, it contains an unusually large number of duets, several back-to-back arias where one comprises a response to the previous (in one instance, Semele’s aria following Jupiter’s even picks up his meter and rhyme scheme, completing the last lines of his aria with the first lines of her own) and even a quartet in the first act — almost unheard of in this genre and time period.

Handel makes a lot out of very little. The score is filled with orchestral “effects,” which Handel generally seems more keen to play with in his oratorios than in his operas.This may have something also to do with the fact that the bulk of Handel’s oratorio-writing career happened after his opera-writing career was all but finished, and this change in style reflects a more general maturation as a composer. Whatever the reason, the Handel of Semele is far more playful than the Handel of Alcina, which I reviewed a few weeks ago.

The role of Semele last night was played by soprano Brenda Rae, whose performance was hampered more than anything by the fact that the titular character of this operatorio also happens to be the least compelling. Still, she did ample justice to it, and her rendition of “Myself I Shall Adore” in the third act garnered one of the only instance of mid-scene applause in the performance. And deservedly so. She brought a wonderful comic edge to the nearly eight-minute-long aria, which, through repeating only twenty-six syllables of text, can easily fall into tedium.

Equally comic was Elizabeth DeShong’s performance as Juno. (Her performance as Semele’s sister Ino — the two roles double — was more melancholy.) As Ino in Act I, DeShong enthralled with her voice (she is easily one of the best coloratura mezzos of the present day) but found the character lacking. As Juno in Act II, she made her first entrance with a fierce swagger that evoked the great mezzos of previous generations, such as Marilyn Horne and Christa Ludwig. Her Juno was both a comic and dramatic highlight of the evening. She, along with soprano Ailish Tynan as Iris, milked the first scene of Act II for every piece of laughter they could, and “Hence Iris Hence Away” achieved both riotous laughter and applause.

Bass Solomon Howard also played two roles, and if his first role as Cadmus was lacking in material, he made an impression on the audience with the sheer power of his voice the moment he first opened his mouth. A vocal highlight of Act I, he subsequently became a comic highlight in Act III, when, as Somnus, the god of Sleep, he faced off against the firey Juno. (Ailish Tynan’s Iris also played a crucial part in the comic stylings of this scene.) The lowest notes in Howard’s “Leave, Loathsome Light” got a noticeably impressed reaction from the audience around me, and his subsequent interractions with Juno received more than a few chuckles.

Countertenor Christopher Lowrey made the most of the relatively small part of Athamas, the prince to whom Semele is initially engaged, and he really came into his own in the last act, in which he sings the operatorio’s last full aria, “Despair No More Shall Wound Me,” which evokes some of the more popular excerpts from Handel’s Messiah. Benjamin Hullet had a bit more to do as Jupiter, and his rendition of “Where’er You Walk” (perhaps the operatorio’s most famous aria) was perhaps the most affecting moment of the evening.

The English Concert Orchestra was in top condition, as was the Clarion Choir. If there was one thing to be desired in the performance, it was brevity. The operatorio clocks in at about three hours of music, and the performance, which started at 7:30, did not let out until about 11:00. Still, Semele’s most lethargic moments are in its first act, and with such wonderful moments as Juno’s cheerfully sinister “Above Measure,” and the intensely dramatic “Ah Take Heed” between Jupiter and Semele, all the way through the end of Act III, it was hard not to be engaged, entertained, and at times deeply affected by this truly unique musico-theatrical operatorio.

The principal challenge of directing Baroque opera for a modern audience is, I think, the prevelance of the Da Capo aria. Da Capo arias are, in short, arias that take an ABA form. A main A section, followed by a contrasting B section, followed by a repeat of the A section, which some people feel should be ornamented with improvisations by the singer, and others feel should be sung exactly as notated. In a modern music theater mindset, we expect songs to get us from point A to point B, and the fact that so many arias in Baroque operas very specifically end with a return to the beginning seems counterintuitive to making them dramatically compelling. Of course, Handel in the 18th century wasn’t writing for a modern music theater mindset, and audiences in the 1700s approached operas very differently from how we approach them today. Meaning that sitting through contemporary productions of Baroque operas can be a real slog a lot of the time.

Alcina is one of George Frideric Handel’s more popular operas today, and when I heard that the University opera department was going to take a crack at it, my interest was immediately piqued, hopeful that the production would be able to thread the needle that is making Baroque opera compelling to a modern audience without compromising the elements that make it unique.

But first, a summary.

Alcina starts with Bradamante arriving at the island of the sorceress Alcina. She is disguised as her brother, Ricciardo, and has come to rescue her betrothed, Ruggiero, who has fallen under Alcina’s spell. Alcina is in the habit of seducing men who wash up on her island, and when she tires of them, transforming them into local wildlife a la Circe. Bradamante is accompanied the tutor, Melisso. The first person they meet on the island is Alcina’s sister, Morgana, who becomes infatuated with “Ricciardo,” which provokes the jealousy of Morgana’s suitor Oronte. Bradamante and Melisso succeed in finding Ruggiero, but he is so thoroughly under Alcina’s spell that he rebukes them. Meanwhile, a young boy called Oberto is on the island, searching for his missing father, whom Alcina has already transformed. In the rest of the plot, Bradamante and Melisso try to rescue Ruggiero from Alcina, while Morgana and Oronte work out their jealousy, and off on the side Oberto tries to get Alcina to show him his father.

And now, a review.

Right off the bat, this production was gorgeous. Gorgeous sets, gorgeous costumes, gorgeous lighting, even a pretty nifty-looking pre-show curtain. The look was very lush, but very stately, and reminded me of really old-school Jean-Pierre Ponnelle-style productions. It is a good look, a classic look, and one that works really well for this style of opera. I don’t think I can overstate how stunning the look of this production was, and the visual aspect was maybe of all aspects the most appealing.

The musical quality too was top-notch, as one would expect from the School of Music, Theater, and Dance. A phenomenal cast of singers (admittedly, I have only seen one of the two casts), and a wonderful orchestra lead by Stephanie Rhodes Russell. I did note that the orchestra was rather larger than Baroque opera typically calls for. Baroque opera often thrives with lighter voices which can sometimes get drowned out by a too-large orchestra, and it seemed that was sometimes the case here, but on the whole, the musical aspect of the production was excellent.

Unabridged, Alcina can run upwards of four hours. I estimate about an hour of material was cut from this production in an effort to get it down to a manageable length. Usually a three-act opera performed with two intermissions, this production had a single intermission inserted near the end of Act II, with the second half of the performance picking up with the last scene of Act II and going into Act III. It was a lopsided arrangement, with the first half of the evening being nearly twice as long as the second, which did make the first half somewhat fatiguing, especially as it had not only the length of two acts, but the dramatic content of two acts, which needs some time to be digested.

I had expected that the bulk of the abridgement would be in the form of cutting sections of Da Capo arias, and also trimming recitative, which turned out not to be the case. Oberto lost the largest chunk of his material (which had the side effect of making Alcina less villainous, as Oberto’s main function in the plot is to provide a victim for Alcina to antagonize so that the audience knows she’s evil), but I was surprised that as many Da Capo arias were kept entirely intact as there were.

The big problem with Da Capo arias (especially those as long as Handel writes) is how can you stage them such that by the end we feel something has actually happened? Does the aria progress the plot? Reveal something about character? Act as a signpost for an important turning point in the story? And what is the character’s reason for returning to the top of the aria? The very form makes this difficult, and I’m not going to try and be a purist and say all of Handel’s Da Capo arias are always one-hundred percent justified. Handel lived three-hundred years ago and these operas were written for a very different theatrical environment. I really think that, when presenting a baroque opera for a modern audience, there is no shame in trimming down a Da Capo aria if you can’t find a way to make it dramatically compelling.

So, yeah, a lot of the longer arias in this production were pretty stagnant, I might even go so far as to say boring. There was a lot of unmotivated standing and singing, or unmotivated wandering and singing. Sometimes it seemed that characters forgot to whom they were adressing an aria, or why they were even singing it in the first place.

Bradamante’s “jealousy” aria in the first act was one that stood out to me, because that’s one that I think very easily can be incredibly compelling, and reveal something about Bradamante’s character, but here it just wasn’t and didn’t. But most of the arias that I found stagnant were ones that I recognize are difficult to pull off theatrically, so mostly I just wished they had been trimmed down.

On the other hand, there were also arias that really really worked! Oronte and Morgana were the two most engaging characters, probably in no small part because their subplot is arguably more interesting than the main plot with Alcina and Ruggiero. Oronte is a character that I have never really liked, but in this production he was maybe the biggest highlight, and, in a novelty to me, managed to be really funny and shockingly entertaining without compromising the overall serious tone of the opera.

The interpretation of Morgana in this production was also new and interesting to me. I’ve seen her played very innocently, almost childishly sometimes, and, most notably, I have seen her played (and have typically interpreted her myself) as being as much a victim of Alcina as anyone else in the opera. (Which is why I’ve always felt that Morgana getting vanquished along with Alcina at the end is really unwarranted and unfair.) In this production, she was definitely still a more likeable and more fun-loving counterpart to Alcina, but she was also very clearly conscious of her own actions and had agency — she even carried around a sword in the first act, and used it! So this production loaded her with a bit more responsibility for her own actions, which at the same time lessened the villainous aspect of Alcina much in the same way reducing Oberto’s part did, since Alcina didn’t really seem to be excersizing any control over Morgana here.

All this considered, I still found Morgana the most likeable character in the opera, and I still feel her being vanquished at the end is undeserved. And I think it’s great that, between Morgana and Oronte, this production really managed to maintain two complex and morally ambiguous characters who were both still really likeable and fun to watch on stage, again without compromising the overall tone of the opera.

I don’t mean to diminish the other players. Bradamante, Ruggiero, Melisso, Oberto, and, of course, Alcina, as important pieces of this opera, and, considering the difficulties of Baroque opera previously mentioned, were about as well executed here as I’ve ever seen them. It was with Morgana and Oronte, though, that this production really went above and beyond, and I wish that Handel and Riccardo Broschi (the librettist), had given them the ending they deserve. I have said in the past that this opera does not deserve Morgana, and that Morgana deserves a better opera. This production confirms that for me, and adds Oronte to the list as well.

When an evening at the theater goes horribly awry, Richard Hannay finds himself on the run from the law, and before long in the depths of an international conspiracy which he must uncover in order to clear his own name. Needless to say, hilarity ensues.

***

Some things in life are deceptively simple. For example, figuring out whether or not “deceptively simple” is the appropriate term to apply to the thing you are about to describe, because “deceptively” is a terrible adverb that you should never use as long as you’re trying to communicate clearly and unambiguously. (“Clearly” and “unambiguously,” on the other hand, are both model adverbs.)

Another thing that is deceptively simple — that is — appears to be simpler than it actually is, is Patrick Barlow’s The 39 Steps. This not to be confused with Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps, or, god forbid, John Buchan’s The 39 Steps. Patrick Barlow’s The 39 Steps is a reworking of Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon’s The 39 Steps, itself an adaptation of Hitchcock’s, in turn based on Buchan’s. I cannot speak to Corble and Dimon’s interpretation, but Barlow’s interpretation of their interpretation is a Monty Python-esque reimagining of Hitchcock’s spy thriller, which calls for four skilled actors, and not much else. Sets are kept minimal by necessity, as the play changes location on a dime, and and costumes are sometimes limited to an array of jackets and hats, as they need to be changed even faster. It is a play which practically seems designed for small-scale community theater, due to its lighthearted nature and apparently low technical demands. But this is by no means easy, and retelling an entire adventure novel with just four people can leave one short of breath.

The RC Players, whose production of The 39 Steps opens March 22nd at the Keene Theater in East Quad, have assembled the requisite cast of four funny people. Sushrut Athavale leads the cast as the pencil-moustached Richard Hannay, cool and quippy, though not himself immune to comic outbursts, Hannay is the perennial leading man, and, to this end, Athavale is the only actor who plays just one role through the entire performance. In a farce, it is easy to forget about the straight man, who acts to ground the antics of the more absurd characters, but the role is one essential to the genre, and requires a comic talent of its own which Athavale certainly possesses. He is opposite Maria LoCicero, who first appears as inciting-incident-on-feet Annabella Schmidt. Once Schmidt’s plot utility is exhausted, LoCicero portrays two other characters, the Scottish Margaret, who, like Ms. Schmidt, is something of a one-scene wonder, and Pamela Edwards, the persona in which the actress spends most of her time on stage. Still, all three characters fall under scrutiny, and LoCicero does a marvelous job portraying each as distinct and uniquely entertaining.

Athavale and LoCicero are joined by JD Benison and Nicholas Megahan as the two aptly-named Clowns, who portray between them literally every other character in the play. They change their voices and costumes seemingly every sixty seconds, sometimes more, sometimes even handing characters off from one to the other in a daisy chain of hat and jacket switching. They certainly have the flashiest parts of the play, and the quick-paced broad comedy that characterizes many scenes rests squarely on their shoulders.

There is one element inherent to farce which I cannot review for myself, and that is how live comedy feeds on the audience. The broader the comedy, the more it feeds. To that end, the cast in a farce must always be on alert, careful to time their jokes to the tempo of the audience they have any given night. Thus a farce will always be continuing to find its shape, and the actors must be up to the task. Without seeing every performance in this run, I cannot say whether they are or not, but my strong suspicion is that they absolutely are.

The 39 Steps has a metatheatrical element to its comedy as well, which was splendidly executed throughout. Director Sam Allen has done some wonderful space work, which was perhaps most notable in a scene set on a moving train. I do not wish to go too far into it lest I give anything away, but let it be said that both the interior and exterior of the train were perfectly embodied and practically visible in what was, in fact, empty space, which had an exhilaratingly comic effect. In some ways, the less-furnished scenes were more impressive than the scenes that had a full contingent of chairs, tables, windows and doors, because the less that is literally portrayed, the more the cast and creative team have to come up with inventive and humorous ways to convey the same information to the audience. Suffice it to say that the bits of comedy which leaned on the fourth wall were, I thought, the most humorous moments. One moment which was very funny, but which I wish had been leaned into even more, was a moment near the end of the play where even the actors playing the characters seem to get in on the comedy, the actors themselves becoming characters, bringing us to almost Brechtian levels of verfremdungseffekt.

Speaking of meta-comedy, if I can make one nerdy nitpick, it is that the references to other Hitchcock films which litter the play (for instance, one character refers to the “Rear Window” of a house) were, with the exception of one, entirely played down, unemphasized, and, if I recall correctly, in one instance cut altogether. Now, I will be the first to say that the exclusion of reference humor is hardly something that should hamper one’s enjoyment of the play. I have myself criticized plays for relying too much on reference humor, which is exceedingly audience-dependent and often awkward to pull off. At the same time, given the abundance of jokes of all sort in The 39 Steps, (if you don’t get one joke, there’ll be four more in thirty seconds one of which you will) I don’t think the relatively small amount of reference humor works against it, and I don’t think it hurts to lean into it in this instance. On the other hand, this is a very minor nitpick, and will also only be noticed by the extreme Hitchcock geeks in the audience who also happen to have seen or read this play before. Which, for this production (though I haven’t done the demographic surveys) is probably a relatively small percentage.

In short, if you enjoy the movies of Alfred Hitchcock, and/or the comedy of Monty Python, and/or just want to enjoy a fun evening at the theater that doesn’t take itself too seriously, The 39 Steps is a brilliantly-written farce, very well executed by the RC Players. (In fact, it is all those things even if you don’t like Hitchcock/Python/fun evenings at the theater. But I don’t see why you wouldn’t.)