Alcina
Handel's opera is a fairy tale about a sorceress, Alcina (Rachelle Durkin), who casts a spell on all who come within her ambit and when she tires of these lovers she transforms them into animals or statues. The opera was designed to combine long displays of da capo singing to show off vocal techniques, spectacular stage effects suited to the sorceress's magical interventions, and tangled plots so complicated that they would make daytime soap operas look straightforward.
Director Justin Way and designers Andrew Hays and Kimm Kovac have devised a fixed set: an ornamental baroque frame encrusted with Alcina's victims. It is as exciting as a visit to the British Museum and places a heavy hand on the live action, which seems too in danger of being petrified.
In order to alleviate this effect, Way creates a back projection that plays games with perspective. At one stage we seem to be staring down at Gericault's Raft of the Medusa from above, all squirming naked bodies. At other times a black-clad chorus of demons crawls across music scores and newspapers like ants at a picnic. This device makes the set visually busy but nothing dramatic is happening, and apparently sensing this the director throws one idea after another at the screen to avoid dullness only to see it immediately discarded.
There is no magic in the concept, and sensuality - which is the opera's central concern - has as much chance on this set as a cup of tea at the Windsor acting as an aphrodisiac.
That leaves the music. There are beautiful arias in the score, many of them elegiac laments for unrequited or betrayed love. Orchestra Victoria produces some exquisite support, particularly among the solo accompaniments, but I thought that conductor Antony Walker's tempo often took the music at a walking pace that disadvantaged the singers' slower phrasing.
As Bradamante, a girl who disguises herself as a man to rescue her brother Ruggiero, Alexandra Sherman doesn't seem comfortable in the pants role. It is a difficult part to sing, requiring distinct changes of style to imply the transfer of gender, but her timbre was challenged by her lower chest notes. Catherine Carby showed vocal dash and she caught the right nobility of tone as Ruggiero overcomes bewitchment in the name of a higher love.
The performance of the evening was Durkin's Alcina. She sang the difficult coloratura with vocal panache and good articulation, although the characterisation lacked shade and her attempts to be seductive were as ephemeral as a butterfly.
Of the other principals the singing is good but not great - and Handel's operas, in many cases creaking antiques, require memorable singing. This is a cast that brings freshness and youth with crisp techniques but a lack of depth in interpretation that creates few thrills in spite of the multiple trills.
