News and Reviews

Productions of Handel’s operas don’t get much better than this one.

The uniformly brilliant cast and accomplished period orchestra in this beautiful performance created a magical weld, truly a “fusion of music and stage” in the Company’s own terms. The stage sets, managing somehow to be at once sumptuous and spare, were a striking scarlet and black; costumes and lighting effects visually arresting.

Operas of this kind consist mainly of a series of solo arias allotted to each of the prominent cast members, space unfortunately forbidding a detailed rehearsal of the high points in this lengthy (more than three hours) sequence, but there were many. The contributions of Rodelinda (Alice Privett), Garibaldo (Nicholas Morris), Grimoaldo (William Wallace), Bertarido (William Towers) and Eduige (Ida Ranzlov) were all absolutely outstanding.

Artistic director, Julian Perkins, conducted the orchestra from the harpsichord, where the beauty of Handel’s score, his ear for sonority, his potent gaps and silences between pieces of music, his changes of texture, were allowed to amaze us all over again.