IN REVIEW: Boston Early Music Festival presents a Kansas City first, a fully authentic Baroque opera
Performances of Baroque operas are rare enough, but rarer still are productions that take into account all aspects of 18th-century performance practice—not just historically informed singing and period instruments but also costumes, décor, gestures and stage direction that reflect what an audience of the period might have experienced. Normally one can hear such things only in cities like Paris, London or Amsterdam, and it was thus with great anticipation we attended the Boston Early Music Festival’s production of Handel’s Acis and Galatea, which despite a few reservations was one of the major theatrical and musical events of the Kansas City season. We’ve become accustomed to Cynthia Siebert’s Friends of Chamber Music bringing us delights that normally only appear on “the coasts,” and this presentation—the conclusion of the Friends’ 2010-2011 season—made us feel we were living in a very big city indeed.
Acis and Galatea was composed as a masque for private performance at the estate of the Duke of Chandos outside London, and years later was reconceived as something more nearly approaching an opera. Today is it quite often performed by opera companies in this later version of 1732, but it was the ambition of the BEMF to return to the original 1718 “chamber version,” scored for a smallish instrumental ensemble and five singers, who also sing as a quintet in lieu of the chorus of the later version. This earlier version had languished for years virtually ignored, and the Festival has revived it and created an operatic presentation of it. Their performance on April 1st at the Folly Theater showed, among other things, the viability—arguably even superiority—of this originally conceived version.
The stage was set as if we were in a drawing-room, perhaps, of an 18th-century aristocratic estate—or as we were supposed to glean, literally that of the Duke and Duchess of Chandos. Period furniture stage left and right provided “parking spaces” for characters when they are not singing. (All five are onstage virtually throughout the two-hour production.) Anna Watkins’ lavish costumes, in muted pastels and complete with elaborately embroidered jackets and effusive wigs, might have seemed over-the-top but will not surprise anyone familiar with period paintings of the 18th-century European nobility at play. This is indeed what they wore, and though the wigs and makeup gave the males of the cast a bit of a femme look, these details faded into the background as one became more and more drawn into Handel’s peerless music. Another nice “period touch” was the successive placement of paintings of the period on a center-stage easel, each representing a moment or mood being enacted in the drama—reproductions, as it happens, of actual paintings found at the Chandos estate at Cannons.
The impressive singing throughout was that of five singers fully steeped in 18th-century style. Teresa Wakim’s soprano is small, and it could hardly be heard in the opening “O the pleasure of the plains” ensemble, but in solo capacity it was lush and filled with subtlety. In arias such as Acis’ “Where shall I seek,” stately Aaron Sheehan demonstrated a bright, affecting voice filled with humanity but also quite adept at the florid Baroque aesthetic. His approach was a good match for Teresa’s, both vocally and from an artistic standpoint. The “choreography” of his arm gestures was especially apt, as he fluidly adopted “period poses” we have learned from iconographical representations of stage productions.
Douglas Williams was a brooding Polyphemus—more gentleman-with-eyepatch than Cyclops—and he sang his famous “O ruddier than the cherry” aria with good technique and a sort of hammy vigor. (I wish he had brought more of this vigor—volume, even—to the ensembles, which felt a bit light on the bass line.) Jason McStoots’ tenor was perhaps not as “surface-beautiful” as the others but he sang with amazing clarity and an exceptional ability to embellish; in his “Consider, fond shepherd” one was always aware that each phrase had a destination, and each arrival came as a moment of inspiration. Zachary Wilder sang Corydon’s celebrated “Would you gain the tender creature” with a plush, mellow-amber tenor; halfway through he removed his wig, revealing a totally bald pate—an illustration, perhaps, of the text’s notion that beauty brings lifeless charms if the heart is not present.
The instrumental ensemble was exceptional, despite some blats from the oboes, and was given several chances to shine—in solo capacity but also in such moments as Acis’ “Love sounds th’ alarm,” performed with such rhythmic vigor by lutenists/guitarists Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs that it bordered on flamenco.
The aspect of this production I felt least convincing was the dramatic conceit of setting the drama at Cannons, where each character “represented” one of the personages possibly present there in 1718. Thus Acis and Galatea are the Duke and Duchess, Polyphemus is the poet Alexander Pope, Damon is Handel and Coridon represents the poet John Gay. Throughout the opera, the characters—in addition to playing their mythical roles—also perform functions of their 18th-century personas: Handel fusses with the score and keeps giving the performers new versions, Pope skulks in a corner jotting down love verses, others bring paintings to the easel for admiration.
Part of the problem was that there was too much extraneous busy-ness on stage, which made it difficult for the eye or indeed the attention to focus on the musico-dramatic issue of the moment. But the larger issue with stage director Gilbert Blin’s albeit clever conceit was that it was never explained, and it was not made fully clear through the stage action itself either. I spoke with several audience members at intermission, and the only aspect most had perceived clearly was that Damon was, in some respect, Handel—though they didn’t know why. Baroque opera is challenging enough without having to grapple with “play-within-a-play” spins that detract from a story’s noble classical origins. Perhaps that’s a purist’s view—but in a production in which every other aspect has been carefully gauged to reproduce an 18th-century experience, why tinker with the very foundations of the drama?
To reach Paul Horsley, performing arts editor, send email to phorsley@sbcglobal.net.
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