Rinaldo,

Until August 22 at the Arcola Theatre, London, as part of the Grimeborn Opera Festival
Producer: Ralph Bridle presents
Music by George Frideric Handel
Libretto by Giacomo Rossi
Directed by Ralph Bridle
Cast: Will Prior, Llio Evans, Susanna Davis, Danny Shelvey
Running time: approximately two hours, including interval

 

 

Handel’s Rinaldo, the first Italian-language opera created for a London audience, was an 18th-century hit about love, war and redemption.  It was written at speed and performed with lavish special effects at a time when tales of crusading knights filled the popular imagination.

Director Ralph Bridle gives us a bold, taut, stripped back version with four singers accompanied by an heroic pianist.  In keeping with our own times of unending wars, he denies us the redemption.

The focus is on the music, on the four superb young voices of the cast and on a conspicuously artificial, but moving format that takes us through an accelerated emotional cycle of peaceful, requited love, betrayal and bloody revenge masquerading as justice.

Chivalry and courtly love are alluded to in the chain mail and all-white costume of Rinaldo, virtuosically sung by counter-tenor Will Prior, while his evil opponents baritone Danny Shelvey as Argente and Susanna Davis as a soaring Armida are exotically and darkly clad.

But ultimately, it’s all about shades of grey.  The tension of the drama is in the doubt as the evil characters fall for the virtuous and the sword of justice, destiny, death and desire is repeatedly taken up and laid down as resolution ebbs and flows.

Barbara Lewis.