Handel: Rinaldo

Avant Garde Handel
Rinaldo is a warrior on a "crusade" to "liberate" Jerusalem. En route, Armida, the Saracen Queen of Damascus falls in love with him, and being a sorceress, she uses magic to capture him. Earlier, she had ensnared Rinaldo's beloved, Almerina, daughter of the General of the crusade. Eventually both are freed by some counter-magic and Rinaldo conquers Jerusalem, and, as a result, Armida is converted to Christianity. If you think it might be a story hard to stage, you are right. But, in Handel's time, the story didn't matter much, it was for the arias that the audience came-especially those sung by famous "castrati.". The opera abounds in this last commodity, with four castrati parts (usually sung by counter-tenors today), two soprano parts and a bass part. Its saving grace is some of the most ravishing music Handel ever wrote.

This performance is a throughly "camp" production-in modern dress, mostly. I am generally not a fan of updating operas (especially when the...

"There's a burlesque theatre where the gang likes to go..."
On this DVD, during the scene in "Rinaldo" where Argante, the King of Jerusalem is singing of his love for Almirena, daughter of the general of the besieging Christian army, a gigantic plastic bobble-headed doll rolls onto stage and drops its pants. Then it turns its back to the audience.

My feelings about this production, exactly.

The DVD's added feature is a movie called "Handel the Entertainer." In it Sir Peter Jonas, the General Director of the Bayerischen Staatsoper and Harry Bicket, the conductor discuss Handel and their treatment of "Rinaldo." Sir Peter considers "Rinaldo," one of Handel's early works, a comic farce and treats it as a burlesque. This production features several partial strip teases, including that of the previously-mentioned bobble-headed doll, and a fair amount of genital groping, so 'burlesque' is really an operative term here, not 'erotic undercurrent' as was Sir Peter's intent. The wicked but loving...

Watch with a blindfold for best enjoyment
Oh dear...

Is there some sort of rule in Director School that states "Do not stage in period. Wherever possible, be tasteless, be vulgar, ensure that your staging has nothing to do with the music, and above all, make the singers do very stupid things"?

I suspect many modern directors live in deadly fear of not being avant-garde. They must wake in terrible fear in the middle of the night, having suffered a nightmare of having produced a "traditional" opera. Oh shame, shame, shame... What a horror to avoid, because after all, it would prove nothing but that the director's mind is unoriginal and that he cannot be piquant and daring, brave and contemporary... right?

Hmm. Is it not time for directors to realise that they are NOT being original in creating a visual mess like the one presented in this DVD? Every second director is doing it - so where is the originality? The audiences must be seeing through the lack of scholarly thought involved in a "just...

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