Opera Alcina, Bolshoi Theatre: reviews, description, history and interesting facts

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The opera "Alcina" by Handel on the New Stage of the Bolshoi Theater can be attributed to the sensation of the theatrical season of 2017. Director Cathy Mitchell, with her production, provides an opportunity to reconsider the traditional attitude towards opera not only to the audience, but also to critics. In the form of an erotic thriller in the realities of our time, a harmless fairy tale written by Handel appeared before the audience.

In October 2017, two productions were added to the posters of Moscow opera houses. These are opera-fairy tales staged at the Bolshoi Theater - Alcina by Handel and Hansel and Gretel by Humperdinck at the Novaya Opera.

Poster "New Opera"

According to the director of the "Novaya Opera" D. Sibirtsev, the theater did not plan to stage "Hansel and Gretel" this season. But due to the fact that the staging of another fairy tale planned in the repertoire was postponed, director E. Odegova suggested including Hansel and Gretel, an opera for children, which was in her plans for the near future, in the repertoire. This show was very popular inpre-revolutionary Russia, but under the name "Vanya and Masha", and was in the Private Russian Opera.

Odegova believes that this is a very timely production, as it is a fairy tale-opera for children, despite the fact that this phenomenon is rare on the domestic stage.

"Alcina" at the Bolshoi Theater

"Alcina" was not popular in Russia. The first time she came was from the B altic States as a tour performance of the Tallinn Opera in 1985 and the Riga Opera in 2003. Handel's works were rarely used in Soviet times, and "Alcina" became the third production after "Julius Caesar" staged at the Bolshoi Theater in 1979 and in 2015 the premiere of the opera "Rodelinda".

On January 16, 2015, in honor of the 330th anniversary of the birth of Handel, the opera "Alcina" was presented in a concert format in the Tchaikovsky Hall. The star of the Latvian opera Inga Kalna participated in the concert program. She performed as Alcina seven very complex arias. The singer participated in the concert program with bronchitis, but nevertheless sang all the arias. And, as the audience noticed in reviews of the opera "Alcina" by Handel at the Bolshoi Theater, she sang better than her colleagues without bronchitis. With this part, she conquered the world opera stage.

These performances were signs of openness to the theatrical culture of Europe and the desire to become part of the world theatrical space, to join the baroque repertoire, which has been developing in the West for more than half a century.

Fromhistory of Handel's opera

German Georg Friedrich Handel lived for many years in England, wrote operas in the Italian style and in Italian. This is the recognized and greatest composer who ever lived. Written in 1735 by Handel, the opera "Alcina" refers to the magical and resembles a fantasy novel. After its first production, for some reason, the opera disappears from the repertoires for a long time. She is remembered only in 1928.

In the 20th century, critics singled out only two successful productions of it: in 1960, the opera was staged at the Teatro La Fenice (Venice), in 1999 it was hosted by the Paris Opera. In 1978, at the festival in Aix-en-Provence, "Alcina" was not understood and accepted by everyone. Bernard Foccroul, artistic director of the festival, thinks that this is quite normal, as conservatives and modernists clash here, having their own views on what is happening on stage.

Handel score

In Handel's opera, the love line is shown by the images of the warrior Ruggiero and his beloved Bradamante, who dressed as a warrior and went in search of her beloved. Her task is to pull Ruggiero into reality from the enveloping charms of Alcina. The score of Handel spells out the psychological states and feelings of the characters, reflecting passion and despair in his melodies. In his work, he used tools that make it possible to understand and hear great and genuine feelings in the score of the opera. By the way, the opera by Friedrich Handel is quite often staged on various stages of the West in our time.

Jointproject

The joint work on Mozart's opera "Don Giovanni" by artists of the Bolshoi Theater and the festival in Aix-en-Provence began in 2011. In the spring of 2017, soloists from the Bolshoi Theater and Aix-en-Provence staged two performances by Kathy Mitchell on the Russian stage: "Written on Skin" and "Funeral Night". A joint product and continuation of the cooperation of these teams is the production of the opera Alcina at the Bolshoi Theater on the New Stage.

This is Handel's third opera, the premiere performances of which will be held on the New Stage of the Theatre. This is not the first time the ensemble has staged this opera. In 2015, at the status festival in Aix-en-Provence, the Bolshoi Theater was a co-producer of her production.

Kathy Mitchell version

Today you can find versions of performances whose directors rethink the work, interpreting them based on current realities. The famous English director Katie Mitchell is no exception, and her imagination knows no bounds. The heroines of her performance are moved from the era of Handel to our century, giving the fairytale story the reality of our days. As a result, the opera turned out to be unusual and bright. In general, baroque operas (written before the classics by Beethoven and Mozart) are very rarely staged in Russia, since it is believed that there are no singers who can perform early music. The opera staged by Kathy Mitchell was no exception, with guest opera singers singing the lead roles.

The premiere of "Altsina" at the Bolshoi Theater took place on October 18, 2017, and morefour performances during October were also premieres and took place on the New Stage of the Bolshoi Theater. All this time, Muscovites and guests of the capital were under the spell of Altsina.

Score by Cathy Mitchell

If for 400 years the viewer has seen the opera "Alcina" in the format of a man's vision of it, then Cathy Mitchell has found her score, focusing on the feminist core of the plot. The story she told in the opera "Alcina" at the Bolshoi Theater is ingenious moves and a good production. The score of the performance is simply virtuoso. This is the transformation of a harmless Baroque opera by Handel into an erotic performance, where the main character Alcina sings most of the arias in bed.

Katie Mitchell's production is a reflection of the human essence, the naturalness of human reactions and instincts. The doctrine of the play is the illusion of youth. Alcina never knew love and had only sexual experience. She falls in love for the first time in many centuries of her existence. Mitchell showed a woman's attitude to love, sex and age in her baroque opera.

Cinematic performance

In front of the viewer on the stage of the theater, representing two floors, all the magic of the opera takes place in real time. The ugly old sorceress Alcina and her sister Morgana live on a kind of island, which today turns into a suite, surrounded by gray unlit closets - the wrong side of luxury. It is in them that the real life of Alcina and Morgana takes place (lower floor of the stage).

According to Mitchell, in the opera,based on the chivalric poem "Furious Roland", written in the 16th century, there are no castles and knights, but there are people with machine guns and camouflage, there is a huge bed in the center of the stage, where erotic scenes are played out with whips and ropes. It is here that Alcina turns into sexual slaves everyone who crosses their possessions. There are among them those who are tired of love, they are turned into stuffed animals in a kind of laboratory, which is located on the second floor of the stage - the attic. In the comments about "Altsina" at the Bolshoi Theater, the audience noted the unusual scenery of the performance and its similarity to a cinematic tape, when several actions can be watched at the same time.

Interesting finds of the play

An interesting discovery of Katie Mitchell in her production is a kind of dubbing of artists. In fact, the roles of Alcina and Morgana are played by two opera singers and two dramatic actresses. Thanks to this, Alcina and her sister Morgana turn from luxurious beauties into old women in the blink of an eye, crossing the wall of their closets, and vice versa, returning to the central stage, they become enviable beauties. This instant reincarnation was liked by the audience, which they wrote about in their reviews of "Altsina" at the Bolshoi Theater.

Much of the credit for the production of sets and costumes in the performance belongs to set designer Chloe Lamford and costume designer Laura Hopkins.

Composition of singers and musicians

A unique connoisseur of baroque music of the Middle Ages, Italian conductor Andrea Marcon worked at the Bolshoitheater with a mixed cast. These were full-time theater musicians and guest performers on such old instruments as baroque brass and the continuo group. Having limited time to prepare the performance, Marcon nevertheless achieved an understanding of music by those musicians who do not specialize in it. To master the playing skills, you need to practice this music not occasionally, but systematically.

Marcon explained that baroque has almost the same freedom for a soloist as jazz. In baroque opera, the word and text of arias are primary, instrumental accompaniment is secondary. That is why not all the justified requirements of the conductor were realized. The reason was the limited vocal capabilities of the soloists.

The performance was attended by invited Western singers who have the ability to sing ancient music, where big loud voices with vibration are not needed. These are Heather Engebretson (Alcina), David Hansen (Ruggiero), Katarina Bradic. However, even with Heather Engebreton, not everything in the arias developed as Marcon demanded. She had enough non-singing sounds associated with a light timbre and breaks in musical phrases. According to critics, the soloist of the Bolshoi Theater Anna Aglatova (Morgana) could well have come up in terms of voice capabilities for the role of prima Alcina.

Reviews

"Alcina" at the Bolshoi Theater was presented to the audience five times in October and forced to reconsider the traditional view of the opera. The audience at the performance was not bored. They saw the vicissitudes of romantic love withall its capriciousness, fatalism, stupidity and weakness. Directed by Cathy Mitchell, opera lovers have the rare pleasure of watching the themes of reality and illusion, truth and deceit unfold. Reviews of the opera "Alcina" at the Bolshoi Theater were mixed.

A lot of good things were said in the reviews about the performance about the American actress Heather Engebretson, who performed the main role of Alcina, who participated in the baroque opera for the first time. Spectators also note that sometimes they sit frozen in tension, the director's text of the play turned out to be so unexpected for many.

True, the understudies did not always work smoothly. Transformations sometimes (not in all performances) were performed poorly, and the viewer saw both the beauty and the old woman at the same time. At times there were inconsistencies in noticeable details, such as the height of the singer and the understudy actress. After all, the old Morgana cannot be taller than her young self? This, too, could be read in the reviews of "Altsin" of the Bolshoi Theater. Many opera lovers liked Alexey Korenevsky, a young singer who performed his arias almost flawlessly. He is young, and it is difficult to say what kind of singer he will be after the transitional age mutation, but he understands music and feels it.

Staging baroque operas on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater is most likely not an accident. Whether they will be included in the troupe's repertoire or not, no one has voiced it yet.