When Opera Atelier staged Handel's Alcina last fall ( Magic Shadows ), I was immediately intrigued by the resemblance of the storyline to Tasso's famous Renaissance romance of Rinaldo and Armida. Lo and behold, Opera Atelier's opening presentation for this season is a remounting of their production of Lully's Armide! And so we revisit similar story material, but with a very different musical and scenic emphasis.
Armide was one of Lully's last works, and exemplified the new style of the tragedie lyrique which he helped to evolve. It's notable as one of the very first times that an opera devoted so much time to the development of a character -- and that character is, remarkably, not the Crusader knight Renaud but the pagan sorceress Armide.
The contrast to Handel's great masterpiece is striking. By the time Handel composed Alcina, the Italian opera seria was hedged around with a whole range of conventions of style -- and some of those conventions, such as the show-stopping virtuoso aria, continued to operate well into the twentieth century. Lully's work is a very different sort of creation altogether, closer in style to one much earlier masterpiece, Monteverdi's L'Orfeo. In Lully, the music is most often shaped by the dramatic need of the moment: recitative to present narrative information, accompaniment added to infuse shades of feeling, short arioso or duet segments when a character's feelings come foremost, and choral numbers to accompany the ballet which was such an essential part of the French court operas.
As always, Opera Atelier has come up with a truly sumptuous production to present this wonderful music drama. Gerard Gauci's sets abandon the elaborate trompe l'oeil effects of some of his other productions in favour of a plainer style of flat backdrop painting which still conveys location very effectively -- and there are a number of locations in this work. The costumes adopt bright primary and secondary colours for the ladies of the singing cast and for all the dancers of the ballet, while the men in the singing roles are clothed in variants of dark brown, but with luxurious materials. The swirl of colours in the ballet sections is one of the great visual delights of this production.
Given the emphasis on the character of the Islamic sorceress Armide, her role requires a first-rate singing actress. Armide has to be mobile and emotive; plain old stand-and-deliver singing would be fatal to the part, and to the opera as a whole. Peggy Kriha Dye gives a first-rank interpretation of a complex character part. She makes use of all the shades of a very flexible voice, soaring gloriously in one passage only to fall to a whisper of sound a few minutes later, or turn to an outright snarl when her hatred dominates her. The critical solo where she tries to kill the sleeping Renaud, only to struggle with her own emotions as she finds herself falling in love with him instead, is the true dramatic highlight of the entire piece.
Around her is gathered a strong cast, some familiar to OA audiences, and some less so. Several people have to play multiple roles. Among the more striking was baritone Daniel Belcher in his role as the allegorical figure of La Haine ("Hatred") -- darkly, intensely powerful in the third act exorcism of Love.
Sopranos Meghan Lindsay and Carla Huhtanen were especially memorable in the comical fourth act as they played evil spirits trying to seduce two Crusader knights from their mission to recall Renaud from his spell-enslaved state. Tenor Aaron Ferguson and bass-baritone Olivier LaQuerre as the knights matched the two spirits in clear singing mingled equally with comic byplay.
This scene, incidentally, ended with a staging goof that really caught my attention. The two knights are bearing Armide's magic sceptre to protect themselves, and bringing a magical diamond shield to show Renaud the reflection of his true state. At the end of the scene, having successfully (although barely) withstood the wily lures of Lindsay and Huhtanen, the knights headed jauntily off stage, leaving the shield and sceptre behind. The "error" became glaringly obvious moments later when they reappeared in the next scene safely carrying the sceptre and shield! It was noticeable precisely because Opera Atelier productions usually pay close attention to such details!
Tenor Colin Ainsworth took the role of Renaud, believably capturing the almost arrogantly self-aware knight and the spell-struck lover equally well.
The Atelier Ballet contributed significantly to the overall impact of the production, not least in the dance where several of the dancers discreetly used finger cymbals, bells, and castanets, to fine exotic effect.
As ever, the entire production rested with utter security upon the crisp, sprightly playing of the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, with the entire performance strongly directed by David Fallis.
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