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LISTENER'S BOX Responses to "Handel in a Little Black Dress" December 3, 2002
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(Editor's Note: You can reach George Thomson's review of Alcina from last week's issue — click on "Last Week" at the bottom of the current Main Page — or by clicking here.)
During that time of idolized castratti and great prime donne, the da capo
arias were ideal settings, indeed purposefully so, for best displaying great
voices. No great singer of the day would ever sing the music as bare bones
as it was sung in SFO's Alcina. Handel didn't intend it to be sung that way!
After all these exalted performers were all as famous as, if not more famous
than, the composer, and certainly vastly higher paid. So they would gladly boost
their reputations and income with pyrotechnics, which captivated the audiences. It also made the da
capo repeats eagerly anticipated and not something to make you look at your watch! Yet I do not recall
anyone bringing up this enormous shortcoming.
Secondly, to me, there was no great "feeling" emanating from the orchestra
pit. It was all very (too) correct and metronomic. With conducing like this,
the ominous prediction in an Opera News editoral a while back — that in
the near future most opera companies will have computer generated-orchestras — will
come true sooner and without notice.
When I studied piano under a teacher who had studied with San Francisco's
superb but unrecognized Lev Shor, she would always draw little squiggles
between notes in Mozart sonatas, where I had to "breathe." Glenn Gould
showed how this musical "breathing" could make Bach sound like singing and
not simply dry aural architecture. There was none of it in Alcina. Little
wonder that so many of the audience on the night of the premiere fled that
austere, colorless rendering of Handel, set before a totally anti-Handelian
production.
— Jack R. Juhasz
I cannot fathom why all the other reviewers chose to completely ignore
the loathsomeness of this scene. The directors obviously thought up this
completely gratuitous business with the intent to offend their audiences.
And what did they (the directors) think of imposing this onto the singers
who had to perform this act live, in front of 3000 people, while singing?
In the other reviews, I had read about all puerile, silly stage
actions and contortions to which the singers were subjected.
Against my better judgment, I went to the show anyway. Had
I known the directors had invented a rape scene, I certainly
would have thrown away my ticket.
Having seen it, the horror of that scene has stuck. I can't bear
to play music from Alcina now. Handel's music has nothing to do with the
directors' sordid imagination, but their image remains. Thank you
to Pamela Rosenberg for bringing Handel's wonderful music to new
audiences.
She should hope that her audience has great endurance for ludricrous
stagings and large stomachs for gratuitous brutality, if she wishes
them to return next season.
— D. Nguyen
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