Modern street cred versus operatic cliché
Rupert Christiansen reviews Tolomeo; Erismena at the Arts Theatre, Cambridge and Theodora at the Barbican
It was Tolomeo that in 1728 put paid to the Royal Academy of Music, Handel's attempt to combine the production of opera with its composition. The main reason for the company's flop was the wildfire success of Gay's The Beggar's Opera, with its devastating satire of Italian opera's pretensions and conventions. But there is also something intrinsically lacklustre about Tolomeo: its plot is a formulaic construct of mismatched love affairs and mistaken identities, and despite a few exquisite arias (notably "Stille amare" and "Dite, che fa") and duets, the music seems lacking in both the energy and the sensuality of Handel at his best. "Decent but unexceptional" is the judgment of Grove's Dictionary of Opera, with which I concur.
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