A Handel rom-com with extra absurdity
Michael White on ENO's self-mocking Partenope
17 October 2008

Given that human beings live their lives in speech rather than song, you could safely describe opera, which does the reverse, as surreal. But few stage directors admit it, preferring to camouflage the fact with futile efforts at veracity. And fewer still come clean enough to make an issue of the surreal as Christopher Alden does in his new Partenope at ENO, using it as a way into the odd, irrational world of 18th-century Handelian comedy.

Most Handel operas have comic moments, but Partenope is comedy up-front and absolute: an 18th-century equivalent to rom-com, featuring a virgin queen (she of the title) pursued by an assortment of lovers who comprise almost everyone else in the cast.

As usual for the time, these lovers include castrati and travesti (women passing themselves off as men). But where you're normally expected to ignore such things, Partenope invites you to enjoy and laugh at them. Self-consciously it mocks its own conventions - which embrace additional narrative absurdity like wars emerging out of nowhere, causing no particular concern, and being easily dispatched.

Earlier this summer the Les Azuriales festival in France staged the piece as an Edwardian house party with the required battle scene enacted as a tug-of-war. Christopher Alden at ENO takes a similar approach, but with more specific points of reference in that Partenope, the hostess, becomes that queen of 1920s salon muses Nancy Cunard, and her lover-guests include the avant-garde photographer Man Ray. Which is where the surrealism comes in, as Ray adapts realities to suit his lens and, among other things, sets up the "war" as a camera stunt.

The idea is contrived but clever, and just about works thanks to an unusually good cast who bring definition to their characters and sing beautifully in the process. In fact, I can't remember when ENO last managed to pull together such a classy ensemble of voices.

Rosemary Joshua is elegance personified in the title role and, along with Christine Rice (as Arsace) and Patricia Bardon (Rosmira), delivers Handelian coloratura singing of the first order, brilliantly alive with clear, clean technical security. John Mark Ainsley bravely turns Emilio into the deadpan, enigmatic, frankly unattractive character of Man Ray, sacrificing to curiosity what the role would normally offer in the way of glamour. And Iestyn Davies as Armindo all but dominates the show with countertenor singing of extraordinary, fleshed-out fullness and endearing pathos as the timid lover who eventually gets the girl.

Add the convincing transformation of the ENO orchestra into a "period" ensemble by conductor Christian Curnyn (a star in the making who really knows how to pace, phrase and uplift this kind of repertory) and you have that often promised but rarely delivered thing, an unmissable show.

On the subject of conductors and uplift, I've just been to the Bonn Beethovenfest which is one of the big annual fixtures in the German concert calendar and finished this year with an indication of the extent to which German orchestras are finding homes for English maestros.

From Beecham to Colin Davis, there's always been the odd Brit making his mark on Teutonic soil; but they were few and far between until, spectacularly, Rattle got the Berlin Philharmonic. Now we seem to be invading. And the last two nights of the Beethovenfest, had Jeffrey Tate with the Hamburg Symphony, which he's about to take over, followed by Jonathan Nott with the Bamberg Symphony, which he's been running for several years.

In both cases the programmes were based around complete versions of the Beethoven theatre scores that tend only to be heard in part; and while Tate's complete Egmont was disappointingly ponderous and dull-edged, Nott's Creatures of Prometheus came charged with energy and rhythmic force. A sharp and telling contrast.

But where Nott and his Bamberg band really scored was the world premiere of a piece by leading German composer Wolfgang Rihm. Called Verwandlung 4, it was the latest instalment in a series of scores that collectively amount to work-in-progress and may one day build into movements of a symphony.

This one lasted nearly 20 minutes but felt like five, shooting past in a spectacular, pulsating sweep of energy as the material gathered force, fragmented, dissolved down, and then erupted back into the flow. Wildly eclectic and disgorging references to other times, composers, and musical languages, it was a dazzling piece of writing: the most impressive premiere I've heard this year.

And it was stunningly performed. Nott and the Bambergers are such a powerhouse, I don't understand why they aren't in the top ranks of the world orchestral league. Nor do I understand why Nott is so rarely seen in his own country, conducting British orchestras. He's sharp-eared, inspirational, dynamic. And it's time we claimed him back.