Reviews 2012
Reviews 2012
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by Georg Frideric Handel, directed by Marshall Pynkoski
Tafelmusik, Koerner Hall, Toronto
January 19-22, 2012
To celebrate its 30th anniversary Tafelmusik has had the wonderful idea of presenting Handel’s seldom performed “musical drama” Hercules (1745). It has had the further brainwave of presenting the work as a “staged concert” directed by Marshall Pynkoski, renowned for his work with Opera Atelier. The notion of a “staged concert” may be self contradictory, but as it turned out Pynoski’s vision proved a perfect match for an unjustly neglected work whose genre puzzled its contemporaries.
Dwindling interest in opera caused Handel to turn to the oratorio, especially the oratorio in English. Oratorios were supposed to be based on religious subjects, so the subject matter of Hercules plus the fact that it was first performed in a theatre not in a church, made the public suspect that Handel was presenting in Hercules an opera disguised as an oratorio. After its failure and final performances in 1749, the work was not revived until 1925 when it was proclaimed a masterpiece. The work has since been staged as an opera, most notably by Peter Sellars for the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 2011, but has not yet become as popular in the opera house as Handel’s Semele (1743), another oratorio with a mythological subject.
Hercules is written to a libretto by Reverend Thomas Broughton based on Sophocles’ tragedy The Women of Trachis. In Sophocles Hercules’ wife Dejanira has been lamenting his long absence. Her joy at his sudden arrival is mitigated by the presence of the princess Iole, whom Hercules has brought back as a prize of war. Fearing that Hercules has been unfaithful, Dejanira remembers she has a love potion. Once the centaur Nessus offered to help Dejanira cross a river but halfway over attempted to rape her. Hercules seeing this killed Nessus with an arrow. The dying centaur told Dejanira that to make up for his misdeeds, she should collect his blood and save it. A garment dipped in it and given to Hercules would cause him to remain faithful to her. Dejanira does this unaware that Nessus has tricked her. When Hercules puts on the robe dipped in Nessus’ blood the robe not only poisons him in the most agonizing way but clings to his flesh so he cannot remove it without flaying himself. To end his pain he asks to be set on a funeral pyre.
To make the story more acceptable to polite society, Broughton made a few changes. He makes the relationship between Hercules and Iole completely innocent whereas in Sophocles Hercules had attacked Oechalia with the express purpose of making Iole his mistress. Broughton omits the incident in Sophocles where Hercules is so enraged when the poisoned cloak takes effect that he kills Lichas the servant who gave it to him. Broughton also has Dejanira descend into madness when she discovers what she has done rather than kill herself on her marriage bed as in his source.
Even with Broughton’s toning down of the sex and violence, Hercules is still so dramatic that it is much easier to imagine as an opera than an oratorio, especially given Pynkoski’s staging. The Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra occupies the back half of the Koerner Hall stage leaving the front half free as a playing area. Opera Atelier’s familiar stone benches stage left and right immediately set anyone at ease who may have wondered how “staged” the work would be. The three female dancers, Iole (Nathalie Paulin) and Dejanira (Allyson McHardy) all wear dance frocks of identical cut, with the notable detail that Dejanira’s is in the sickly yellowish green associated with jealousy. The two male singers Sumner Thompson as Hercules and Colin Balzer as his son Hyllus wear black shirts, pants and musketeer boots and so does the herald Lichas, a travesti role in the original, played by Laura Pudwell. The Tafelmusik Chamber Choir is ranged in the first balcony above the orchestra.
This “staged concert” was thus far more “staged” than one might have expected; for not only was the cast off book and in costumes but they acted in the intense yet stylized fashion we have come to expect in Opera Atelier projections. With lovely dances choreographed by Jeannette Lajeunesse-Zingg to complement certain passages and rudimentary lighting from Raha Javanfar, the production missed only Gerard Gauci’s painted backdrops, more specific costuming and subtler lighting to be classed as “fully staged”. I would love to see what a costume designer would create for Hercules’ poisoned cloak and how Pynkoski would stage the spectacle of Hercules’ suicide and apotheosis.
Hercules may be the title character, but the show really centres on Dejanira. McHardy’s voice has only grown darker, stronger and more lustrous over time. On January 20, she did not quite display the effortless agility needed for runs in Dejanira’s first major aria “The world, when day's career is run”, but once her voice warmed up, she gave a gorgeous account of “Begone, my fears, fly hence, away” and made the mad scene “Where shall I fly? Where hide this guilty head?” so thrilling that the audience, trained not to applaud after every number, broke that rule thunderously to acclaim her.
Both Paulin and Pudwell sang beautifully and with exceptionally clear diction. Paulin’s most moving contribution was her lament for her dead father in “My father! Ah, methinks I see”, while Pudwell gave a superbly grave account of Hercules’ poisoning in the recitative and air “Ye sons of Trachin, mourn your valiant chief” that begins Act 3.
Sumner Thompson has a powerful yet agile baritone and was hugely impressive in Hercules’ rage aria “O Jove, what land is this, what clime accurst” describing the agony he suffers wearing the poisoned cloak, where his numerous runs reflect shivers of pain. Balzer’s heroic tenor shone in Hyllus’ aria “Let not fame the tidings spread” and in his duet with Iole.
Pynkoski used his staging to make points clear that are not in the libretto itself. When Hercules is consoling Iole over the loss of her father and country, Pynkoski has Dejanira enter, observe and misinterpret their embrace, and exit again, thus providing a more concrete basis for her jealousy. The betrothal of Iole and Hyllus at the end would seem to come out of nowhere, except that Pynkoski has Hyllus fall in love with Iole at her first entrance. Zingg does her part too. In the final chorus of the Trachinians, Zingg has Jeanne Lamon descend from the podium where she has been conducting while playing the violin and move to the stage where the dancers perform a round dance with Lamon at the centre, thus acknowledging that this production is a celebration of Tafelmusik itself--its glorious music-making during this performance and over the last three decades.
Such a feast of music and drama made one think how easy it would be for Opera Atelier to add Hercules to its repertoire. It also raised the notion that the “staged concert” might be an excellent way for Tafelmusik to bring to life the innumerable 17th- and 18th-century operas thought perhaps too obscure for a full staging by Opera Atelier. Rarities by Cavalli, Vivaldi, Mayr, Hasse and J.C. Bach have all recently been staged. In fact, McHardy’s previous engagement this month was J.C. Bach’s Amadis de Gaule in Paris. Now that the COC Ensemble Studio no longer has its own show each year, devoted to the baroque in alternate years, Tafelmusik could fill this gap and, as in this resoundingly successful Hercules, spread, as the final chorus sings, “The blessings that from peace and freedom flow”.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Allyson McHardy.
For tickets, visit www.tafelmusik.org.
2012-01-21
Hercules