George Frideric Handel, Partenope (1730)

I found this production on youtube. And there are A LOT of problems with the recording: the visuals are extremely murky, for one; it's hard to really tell what's going on, and there are so many close-ups of faces that it's hard to get an idea for where this is all taking place. Furthermore, the subtitles are wonky as hell; frequently they just appear and disappear in the blink of an eye or a few second at most, so you really have to be looking closely or have the pause button at the ready. Finally, for reasons surpassing understanding, whoever created the video decided to awkwardly edit out applause breaks--although that last one is actually less irksome than the others, which make it difficult or impossible to parse the plot here in anything but the broadest of strokes. After watching it, I belatedly realized that this very performance is available on disc, which would no doubt fix a lot of these problems (though the close-ups would still be an issue).

So that story...well, sure, I could easily crib from wikipedia, but where's the fun in that? What I got is that there's this queen, Partenope, and also Rosmira, another woman (not totally sure what her deal is) who is in drag for most of the opera. And there are two dudes, who are sort of torn between the one and the other of them, and...possibly a third dude? I think there's a third dude. But seriously, even looking at that wikipedia entry, it would be impossible to tell which of these dudes is which or who ends up with whom. Suffice it to say, everyone's happy except odd-dude-out.

I haven't been this confused at a Handel opera since Serse. Well, actually, until now I'd never been at all confused by any Handel opera other than Serse. Still! When the music is this good, you can't complain too much about plot concerns--or about dodgy video issues (the sound, at any rate, is first-rate, which is of course the main thing). I mean, come on. As may be obvious, baroque music has really, really grown on me lately. I go back and forth between Handel and Rameau, but it's all GREAT STUFF! Time to watch some more.