Here's some Handel for ya! Just a quick take, because my Handel insights are running dry, to the extent that they ever existed. Can you handel it?!? I sincerely apologize for that extremely inappropriate comment.
This is based on Euripides' play Alcestis. It's Legendary Times, and Admeto is king of Thessaly. He's dying, but it seems that he can live if his wife Alceste sacrifices herself. Don't think about it too hard; it doesn't make much sense. She commits sucide, which seems surprisingly dark for a Handel opera, but Admeto, having recovered, sends his best warrior, Ercole (that's Hercules to you and me) to the Underworld to retrieve her. So that's going on; in the meantime, there's another princess, Antigona, in love with Admeto (Admeto's brother Trasimede is also in unrequited love with her). To get close to Admeto, she gets a job working in the palace gardens. Admeto's all upset because he's in love with both his wife and this other woman (#thessalianproblems), and goes on a bit. Having been successfully rescued by Ercole, Alceste instructs Ercole to tell Admeto that he wasn't able to find her to see how he'll react. He decides to take advantage by marrying Antigona, but Alceste indignantly reveals herself, and it turns out that they're still in love, and Antigona and Trasimede get together, and there is a somewhat unconvincing happy ending.
It's perfectly solid Handel, shaky story notwithstanding. One fun aria after another, if not quite on the level of something like Orlando, and lacking the comedy of an Agrippina or Giulio Cesare. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and I don't know how much else I have to say. I will comment on this production, however, which has an ancient Japanese theme. This would certainly drive the usual suspects bonkers, but I think it's not too bad at all: very visually inventive and striking, which lots of silent Japanese ghosts and monsters dancing about at relevant points. Also, dudes dressed as sheep and stags, which is a bit goofy, but fine. The only misstep--and it's quite a bit misstep, I feel--is the way Ercole is made up like a sumo wrestler, complete with fat suit. That's just fucking goofy in a stupid way, and it's very difficult for me to understand how the producer could not have realized that. Wasn't there anyone around willing to point it out? Crikey.
Okay, I want to say one more thing, regarding the theology of this opera, such as it is. When Ercole comes back from the Underworld and is instructed to say he wasn't able to find Alceste, he specifically says, yeah I couldn't find her in the Underworld--she must have been taken to Elysium to go drinking with the gods. But nope! She's in the Underworld, being tormented by demons! And, okay, great, she's alive again, but what kind of psychological impact is that going to have, knowing that you're in for eternal (presumably--is there any kind of ancient Greek eschatology?) suffering when you die! Please look forward to it! I know the ancient Greeks themselves were kind of grim about these things, but it's interesting to see this reproduced in a completely different milieu. I don't think Handel or his librettist thought about the implications here.
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