Handel was a busy little bee at this time: his oratorio Hercules debuted in January of 1745 and Belshazzar in March. And we have staged versions of both of them. Sweet!
Hercules is more or less the same story in Ercole amante, abeit in a less cartoonish register. Hercules has murdered some king and captured his daughter Iole and brought her home; he has designs on her, much to the distress of his wife Dejanira. Meanwhile his son Hyllus is also into Iole. Dejanira comes up with the great idea to give her husband a cloak soaked in centaur-blood, with the idea that it'll make him love her but, whoops, it actually kills him. She is full of remorse (her end is unclear); meanwhile, the gods decree that Iole and Hyllus should get married.
Belshazzar, meanwhile, is, of course, a Biblical epic, based on the Book of Daniel. The Babylonian king, Belshazzar, is oppressing the Jews, but Cyrus (the Great) comes up with the idea of rerouting the Euphrates to defeat them. This is possible because Belshazzar just likes getting drunk all the time. So...he does that thing. He kills Belshazzar, but everyone else is spared. And there you have it!
It's Handel, man. He's a superstar, and these are as good showcases of his talent as any. Which is better? That's tough. As I watched Belshazzar, at first I thought I liked it a bit less than Hercules, but now I'm not sure: I think the difference is that Hercules has a somewhat more immediate plot, with more clearly-drawn characters, and especially the character of Dejanira. In fact, the oratorio really should be titled Dejanira instead of Hercules. I suppose she just doesn't have the same name recognition. But! She definitely has the biggest part, and there's no point in denying it: Joyce DiDonato definitely steals the show. She can and does act up a storm. I sort of take issue with the implication that there's something wrong with her jealousy; her husband was indeed trying to cheat on her, and it's not like she meant to kill him, at least in this telling. OH WELL.
Belshazzar is a more communal kind of piece, making extensive use of the chorus for Babylonian and Israelites alike. Some really good singers I'd never (as far as I can remember) seen before: Kenneth Tarver is terrifically magnetic in the title role, and Bejun Mehta is great as Cyrus; I feel like it had been a long time since I'd seen a countertenor with a really meaty part, and he works it the heck out. I also like the fact that the ending is so compassionate (I mean, it's not a surprise; compassion was a huge thing in baroque opera--we might consider thinking about the possibility of bringing that back): Belshazzar dies, but no one else does, and Cyrus preaches mercy and forgiveness for everyone. Good.
Okay, so this is neither here nor there, but I have to puzzle over this, from the Hercules DVD booklet, by the producer Luc Bondy:
Once I had listened to the work, I wanted to find out more; to discover its origins. And so I read Sophocles Trachiniae. I then spoke to Martin Crimp about it. He knows Greek and I asked him to translate Sophocles' test for me.
Wait...so you read it, but then for some reason the translation you read wasn't good enough, such that you had to demand that George Benjamin's librettist make you a bespoke translation? What even IS this? Is it just your weird, oblique way of bragging that you know someone who knows Greek? Extremely strange.
Anyway, in conclusion, you should watch this Handel guy. He's an example of somebody who's done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more.
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