Okay. This is an interesting thing. This was the young Handel's first oratorio--and, I think, the only one in Italian, though it was revised multiple times, and a version in English was one of the last things he ever worked on (note: I just remembered that there's one other, La resurrezione).
The first thing you will note about this is: it is extremely not an opera. Handel's oratorios that are performed as such generally have simpler plots than his operas proper, but they still have, you know...plots, such that staging them makes some dramatic sense. This one, however, really isn't like that. What's this about? Well, it's pretty simple. There are four allegorical figures: Beauty, who wants to stay young and beautiful forever but knows she won't; Pleasure, encouraging her to just think about, um, pleasure; and Time and Disillusion warning her that her existence is transient.
That's it. So how the heck are you going to make that into a drama? There's no setting, no action, and only "characters" in the loosest possible sense. Anybody who wants to stage it is going to have to decide what these people are like, where it all takes place, and what exactly is happening. I mean, come on; there has to be some action. Any two different productions are going to be completely different things.
I can vouch for that because I saw two different productions: the first from 1916 at Le Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, and the second this 2020 version from Staatsoper Hanover. In the first, we have Beauty as a girl whom we first see partying at a rave, when the guy she's dancing with has some sort of fatal drug overdose. It takes place sort of at the club, sort of in a hospital room...hard to say. Pleasure is a sleazy DJ/drug dealer, Time is an older guy who's possibly supposed to be the club owner, and Disillusion is his...wife and/or personal assistant. In the second version, these are supposed to be four characters having four personal crises, sort of. Beauty is a housewife thinking about her choices, Pleasure is a young woman with a breast cancer diagnosis, Time is a gender dysphoric man, and Disillusion is a, um, disillusioned writer.
What these things have in common is: they have action with very little relation to the text that's really just impenetrably obscure. I had no idea what was supposed to be happening in either. The latter features text overlays introducing the characters and spoken-word interludes, but they don't really help. The former production I found more interesting-looking, but I don't think either of them really worked. If I were trying to dramatize this...well, I wouldn't, because I just don't think it's something that's likely to be productive. But if I were, I wouldn't focus on concrete meaning. I'd just include some arresting imagery and encourage people to think about the text's themes. It's just distracting and pointless to try to graft the text onto a separate drama.
I dunno, man. There are so many Handel operas that are rarely staged and unavailable on video, along with oratorios that would probably be a lot more appropriate than this as operas. It seems like an act of perversity that this one somehow gets two separate dang productions. I guess the openness to interpretation is appealing, but I have my doubts about the potential to create something really great out of it. I'll watch anything by Handel, but while the music is of course good, I sort of feel like, if anything, the visuals just took away from it. I'd just listen to this one.
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