George Frideric Handel, Serse (1737)

I'd seen this before.  Of course I had!  But...only sort of, I feel like.  It was before I really got my head around baroque opera, so a lot of its artistry was kind of lost on me; plus, it was this Operavision version, sung in German; at the time, I was so clueless I didn't know that wasn't normal, but THE POINT IS, I wanted to see a more authentic production.  And this was the last thing on Medici that I wanted to see but hadn't, so I decided to squeeze it in right at the end.

When I first saw it, I found the plot totally impenetrable, but now it's much clearer.  Yes, some of the specific convolutions are a bit hard to follow, but the basic plot is extremely normal opera seria stuff.  Serse, or Xerxes, wants to marry Romilda, not knowing that she and his brother Arsamene are in love.  Romilda's sister Atalanta is all for this marriage, so that she can have Arsamene for herself.  And there's also Amastre, Serse's former fiancée who was spurned and now seeks revenge.  She's disguised as a man because sometimes in baroque opera, that's just what you gotta do.  In the end, Romilda gets Arsamene and Amastre gets Serse, and Atalanta determines that she'll find a new lover.  There are also comic elements, mainly centering around Arsamene's servant Elviro.  At the time, some people were very upset by this: you can't have comedy in your opera seria!  That would be like combining chocolate and peanut butter!  Blech!

Of course, this opera is most famous for "Ombra mai fu," Serse's hymn in praise of his favorite plane tree.  That actually comes right at the beginning of the opera, immediately after the overture.  It's a gorgeous tune for sure, and you'd think it would overshadow the opera, but nah.  The whole thing is as beautiful and great as you expect from Handel.  I have no complaints.

This 2000 production from Dresden is extremely fine.  It doesn't really call attention to itself; not that I don't often like productions that do, but this works well.  It's some sort of nineteenth-century Ottoman kind of thing.  The operavision production was kind of strenuously wacky, which is okay as far as it goes, but less may be more here.  The only castrato role here, actually, is Serse himself; Arsamene was always a trouser role.  But here he's played by a mezzo, Paula Rassmussen.  It really wasn't until quite recently that it started to be normal for countertenors to play these roles.  But either way can be good!  And she's really remarkably convincing in the part.

Interestingly, Cavalli wrote an earlier opera using a version of the same libretto.  I really want to see it, but as great as Cavalli is, is he as great as Handel?  Let's be honest.  If only one of the two had to be available (though I wish it didn't), this was almost certainly the right choice.