GF Handel: Partenope, English National Opera, London Coliseum, 2 November, 2008. 

Our motivation for obtaining seats at the London Coliseum for Handel’s Partenope was a desire to see a Handel opera of which we had never heard enhanced by the all-star cast of singers most of whom are known to Oxford diences either in recital or in opera: John Mark Ainsley, Rosemary Joshua, Christine Rice, Iestyn Davies, Patricia Bardon and James Gower. The additional attraction of a 3pm Sunday matinee proved a near disaster when misguidedly taking the Oxford Tube, instead of the X90, we were caught up in traffic chaos around Shepherd’s Bush due to the opening of the Westfield shopping centre, arriving only just in time to order smoked salmon sandwiches for a late lunch in the interval.

The opera, composed in 1730 to a 1699 libretto by Silvio Stampiglia, was given in a text, intriguingly described in the billing as ‘anonymously’ adapted, in an English translation by Amanda Holden. It is difficult therefore to know to whom to give credit for this rewriting of the plot and setting the action firmly in the early nineteen-thirties’, the age of art deco and surrealism. We are in a period a mixture of PG Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh (Vile Bodies rather than Brideshead as one critic had it) and Anthony Powell. The dialogue is witty and contemporary marred only by a tendency to use expletives more appropriate to the noughties’.  (While writing this, I have Partenope on BBC’s ‘Opera on 3’, in which we are informed it is intended to be Paris in the twenties’ – but the language is unmistakably English and the fashions later)

From various confused sources we learn that Partenope (Greek for ‘virgin’) was the name of a siren who, in frustration at not succeeding in charming Odysseus (in one version) or Orpheus (travelling with the Argonauts, in another), throws herself into the sea off her home in Capri and is washed up in the shore of what is now Naples, where her shrine formed the basis for the founding of that city originally with her name by a Queen also named Partenope (also the name of a sister of Florence Nightingale). 

This has nothing to do with the plot of the opera. This concerns the efforts of Partenope (Joshua) to find a mate from a selection of suitors: the outsider Emilio (Ainsley) who seeks to capture her by force but is thwarted by her favourite Arsace (Rice). But Arsace is pursued by his ‘ex’ Rosmira (Bardon), disguised as a man. This pair end up reconciled and Partenope makes do with Armindo (Davies). In bringing the action to the twentieth century, the director Christopher Alden has softened the drama by covering it with a surrealist froth. Emilio becomes the photographer artist Man Ray who ‘captures’ images of Partenope at the beginning on camera and in the last Act assembling a large paper collage of a cubist portrait and throughout in alluding to known surrealist art and attitude by Man Ray and others: instead of prison, Emilio is confined to a lavatory.

This is a brilliantly imaginative treatment which makes for huge entertainment, yet without distracting from the power of Handel’s inventiveness. This is Handel unlaced from the rigorous corset of pure opera seria. Musically the performance was a total delight. The conductor Christian Curnyn coaxed the orchestra into a beautiful authentic sound which inspired the singers to go from strength to strength. The voices are perfectly matched. I mention only Iestyn Davies whose countertenor has now reached maturity so he can hold his own with powerful female voices in the same register.