Romantic jealousies and magical interventions lead to all kinds of complications in this stunning production of Agostino Steffani’s forgotten gem at the Boston Early Music Festival.

A scene from ‘Orlando’ PHOTO: KATHY WITTMANByHeidi Waleson

June 12, 2019 2:01 p.m. ET

Boston

The Boston Early Music Festival has unearthed a forgotten Baroque opera gem—Agostino Steffani’s “Orlando generoso” (1691)—and given it a splendid production, opening the festival on Sunday at the Emerson Cutler Majestic Theatre. (BEMF is titling the show simply “Orlando.”) The Italian-born Steffani (1654-1728) made his career in service to the aristocracies of Munich and Hanover, writing numerous successful operas for their theaters. For context, in 1710 the more famous George Frideric Handel succeeded Steffani as Kapellmeister at the court of Hanover; in 1733 Handel’s own “Orlando” had its premiere in London.

Both operas (and many others) are based on Ludovico Ariosto’s 1516 epic poem “Orlando furioso,” the tale of the knight Roland, whose unrequited love for Angelica, the Princess of Cathay, drives him mad. (Angelica is not interested because she is already married to Medoro, a soldier.) Ortensio Mauro’s libretto also features the knight Ruggiero and his beloved, Bradamante (both central to Handel’s “Alcina”), plus a sorcerer, a sorceress, and a comic thief. They all wind up in Cathay, where Galafro, Angelica’s father, does not recognize her (she has been gone a long time and is in disguise), and falls in love with her himself. Romantic jealousies and magical interventions lead to all kinds of complications. It is only when Orlando, imprisoned by Galafro, finally comes to his senses that the world can be righted.

Director Gilbert Blin devised a stunning period-style show. Flats and drops (by Mr. Blin with Kate A. Noll) made quick work of location transformations and magical events, and the de rigueur flying machines, including the sorcerer’s hippogriff, were delightful. Anna Watkins’s lavish costumes delicately referred to the Chinese setting with dress shapes and top-knots, contrasting with the clothing of the Western visitors to seem foreign but not too foreign; Kelly Martin’s atmospheric lighting suggested a pre-electricity era. Mr. Blin’s directing kept things light and entertaining, and big scenes, like the sorcerer’s enchanted palace, with its automata-like inhabitants, had dramatic éclat and wit.

Steffani’s appealing music was an intriguing combination of Italian and French styles, with full-fledged da capo arias co-existing with danced minuets and chaconnes (Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière contributed the low-key, effective period choreography). Tenor Aaron Sheehan deftly captured the disintegration of the suffering Orlando. In his elaborate opening aria, describing how Glory and Love battle within him, his lengthy runs on the word “combattono” had military precision and awe-inspiring breath control; his Act III revelation in prison properly brought the opera’s antics to a contemplative halt. Two superb sopranos offered contrasting personalities: Amanda Forsythe, exquisite as the wide-eyed Angelica, and Emőke Baráth, impassioned as the martial Bradamante. The trio of countertenors—Christopher Lowrey (Ruggiero), Kacper Szelążek (Medoro) and Flavio Ferri-Beneditti (Galafro)—ably complemented them. Baritone Jesse Blumberg gave the sorcerer Atlante a lyrical spin, tenor Zachary Wilder contributed some lively physical comedy as the thief Brunello, and soprano Teresa Wakim had a brief but potent moment as the sorceress Melissa.

With music directors Paul O’Dette (theorbo) and Stephen Stubbs (baroque guitar) leading from the continuo section, and concertmaster Robert Mealy heading the top-flight orchestra, the opera’s pacing rarely flagged over its considerable length of four hours, including two breaks. And the show’s high points were unforgettable. For example, early in Act II, singing a plaintively lovely double lament for their (temporarily) vanished lovers, Angelica was accompanied by bassoon and violin and Ruggiero by oboe and cello, as fireflies darted around the darkened stage. It was one of those time-stopping moments that make BEMF’s biennial opera essential.

—Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).

The New York Philharmonic presents a remake of Beethoven’s sole opera, ‘Fidelio,’ with entirely new music, and the result is a gloomy production leached of the original’s passion.

A scene from ‘prisoner of the state’ PHOTO: CHRIS LEEByHeidi WalesonJune 12, 2019 2:47 p.m. ET

New York

With “prisoner of the state,” given its world premiere last week by the New York Philharmonic, composer David Lang remakes Beethoven’s sole opera, “Fidelio,” with entirely new music. His version strips away not only the awkward comic elements and secondary love stories of the original, but also rejects both its central narrative premise—rescue—and its theme, the triumph of justice. What remains is a gloomy, 65-minute oratorio that extends the prison setting to the wider world. As Mr. Lang’s Prisoner sings: “Everywhere we are in chains. The difference here—between prison and outside—in here you see the chains.” The production, directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer with scenic design by Matt Saunders and costumes by Maline Casta, ringed the David Geffen Hall stage with chain-link fencing topped by barbed wire. The onstage orchestra wore black watch caps, and the chorus, in yellow prison garb, occupied a raised platform at the rear.

Mr. Lang devised his own English libretto, following Beethoven’s basic template but adding references and texts from Machiavelli, Rousseau, Hannah Arendt and Jeremy Bentham. The characters have titles rather than names (Assistant, Jailer, Governor, Prisoner) and there’s a chorus of Prisoners and four Guards. The opera begins with the Assistant’s simple, wistful song, “I was a woman once.” It is an early high point of the score, particularly as sung by Julie Mathevet in an ethereal, vibrato-free soprano. She’s the Prisoner’s wife, pretending to be a boy in order to save him, but her straight tone, as we will see, also suggests that she is powerless.

Indeed, in damping down the narrative thrust of the story, Mr. Lang leached much of the passion from it. There’s nothing corresponding to Leonore’s defiant “Abscheulicher!” The Prisoner’s aria, “uhhh, so dark,” is oddly pretty and tonal; with his mellifluous baritone, Jarrett Ott sounded more like Jesus in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, already passed to the other side, rather than a living man in extremis, as in the Beethoven original. (He was seen in a video feed from his cell beneath the stage apron.) Even the music of the Governor (tenor Alan Oke), his villain’s part beefed up with utterances like the aria based on Machiavelli’s line “Better to be feared than loved,” is matter-of-fact rather than nasty. The Jailer’s aria about gold has more texture, and Eric Owens used the weight of his bass to express a cynical, downtrodden view of a world where nothing matters but money.

The opera’s most interesting musical moments were choral, like the chilling a cappella number in which the short, choppy phrases of the Prisoners (“We break. We are worked”) were woven with those of the Guards (“We punish so we can forgive”). (The men’s chorus came from the Concert Chorale of New York; Matthew Pearce, John Matthew Myers, Steven Eddy and Rafael Porto were the Guards.) Most of the dramatic tension was built in the orchestra, conducted by Jaap van Zweden, using repeated melodic cells and slashing percussion that created an undertone of darkness and dread. The darkness is warranted: There is no rescue. The Assistant fires a gun at the Governor to protect the Prisoner; the Governor smiles, and takes the weapon. The trumpet of rescue sounds, but the Governor sings, “In a better world, the inspectors would arrive at just the right moment” and “Until we hear [the people] crying out ‘Freedom’…No one man is ever safe or free.” The noisy finale throws the responsibility for liberation back on the audience, but its musical confusion suggests that this will not be an easy job.

—Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).

Boston Early Music Festival. Steffani.

New York Philharmonic. david lang.

The North American premiere of Heiner Goebbels’s deconstructed portrait of the past 120 years; a stripped-down Purcell work performed in a cemetery’s catacombs.

A scene from ‘Everything That Happened and Would Happen’ Photo: Stephanie Berger for Park Avenue Armory By Heidi Waleson June 6, 2019 4:22 p.m. ET

New York

I’m all for recycling, but Heiner Goebbels’s “Everything That Happened and Would Happen,” which had its North American premiere at the Park Avenue Armory on Monday, looked mostly like a way to repurpose scenic elements from the director’s 2012 Ruhrtriennale production of John Cage’s “Europeras 1 & 2.” The 11-member company scurried around the gigantic Wade Thompson Drill Hall, raising and lowering cutout Baroque-style drops depicting trees and buildings—often displaying them upside down or backward. Sometimes the drops became screens for video, most of it very recent footage from the Euronews “No Comment” program (we saw the immense cruise ship that smashed into a dock, colliding with a small tourist boat in the middle of Venice on June 2; a Tough Mudder race in Germany from the day before). The company also pushed pedestals and large wheeled bins around the space; the latter action, with the bins lighted from the inside, looked like a dance for dumpsters. Boulders rolled noisily down inclines. There was also fog.

Ostensibly, the show was a deconstructed portrait of the past 120 years, presenting fragments rather than a narrative intended to tell the audience what to think—except that it did. Readings (in multiple languages) from Patrik Ouředník’s 2001 book “Europeana” touched on such 20th-century events and concepts as racist ethnographic displays, the Holocaust, Barbie dolls, the death toll of World War I (“500,000 kilometers of soldiers fell”), jogging, and the Millennium bug. This juxtaposition of serious things and trivial ones, though seemingly chosen at random, nonetheless painted a picture of a global society that never learns anything. Resistance to a progressive theory of history is nothing new, but this formulation didn’t allow for any positive developments at all. No discovery of penicillin, for example.

In any case, the physical production bore little or no relation to the text. Nor did the music, a dreary tapestry of drones, squeals, crashes and wails improvised by the five musicians (percussion, clarinet/saxophone, ondes martenot, organ, guitar/electronics) positioned around the edge of the playing space. The lighting (by John Brown and Mr. Goebbels) provided some dramatic moments, and in one cool effect a giant bar code of white lines rolled slowly across the stage along with the performers, who seemed to be trying to outrun it. But when the lengthy finale, which had the company making a pile of those drops and the musicians building up a noisy crescendo, finally ended, it was a relief to realize that the running time of this pretentious display, announced as 2 1/2 hours, had been mercifully reduced by about 30 minutes.

iii

A scene from ‘Dido and Aeneas’ Photo: Kevin Condon

Brooklyn, N.Y.

Rather than filling a giant space with a lot of hot air, Death of Classical’s intimate production of Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas” (1689) this week suffused the Catacombs of Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery with as much sound and emotion as this claustrophobic tunnel, flanked by family burial chambers, could hold. Alek Shrader’s focused, imaginative production, tucked into one end of the tunnel, relied on simple visuals—a small platform, a single chair, flickering candles, Dido’s dramatic red dress and chainmail jewelry (by Fay Eva), arresting makeup (by Ivey Ray), subtly hued lighting (by Tláloc López-Watermann)—and let the music do its job in this highly resonant acoustical environment.

Mr. Shrader interpolated a few brief spoken scenes from Christopher Marlowe’s 1594 play on the same subject. This device turned chorus members into named characters, such as the Berber king Iarbas (bass-baritone Paul Greene-Dennis), who is rejected by Dido in favor of Aeneas. It also added some detail to the central love story and gave Dido’s final lament an extra suicidal twist. Dancer/choreographer Liana Kleinman—representing Dido’s soul, perhaps?—supplied a poignant movement component compact enough for such a small space, while the singers kept their physical gestures to a minimum.

Daniela Mack was a mesmerizing Dido, both her voluptuous mezzo and her demeanor complex yet generous in love and in death. Baritone Paul La Rosa made Aeneas irresistible—who wouldn’t fall for this buff, handsome, clear-toned warrior? He even did the dialogue well. Molly Quinn was an enchantingly mellifluous Belinda; Vanessa Cariddi, a scary Sorceress (her chain face-mask added to the effect); Alyssa Martin and Erin Moll, comical yet deadly Witches. Marc Molomot led the sailors’ song with brio; Brooke Larimer was a bit over-vibratoed as the Second Woman, here renamed Anna, Dido’s sister. Anna is in love with Iarbas, a Marlowe plot complication the Purcell can easily do without.

Music director Elliot Figg led an ensemble of five period string players from the harpsichord. Their position behind the stage resulted in a few coordination problems, and some of the arias and choruses were too slow. This erotic languor was sometimes interesting, but I missed consistent rhythmic snap and variety. This is the second season of the Angels Share, a series of opera and other music productions in the Catacombs and elsewhere in the cemetery. It has proved inventive and exciting in its use of this unconventional space, but some production dead zones remain to be animated.

—Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).

Greenwood Cemetery. Forget my fate.

At The Armory — a new candidate for one of the worst five things I’ve seen. I should have seen it coming with the Gertrude Stein quotation at the front of the program. Heiner Goebbels needs to know a bit more about history and philosophy before holding forth. Both elitist and anti-intellectual at the same time.

Furman Center panel with @errollewis and @mayawiley

The Robert Lepage production of Richard Wagner’s epic cycle returned to New York with better results than before.

A scene from ‘Götterdämmerung’ Photo: Ken Howard/Met Opera By Heidi Waleson May 13, 2019 3:42 p.m. ET

New York

The Metropolitan Opera’s Robert Lepage production of Richard Wagner’s “Ring” returned this spring for three complete cycles, concluding with Saturday’s “Götterdämmerung.” Launched with “Das Rheingold” on the opening night of the 2010-11 season, and last mounted in spring 2013, the production has been lambasted for its seemingly idea-free monumentality. Built around the enormous multi-ton “Machine,” with its 24 rotating planks, the production is an odd mix of abstraction and extreme literalness, like the tacky breastplates and wigs worn by the gods in “Rheingold.” (Carl Fillion designed the set; François St-Aubin the costumes; Etienne Boucher the lighting; Boris Firquet, Pedro Pires and Lionel Arnould the video.) This time out, the Machine suffered none of the malfunctions that plagued its debut, and only clanked a little bit. At its best, the show allows for spectacular moments, but for the most part, it leaves the singers to fend for themselves against an overwhelming, and sometimes precarious, backdrop. The three cycles did a brisk box-office business anyway; such is the rarity value of a full “Ring” with a top-flight cast.

For my third time through this production (and having seen other “Ring” cycles in Toronto and Chicago since the last one), I thought I pretty much knew what to expect. “Rheingold” was as remembered: a handful of eye-catching special effects, some of which rely on stunt doubles for the singers walking up and down walls, and others done with video, as when the mermaid tails of the Rhinemaidens seem to create cascades of river pebbles. But for most of the opera, the Machine looked bare and, well, mechanical, with the singers wedged uncomfortably onto the stage apron, or gingerly climbing around the planks, appearing none too safe, and the production lacked any point of view. This was in marked contrast to the David Pountney version at Lyric Opera of Chicago, which skillfully interpreted “Rheingold” as a black comedy.

The savior of the evening was Michael Volle, whose lyrical baritone and extraordinary articulation of text created a wonderfully pompous, arrogant Wotan. Other pluses were the Alberich of Tomasz Konieczny, with his powerful, penetrating bass-baritone and thoroughly nasty demeanor, and the playful, mellifluous trio of Rhinemaidens, Amanda Woodbury, Samantha Hankey and Tamara Mumford. None of the other singers stood out, and the Met Orchestra, led by Philippe Jordan, sounded muscular if occasionally unfocused, with some worrying bleats in the brass section. Overall, the auguries seemed unpromising.

But as the rest of the cycle unfolded, the performances in general got stronger, and I even found myself making my peace with the Machine. “Die Walküre” is the most emotionally immediate of the four operas, and thus the hardest to kill. The tipped planks made sense as the roof of Hunding’s gloomy, oppressive hut, while Günther Groissböck (Hunding), Eva-Maria Westbroek (Sieglinde), and especially the anguished Stuart Skelton (Siegmund) created high tension together. The acid tone of Jamie Barton’s Fricka worked better here than it had in “Rheingold,” and Christine Goerke’s impulsive, radiantly sung Brünnhilde was exhilarating.

Again, Mr. Volle was riveting. He started Wotan’s lengthy Act II monologue practically in a whisper, as though he were talking to himself, and built it up into a howl of despair. In Act III, you believed both his towering rage and his grief over his punishment of Brünnhilde. No longer serenely certain of his power, as he was in “Rheingold,” this “Walküre” Wotan visibly struggled in the trap he had made for himself. The set issues were still there—watching Wotan and Brünnhilde scramble over the planks in Act II was frightening, and the eyeball that displays shadowy figures during the monologue was weird—but Fricka’s ram-headed chair had a certain elegant witchiness, and the stark mountain against which father and daughter play out their final confrontation looked properly implacable.

The “Siegfried” production has more representational video, some of it cool (the critters and snakes slithering through the roots of the forest), some of it lame (the insubstantial Woodbird, especially pale when compared to Erin Morley’s silvery offstage voice). The Machine’s major drawback here was the tiny, cramped space allotted for Mime’s cave, and Mime (the effective Gerhard Siegel) kept crossing behind Siegfried (Stefan Vinke), distractingly close to him, during the Forging Song. This was annoying because Mr. Vinke’s tenor was at its clarion finest in this moment, and while you need to notice the scheming Mime, he shouldn’t upstage the star. Mr. Volle developed the Wanderer (Wotan) still further in “Siegfried”: He had a sense of humor (he enjoyed baiting Mime and Alberich), and was resigned to watching his own destruction play out. And as Wotan leaves the cycle, Brünnhilde’s development begins. Ms. Goerke brought a whole kaleidoscope of feelings to the Act III awakening scene, changing from frightened virgin goddess to rambunctious, ready-for-anything teenager, when confronted with the hot young hero.

Ms. Goerke was even more exciting in “Götterdämmerung,” delivering the newly adult Brünnhilde’s confidence, fury and finally understanding with absolute vocal and dramatic authority. This last opera of the cycle was all about her. Eric Owens turned in a deep-voiced, complex Hagen, his malevolence hard-wired, Mr. Vinke, though tiring a bit, powered through Siegfried’s undoing, and Michaela Schuster was touching as the desperate Waltraute.

The orchestra’s brass bleats had gone away by the end of “Die Walküre,” and Mr. Jordan and the musicians provided a cushion for the singers, and powerfully sustained the narrative thread. Then in those final, transcendent orchestral moments of “Götterdämmerung,” when the world is washed away, I started to see the point of the Machine. Mr. Lepage has said that his inspiration came from the treeless, rocky landscape of Iceland. Now, the set’s craggy, abstract blankness suggested geological time, with the video images and even the people—the struggles of gods and men, with the stupid, greedy Gibichungs as the last straw—being evanescent blips in its eternal existence. “What use was my wisdom?” sings Brünnhilde. What use, indeed? It’s not a comfortable conclusion, and there are still silly bits (that horse! those costumes!) and too many dull, undirected moments in the long hours of this “Ring.” But maybe it did have an idea, after all.

—Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).