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3 hours ago
5
It’s day seven on “Melissa’s Island”. Melissa is grafting hottie Amadigi but he keeps mugging her off. Amadigi’s head’s been turned by fit bird Oriana, but snakey Dardano is trying to crack on with her too and she’s got the ick. It’s giving toxic relationship energy.
The absurdity of Handel’s magic operas can be a headache for directors. But not for Olivia Fuchs, whose Amadigi for Buxton festival takes the composer’s paper-thin four-hander and swaps magic for TV trickery, sorceresses for all-powerful producers, and a set of foolish lovers for the cast of a Love Island-style reality show. Add an inflatable flamingo, a barrage of cameras and more hearts than a cardiologist convention, and you’ve got a staging that keeps you so busy smiling that you barely notice that you’ve, well, caught feelings.
With such a small cast, chemistry is everything, and it’s a joy to watch sopranos Hilary Cronin and Rowan Pierce, and countertenors James Hall and (in an impressive jump-in) Tim Morgan, tangling themselves in Handel’s musical game of Twister. The eagle-eyed will have spotted a distinct lack of lower voices – another challenge for the cast, who must somehow distract us from the missing colours. Enter Erin Helyard and the English Concert – a dream team of baroque dynamism and style, whose propulsive playing drives the action, only pressing pause for emotive obbligato moments for oboe and bassoon.
This isn’t the first reality TV opera staging, but it’s Fuchs’ endless invention that sells the concept. Melissa’s deceptive illusions become video trickery, her trial-by-fire a gameshow challenge, and the final act’s tortures are fulfilled with the help of a hot pair of hair-straighteners and an eyelash-curler.
Hilary Cronin’s Melissa deserves her own spin-off series for her power-suited villainy served with a hip-wiggle and an eyebrow-raise, every dastardly thought or passing mischief used to mould the shapes of Handel’s coloratura. When you hear what Cronin can do with an appoggiatura, you understand precisely how she’ll deploy that curler. All that, and then she breaks your heart in a final aria delivered simply, straight down the lens.
Pierce’s wide-eyed Oriana is vocal silver to Cronin’s gold – lighter and more delicate. Hall’s vocal agility gives Dardano plenty of bite, though a lovely “Pena tiranna” comes dangerously close to hero vibes, and Morgan’s hapless charmer on an Amadigi somehow gets the girl with only minor vocal sweat. Slay.
