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Francesco Cavalli, La Calisto: Soloists, the Monteverdi Continuo Ensemble, members of the Orchestra of the age of Enlightenment, cond. Ivor Bolton. Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, 25.9.2008 (ME)

Umberto Chiummo (Giove) and Sally Matthews (Calisto)

David Alden, making his ROH directorial debut with this stunning production, believes that ‘the sensibility of the Venetians in the first years of public opera was extremely modern’ and describes his version of the work as ‘a loopy postmodern take on the Baroque’. Eschewing both a contemporaneous setting reflecting the world of 1651 and any classically based evocation of the ‘seat of the Gods,’ Alden has given us an always stimulating, often moving and sometimes outrageous experience, in an evening remarkable not only for its alluring stagecraft but its glorious singing.

Of course, the singing should be wonderful - this is the ROH, this production has already had three runs in Munich with more or less the same personnel, and to say that it’s luxury casting is almost an understatement, since the principal roles were taken by some of the finest Baroque vocal specialists around today, with even the relatively minor parts of Linfea sung by an Orfeo, and Mercurio by a Don Giovanni. If you wanted examples of how a director can create sympathetic characters out of unlikely material such as distant and aloof Gods and symbolically recondite shepherds, you would need to look no further than the wonderful Giunone of Véronique Gens, and the utterly sympathetic Endimione of Lawrence Zazzo. I have not always been enthusiastic about the latter on disc, but here he displayed a sweetness of tone, an elegance of phrasing and a sensitivity of interpretation that pretty much stole the show, ‘Cor Mio’ in Act 2 everything a baroque arioso ought to be.

Monica Bacelli (Diana) and Lawrence Zazzo (Endimione)

There were no weaknesses in this cast: I’ve raved over Sally Matthews before, and she did not disappoint here –this is a genuinely Handelian voice in the best sense of that phrase, agile, bright, sparkling, with crystalline diction and clear projection, and she portrayed Alden’s nymphet-cum-poppet with aplomb. Her Giove, the suave Umberto Chiummo, was envisaged as a sort of Lazenby-as-Bond lothario, and he played it to the hilt, singing with persuasively unctuous tone. Monica Bacelli, as Diana, is new to me, but I look forward to hearing a great deal more of her – this is a genuinely beautiful mezzo-soprano voice, ideal for roles such as Sesto or Cherubino, and she is no slouch in the acting department either.

It always sounds like damning with faint praise when you say of a singer that ‘he doesn’t sound like a British tenor at all’ but in fact it’s a genuine compliment and one which applies particularly well to Ed Lyon, whose strikingly characterized and strongly sung Pane revealed  ringingly heroic tone, an ROH Tamino in the making. The production’s ‘other’ tenor, Guy de Mey, was surprisingly making his debut here – he is well known to me in this repertoire, and he was a superb Linfea – of course it’s a broadly comic role, but his idiomatic phrasing and exact timing made it much more than that. Dominique Visse was another surprising ROH debutant, and another expert in this repertoire – his Satirino was both hilarious and touching. Markus Werba sang with burnished tone and presented a vividly characterized Mercurio, and the ever-reliable Clive Bayley gave dignity to the difficult part of Silvano.

The production may not please everyone – no holds are barred in displaying the lasciviousness of these bickering Gods and the vulnerability of their mortal counterparts, and of you’re looking for lovely portraits of the Heavens (or even characters on roller skates) then you might be disappointed, but for most of us Alden has provided a production which not only does Cavalli proud, but builds on the scholarship and understanding of Raymond Leppard and other previous interpreters of the work. Ivor Bolton is clearly in total sympathy with Alden’s approach, and his tiny band of players weaved magic around the singing.

The costumes, by Buki Shiff, are simply fabulous, the choreography (Beate Vollack) and lighting (Pat Collins) wonderfully apposite – Paul Steinberg’s set designs work effortlessly to create the different worlds of the opera, and the sense of colour, arrestingly vivid tableaux and alternation between humour and pathos are all expertly managed. I particularly loved Juno’s Peacocks, her ‘wonderful birds’ with their delicate movements and fantastic feathers, the rather louche chameleon – cum – coffee table, and of course the leopard-skin-patterned lissom lovelies who disported themselves as Nymphs; they even looked as though they were having fun. We in the audience certainly were, and if you haven’t been you should make every effort to catch one of the remaining performances ( on Saturday 27^th at noon, and evenings on October 1^st, 3^rd and 10^th)  because this is what the ROH is all about  - a brilliantly conceived production with a cast hard to equal in this repertoire.

Melanie Eskenazi

Pictures © Bill Cooper

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