Hector Berlioz dismissed Handel as ‘that tub of pork and beer’ but it wasn’t always like that. Picture a younger, sexier Handel, rocking into Rome aged 22 and challenging Scarlatti to a keyboard duel. The Italian elite couldn’t get enough of Il caro Sassone, ‘the darling Saxon’, and he repaid them with 80-odd short Italian cantatas: little controlled explosions of character, colour and flamboyant melody in which his whole future career as a musical dramatist can be heard in concentrated form.
This was an encounter with a genuinely evil work of art
For the London Handel Festival, the director Adele Thomas staged four of these pocket-operas. The setting was Stone Nest, a domed former church, and the performance took place in the round. A period-instrument orchestra under Laurence Cummings (who seems to be game for anything) ringed the space, tears of glitter smudged upon their faces. There was a hint of smoke, plus flickering atmospheric lighting (by Josh Pharo) and surtitles projected on the walls.
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