On top form

Having seen and been most impressed by two New York Met relays of Wagner operas on the big screen, I was interested to see how the largely close-up medium would cope with a Handel opera, where the challenges are quite different. Both composers have single characters singing for large stretches of time, but, while Wagner’s are always involved in a process of feeling, so that there is a sense of exploration at every moment, Handel’s are immersed in states of feeling.

In da capo arias they often move from rage to resolution, or something of the kind, but then revert to the original state and its music, presumably to endow their arias with symmetry; though it has been suggested that Handel regards emotional states as inherently obsessional, so that the figures he portrays are all locked, for the length of an aria at least, in a feeling that they are unable to emerge from.