This year’s London Handel Festival got under way, as usual, with an opera production at the Royal College of Music’s Britten Theatre. Imeneo, a late opera of Handel, is unusual in several respects. While it is concerned with amorous intrigue and frustration, there is no dynastic or other political dimension, a welcome change, and one that results in the work’s lasting only two hours.
There seems, too, to be an element of self-parody: in Act III the central female character Rosmene, with whom both the chief male characters, Tirinto and Imeneo, are in love, manages to avoid responsibility for her choice between them by feigning madness, singing randomly and swooning. Once she has chosen Imeneo and told Tirinto to endure rejection calmly, the chorus of Athenians close the piece by saying that reason must take precedence over passion, the same conclusion as the lovers in Così fan tutte draw, and just as inanely irrelevant.
I saw the second performance by the first cast, and as almost always at the RCM was impressed by the high standard of singing.
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