Torments of love

Handel’s Orlando, apparently one of his greatest operas, is much more impressive in the first revival of Francisco Negrin’s production at the Royal Opera than it was at its first outing in 2003. Though my visual memory is most unreliable, I remember it as revolving dizzyingly, with characters whipping through door after door as the tripartite set sped round. There seemed then, too, to be far too much business going on during the da capo arias, as if Negrin didn’t trust Handel to command the audience’s attention unless they had something adventitious to watch. This time round the revolving set struck me as having slowed down somewhat, and as more appropriate to the action which developed on it, the characters passing from a state of pastoral peace to one of warfare or emotional turmoil. And where before it was unclear how ironically they were being viewed, here they seemed straightforwardly anguished by the torments of love, which are watched with a pained philosophical eye by the so-called magician Zoroastre, though actually he is the rational agent, a kind of benevolent Don Alfonso.