Disguises and mistaken identities are a staple of opera, but usually as part of the onstage, not the offstage, action. So what are we to make this week of a Handel opera that isn’t by Handel at all, and a Mozart opera that was largely composed in 1990? As usual in the opera house, there are good — if complicated — explanations.
Every year the London Handel Festival tests the theory that forgotten operas are forgotten for a reason, rooting around the darkest corners of the composer’s output to find some abstruse treasures for their audience. This year they’ve outdone themselves, with a performance by Opera Settecento of Elpidia — an opera not heard since its initial run in 1725. The reason? Elpidia is a pasticcio, a collection of arias mostly by Vinci (with a few also from Capelli, Lotti and Orlandini) strung together with original recitatives by Handel.
Such a cut-and-paste approach might not suit our purist, contemporary idea of artistic creation, but the result is superb.
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