Antonio Vivaldi
The Lost Rigors of the Baroque
BY FRED KIRSHNIT [NY Sun, 21 Mar 05]
Jorge Luis Borges used to teach that there were only five or six basic stories in all of world literature. A fan of Baroque opera might be forgiven for thinking that there were only a few actual stories, and that “Orlando Furioso” was the primary one. Soon after Vivaldi composed two operas on the subject, George Friedrich Handel fashioned three. The first in the trilogy, 1733’s “Orlando,” was premiered on Sunday afternoon in a new production at City Opera.
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Trading the Dangers of War for the Perils of Love
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI [NY Times, 22 Mar 05]
For the new production of Handel’s remarkable opera “Orlando” that opened on Sunday afternoon, the New York City Opera has assembled a splendid cast, headed by the exciting countertenor Bejun Mehta in the title role. Still, if a Handel opera is not to seem like a stagy succession of da capo arias in which characters simply posture themselves and proclaim emotions, a production must help the singers penetrate the beguiling musical surface to tap the dramatic subtext. The director Chas Rader-Shieber’s enchanting production, introduced two years ago at the Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, N.Y., does this and more.
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Making a good case for making war, not love
BY JUSTIN DAVIDSON [Newsday, 23 Mar 05]
Handel’s opera “Orlando” is a seductive broadside against love, and New York City Opera’s new production makes this distaste for romance seem irresistible for a while.
When the titular knight goes soft, the magician Zoroastro intervenes to warn him away from the vagaries of passion. Better, he counsels, to stick to such sensible, manly stuff as vengeance, mayhem and murder: Make war, not love.
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