Sinéad O’Neill’s production of Handel’s Orlando, a study in love-induced derangement adapted from Ariosto’s famous poetic epic, paradoxically refrains from replicating the title character’s mania in any frantic choreography and is more engaging for it. Instead, it takes inspiration from the opera’s 18th century origins in the often leisurely, ritualised pace of its choreography and in the underlying style of the costumes. Psychoanalysis and Symbolism, even perhaps Surrealism, seem to be implied with the pregnant, if elusive, deployment of a bed; a suspended spiral staircase; Angelica bound up in a series of ropes as she reflects on the complicated ties of love, apparently the reverse of Ariadne’s thread; or the sinister black crow which watches over the supposedly happy ending.
All that is set in a shadowy sylvan setting, though not all is quite as it seems: a flock of birds is depicted only in drawing, on the wallpaper of the dividing screens of the first Act, and the nightingale addressed by Dorinda in Act Two is a skeletal mechanical figure. It’s neither quite a dream nor nightmare, but it is removed from everyday reality, and the unhurried, uncluttered staging adds to the sense of the uncanny. The proximity of the stage and auditorium at Longborough enables a closer engagement with the psychological and emotional dynamics among the characters.
More curious, and less explicable, is the casting of the bearded wizard Zoroastro in a lady’s wig and dress, accompanied by three silent female accomplices who are similarly clad in hooped skirts. Their generally slow-motion action is hypnotic, but as they don’t particularly act either for or against the protagonists – neither Graces nor Furies – it’s not always clear what role they perform or what they add to the drama. Nor is there any obvious reason why Zoroastro should be a transgender figure here. In the context of an opera where all the other soloists are written in a high range, it’s evidently significant that Handel wrote the part for bass, especially when (as the programme note rightly indicates) he has the first vocal number in the whole work against just about all precedent in Baroque opera. It would seem to be all the more important, then, to draw a more precise contrast between masculine and feminine elements in this opera, particularly since the other two male roles are taken by women singers rather than countertenors.
The opera’s dramatic contours are vividly drawn in the musical performance by a fine cast, and the Academy of Ancient Music who gave the work in concert as recently as 2024 (review here). Under Christopher Moulds they make a somewhat more measured reading now, in line with the temper of this production which opens with a fairly stately account of the Overture. A relatively smaller ensemble keeps it lean – horns are omitted – but with the sonorous basso continuo coming through consistently, it also has something of the aura of French Baroque music. Like the production, the performance takes on greater energy in Act Two from Orlando’s furious aria ‘Cielo, se tu il consenti’, followed by a swift, lilting account of Medoro’s captivating ‘Verdi allori’. I can’t recall hearing a more rugged, pointed way with the manifestation of Orlando’s madness at the end of the Act in the remarkable scena with jagged musical lines and passages in irregular 5/8 time.
Beth Taylor proves an impressively versatile and resilient interpreter of the title role, virtually two personas in one as she oscillates between a low, dusky register, and a supple, finely controlled coloratura in the upper range. They suggest, like her acting on stage, a pent-up and impetuous tension that is perhaps more fearsome than out-and-out rage. As the knight’s mentor, Zoroastro, Andrew Foster-Williams is in lithe but firm voice as he dispenses advice. Anna Devin is a forthright, boldly sung Angelica as she first taunts Orlando and then rejects him for Medoro. As that rival to Orlando, Katie Bray’s Medoro is chipper, and Keli-Ann Masterson brings levity and sparkle to the role of the shepherdess Dorinda, despite her hopeless love for Medoro. In this ostensible opera seria in which Handel experiments with some lighter elements of pastoral and opera buffa, the clear contrast drawn here by O’Neill between the serious musical characters of Orlando and Angelica, and the somewhat more comic ones of Medoro and Dorinda, perhaps intriguingly suggests that the wrong romantic partners are matched up.
Curtis Rogers
Orlando
Composer: George Frideric Handel
Libretto: Anonymous adaptation of Carlo Sigismondo Capece’s L’Orlando, after Ludovico Arioso’s Orlando furioso
Cast and production staff:
Orlando – Beth Taylor; Angelica – Anna Devin; Medoro – Katie Bray; Dorinda – Keli-Ann Masterson; Zoroastro – Andrew Foster-Williams; Actors – Olivia Higginbottom, Anna Tolputt & Freya Storie
Director – Sinéad O’Neill; Set and Costume Designer – Anisha Fields; Movement Director – Michael Ashcroft; Lighting Designer – Ben Ormerod; Academy of Ancient Music; Conductor – Christopher Moulds
Longborough Festival Opera, Moreton-in-Marsh, 4 June 2026
All photos © Matthew Williams-Ellis