Cleopatra’s last aria in (1724) will show some of the choices a director may make in visual style, in emotional tone, and the imagined partner to whom the character sings. Productions, — Handel: Giulio Cesare, “Da tempeste” (first part) 2½ Old and New Inger Dam-Jensen (Copenhagen, 2005; d. ) — Handel: Giulio Cesare, “Da tempeste” (first part) 2½ (Glyndebourne, 2006; d. David McVicar) And with Morgana’s opening aria from (1735), we may address the problem of portraying seduction onstage, especially

when this has overtones of enslavement rather than love. And also admire, in the hands of director Katie Mitchell, a brilliant response 1. to the ornamentation of theda capo. — Handel: Alcina, “O s’apre al riso” (first part) 2 If it’s Catriona Smith (Stuttgart, 2000; d. Jossi Wieler) Baroque… — Handel: Alcina, “O s’apre al riso” (complete) 5 Anna Prohaska (Aix-en-Provence, 2015; d. Katie Mitchell)

E. Making Devotion Personal

Finally, an oddity: a staging of Handel’s by the director Claus Guth. It is more than a vanity project or stylistic exercise. By allowing the element of doubt to enter this proclamation of faith, Guth brings his singers into our own questioning time, and makes us hear the words as if for the first time, not merely as Holy Writ. — Handel: The Messiah, “Comfort ye. my people” 4½ Richard Croft (Vienna, 2012; d. Claus Guth) — Handel: The Messiah, “He shall feed His flock” 7½ , Cornelia Horak (Vienna, 2012; d. Claus Guth)

After each class, relevant materials will be posted at: http://www.brunyate.com/OpProdMCC/ The instructor may be contacted at [email protected]

Handel: If it’s Baroque… B. Basic Concepts, Mostly Baroque How do the conductor and stage director divide responsibilities in Any staging of an older opera involves building a bridge the opera house? With what principles may we approach the staging of a work from a distant century? What did the earliest theaters between the past and the present. You start with a score; its (such as the one still surviving at Cesky Krumlov) look like? We shall music is your Bible. But no score earlier than about 1850 will watch a scene from an unusually detailed reconstruction of early tell you what to do on the stage. So the first task is to imagine production style, inAtys (1676) by Jean-Baptiste Lully(1632 –87). what the composer himself would have seen. Do you simply — Lully: Atys, opening of the Prologue 6½ reproduce that? Time has passed, and much has changed: Les Arts Florissants, Paris 2011 musical understanding, theater technology, the availability of singers, the expectations of the audience, and our political and C. Castrati and Others moral perspectives. The act of staging implies a history of the lapsed time between a composer’s period and our own. Baroque opera in the Italian tradition settled in to a closely defined form, opera seria. We shall look at what this involves, how its drama A. Alternative Versions worked, and what it demands of its singers—especially castratisuch as Senesino and Farinelli, who were the superstars of their day. A Three takes on scene from the earliest opera still in the repertoire movie about the latter enables us to imagine (and, with modern (1607), the Orfeo of Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643). We shall technology, to hear) what their performances might have been like. watch a production by Gilbert Deflo that aims at authenticity, one — Riccardo Broschi: Idaspe, “Ombra fedele anch’io” 4½ by Trisha Brown that treats it as dance, and another by From the film Farinelli, il castrato, by Gérard Corbiau (1994) that fills the stage in a wild extravaganza. This last employs an arrangement and orchestration byElena Cats-Chernin. D. Handel with Care — or with Abandon — Monteverdi: Orfeo, “Vi ricorda, o boschi ombrosi” 2½ Furio Zanasi (Barcelona, 2002; d. Gilbert Deflo) Three arias from the of (1685–1759), — Monteverdi: Orfeo, “Vi ricorda, o boschi ombrosi” 2½ the dominant opera composer of his time. Each will be heard in two Simon Keenlyside (Brooklyn, 1998; d. Trisha Brown) different performance. In the case of an aria from Orlando (1733), we can explore the difference between a staged and unstaged — Monteverdi: Orfeo, “Vi ricorda, o boschi ombrosi” 2½ version, and also demonstrate the practice of adding improvised Dominik Köninger (Berlin, 2012; d. Barrie Kosky) ornaments to the da capo repeat of the opening section, which was And an even more radical take on baroque opera from Paris last fall: almost de rigueur in Italian opera seria. a production ofLes Indes Galantes (1735) by Jean-Philippe Rameau — Handel: Orlando, “Fammi combattere” 3½ (1683–1764) that turns its original colonialist philosophy on its head. Bejun Mehta in concert with René Jacobs — Rameau: Les Indes galantes, dance from the “Savages” 4 — Handel: Orlando, “Fammi combattere” 4 Paris, 2019; choreography Bintou Dembélé. Bejun Mehta (Brussels, 2011; d. Pierre Audi)