Opera note.(Music)(Rodelinda (1725))(Author Abstract)

Handel's Rodelinda at the Metropolitan Opera, New York.

Handel's Rodelinda (1725) has always been one of his most famous operas, with much magnificent music. When it was performed in Gottingen in 1920, it marked the beginning of the Handel opera revival. The opera centers on the abandoned queen Rodelinda (whose defeated husband has fled and is presumed dead), and who is laid siege to by the usurping king. Her steadfastness in protecting herself and her young son--through tribulation and through six superior arias of contrasting emotional states--is rewarded when her husband returns and, after a procession of plot devices, regains his throne. All ends happilly, with the double-dyed villain (not the usurping king, but his henchman) dead mad the usurper repenting his misdeeds.

Nicola Haym's libretto--essentially a string of ABA arias with one lovely duet thrown in--is, despite the convolutions of the plot, fairly straightforward onstage. The Metropolitan Opera's production, which I heard December 2, can be listed as one of its finest in the past few seasons. Very well sung throughout, it was staged with great care and imagination by Stephen Wadsworth (who staged the excellent Seattle Ring Cycle). He is one of America's premier directors of opera. He always works from the inside out: that is, he begins with character, with real people caught in real situations. Even in as artifice-driven an art form as opera seria, Wadsworth creates a consistent naturalness--intimacy bordering on verismo realism. Genre touches throughout the evening--gardeners planting flowers, masons constructing a memorial--are never obtrusive, and fit into the larger story. The constant passing of dark-costumed soldiers effectively provides that aura of police-state menace. Such marvelous touches as his handling of Rodelinda's son Flavio (beautifully acted by Zachary Vail Elkind) made him--as he is--an integral part of the unfolding tale.

In this Wadsworth was aided by the brilliant sets of his longtime collaborator Thomas Lynch. Lynch put eighteenth-century Milan onstage at the Met. The detailed sets, striking as they are, do more than just look nice (relief enough in today's opera world!). They further the drama. In the third act, the hero-fugitive Bertarido is imprisoned in a dungeon, and because of the Met's stage wizardry we are shown both upper and lower levels. On the upper level we see the usurper Grimoaldo in torment because of his vain pursuit ...