Six characters in search of a director

[muckefuck]

I'm afraid I have to agree with pretty much everything my brother said in his review of the Lyric's staging of Rinaldo. Our main point of divergence is Daniels. I'm probably letting myself be swayed by Nuphy here, who doesn't care for him, but I thought he was the weakest of the principles. I don't remember his performance in Giulio Cesare at all (which isn't too surprising given how de Niese walked off with that one--it should really be called Cleopatra), but I liked him well enough in Orfeo and was gobsmacked by his Oberon in Midsummer Night's Dream. But I'm afraid Nuphs is spot on when it comes the flatness of his singing. He gets all the notes, but that's about it--and in the third act, he struggled to do even that. He's supposed to be pumped up with romantic love and ready to storm the walls of Jerusalem but he could barely hold his own against the orchestra.

Davies delivered on his hype, however, and I would warmly welcome a return of debutantes van den Hevel, Kleiter, and Prina. Please, just don't ask Francisco Negrin to direct them. I can't recall what he did for Partenope nine seasons ago, which indicates that it couldn't've been the shit sandwich of hammy nonsense, distracting silliness, and clunky boxes dropped on the stage we had tonight. There were some very effective moments, to be sure, and even scenes that flirted with coherence. But mostly it brought to mind those arch movie versions of cheesy old shows we've been deluged with lately. Negrin shares with those directors a lack of vision for how to make them effective on their own terms and a distrust of an audience's ability to sit through anything not 100% up-to-date without being constantly reminded how much smarter they are than the material. I deliberately didn't read bunj's review closely before tonight, but I glanced at it just enough to suspect that I'd enjoy the opera more with my eyes half-closed most of the time. And I was right.

Thank the Graces the music is beyond gorgeous. (Speaking of the Graces, did you know that the Furies weren't conceived of in early modern times as scary women with scourges but as swishy camp flamenco dancers?) And it's really impressive to see how Handel plays around with the conventions of Baroque opera. He loves the Damascene sorceress so much he gives her bracketed arias when she appears, something no one else ever gets. She's really the character with the most interesting arc in this work and Negrin admits as much in his notes. So why he decided to bury her biggest scene by conceptualising her as an ill-tempered drunken lounge singer is lost on me. But, like bunj's, mine is clearly a minority opinion; that selfsame scene just about brought down the house.

We're not catching the Rising Young Stars this year. (In a completely uncharacteristic move that revealed to both of us just how thrown he's been by the recent decline and death of his mother, Nuphy not only forgot to send in the money for tickets but forgot that he'd forgotten to.) So this mixed bag closes out our season. We decided to celebrate in grand style by blowing two dinner's worth of scratch on one meal at Santorini, sharing a beautiful whole black sea bass that set us back the cost of a new pair of shoes. It was a lovely piece of fish; too bad the sides weren't worthy of it. And I hope is was simply the flood of the Blackhawks fans that had our waiter so frazzled. Can't remember the last time someone broke off my order halfway through because they apparently didn't trust their own ability to keep it all straight in their head.