Any opera with two pairs of young lovers inevitably gets compared to Così fan tutte. But in the case of Handel’s mid-career novelty Imeneo, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a better point of reference. There may be unexpected Mozartian depths to this intimate comedy of duty and desire, but there’s none of Così’s cynicism or cruelty in a piece whose games are played strictly at opera’s own expense.
With the vogue for Italian opera all but over, deposed in the 1740s by the new fashion for English oratorios, Imeneo is Handel in mischievous, end-of-term mood. This operetta (the composer didn’t dignify it with the weight of a full opera) sets up conventions only to knock them down. Da capo arias? Occasionally. Mad scene? Not really. Happy ending? Certainly not. It’s exhilarating, often meta-theatrical stuff, and director Guido Martin-Brandis and the Cambridge Handel Opera Company capture all its knowing, self-referential charm in this delightful staging.
A row of Ionic columns flanking the stage are the only nod to the drama’s Athenian setting. Otherwise it’s an 18th-century fantasy of topiary and trellis (an arbour dripping with wisteria winks playfully to Bridgerton), where the necklines are low and the stakes still lower.
Pirate-kidnappers, who have seized the city’s entire stock of marriageable young virgins, are dispatched by Imeneo (Timothy Nelson) in a few phrases of recitative and the opening five minutes. The only conflict that remains is whether Rosmene (Ellie Neate) will choose gratitude and marry her rescuer, or fidelity and wed her lover Tirinto (Bethany Horak-Hallett). Handel spins it out deliciously, with the help of a sub-plot of Rosmene’s younger sister Clomiri (Lisa Dafydd) and her father Argenio (Trevor Eliot Bowes), lulling us into familiar romcom rhythms before confounding them in an ending that separates and unites all the “wrong” people.
With music director Julian Perkins conducting from the harpsichord – on stage along with his band – Martin-Brandis invites the musicians into the action. Characters make asides to them (and a double bass comments in its turn), when they’re not busy breaking the fourth wall with the help of Trui Malten’s articulate lighting design. A chair, a couple of gilded pictures frames and a pair of hats are the only props – used with endless invention, wit and care by a cast who balance Handel’s precise cocktail of artifice and sincerity beautifully.
Perkins breathes this music, though on opening night his orchestra weren’t quite with him: violins sagging, entries occasionally timid. No fear, however, from a superb cast: Neate’s Rosmene vibrant, growing in power through the immense final scene; Dafydd captivating and sweetly sung as the determined Clomiri. Horak-Hallett’s glossy mezzo was evenly matched with rival Nelson’s handsome baritone, leaving Bowes to turn the patriarch into an irrepressible comic turn. Handel’s operatic afterthought scrubs up well as the main event.
