First performed in 1728, Tolomeo is one of Handel's bleakest and most haunting operas. It's a strangely prescient work: its Oedipal view of psychology prefigures Freud; more pertinently, perhaps, it examines, often with painful exactitude, the reactions and emotions attendant on exile and asylum.
The feuding royal brothers Alessandro and Tolomeo, along with the latter's wife Seleuce, arrive in Cyprus seeking refuge, only to be greeted with a mixture of abuse, manipulation and thuggery on the part of the local king Araspe and his devious sister Elisa. Returning home, however, would necessitate confronting a very different nightmare, for the brothers have been set against each other by their ambitious mother Cleopatra, an unseen yet dominating presence in everyone's minds.
The score uncompromisingly evokes a mood of pervasive sadness and nostalgia. Slow, reflective arias predominate, which shockingly heightens the impact of both Araspe's foursquare brutality and Elisa's ditsy coloratura.
Such concentrated intensity can be hard to sustain in performance, though Laurence Cummings's conducting is immaculately judged in its depth and compassion, while the cast, drawn from students of the Royal College of Music's Benjamin Britten International Opera School, is excellent. The two sopranos - Katherine Manley as Seleuce and Laura Mitchell - are both sensational. Countertenor Christopher Ainslie is the handsome, mercurial Alessandro, sounding particularly gorgeous in his big first act aria. Kostas Smoriginas is a thoroughly unpleasant Araspe, Patricia Orr a moving Tolomeo, though her slightly metallic voice might not be to everyone's taste in Handel.
James Conway's production adds immeasurably to the opera's disturbing atmosphere. The drama plays itself out on seashore, where refugees are washed to land like driftwood. Images of isolation and degradation proliferate, while concrete walls hint that exile, meanwhile, all too frequently means the replacement of one prison with another. This strong production enters English Touring Opera's repertoire in the autumn.
