“Alcina” by Alan Curtis

I listened to Handel’s opera “Alcina” conducted by Alan Curtis. This opera is filled with so many wonderful music.

American mezzo-soprano, Joyce Didonate sung the title role. She is outstanding in this recording. She is technically and emotionally expressive singer. She is wonderful in singing Handel. There is exquisite beauty in her voice, especially in her upper range.

This is the first time I listened to Alan Curtis. Comparing with the refined agility and vibrancy of the orchestrations by Marc Minkowsky or Diego Fasolis, Alan Curtis’s orchestration is calm and subtle. His music is sensitively detailed but lacking certain liveliness for my taste.

It is one of the reasons this recording felt not so exciting than other Handel recordings.

Another reason is that all the singers in this production have very beautiful voices but they have much less expressions and more or less subdued in their singings exception of Joyce.

This opera is based on the Baroque era epic poem “Orlando Furioso” which was also the base for many operas including two more by Handel such as “Ariodante” and three by Vivaldi such as “Orlando Furioso”.

So there are some of the familiar names. In this opera, the sorceress, Alcina is the main character and the main theme is her love triangle with Ruggiero and his fiancé, Bradamante. Ruggiero and Bradamante are both warriors and when the opera opens, Ruggiero is already under Alcina’s magical spell enjoying hedonistic life with Alcina in the heavenly-like place and doesn’t remember his former life. In order to rescue him, Bradamante who is much more macho than her fiancé penetrates the Alcina’s island disguised as a man.

And when Ruggiero was woken by the magic ring, he was disgusted by what was done to him. Alcina doesn’t recognize all the cruelties she’s caused to the others. And she is genuinely in love with him therefore she goes through series of laments for being rejected. And then she turns to anger against the world. There are fear, confusions, psychological deception games and huge battles between Alcina’s party and Ruggiero & Bradamante’s party involving monsters, beasts and warriors.

In the end, Ruggiero breaks the urn. Alcina’s world of the illusion disappears and her prisoners take back their human forms from beasts, rocks and trees after they’re brutally transformed by her.

According to the CD notes, Carestini who was the original castrato singer for Ruggiero refused to sing the aria “Verdi prati” because it was too easy for him. Handel got so mad and told him that he doesn’t get paid (castrato singers were highly paid super stars back then) until he sings it. Carestini sung it, which became the instant hit.

I don’t blame Carestini because even I didn’t recognize the greatness of this aria initially neither. Even after I learned the translation of it, I only thought it as a nice idyllic song. It was only when I listened to it in the context of the opera.  Handel’s thunderbolt finally hit me. And when it hit me, it hit me so hard. The meaning of the aria made me understand his music greatly. Musically, it is an amazing aria with the deep psychological emotion.

This aria is sung when Ruggiero discovers the Alcina’s magical scheme and decides to leave behind the world he once thought was paradise, which was actually the horrid landscape, disguised as illusion. Even though he is very furious for what Alcina has done to him, there is a part of him still felt something special for the world.  Before he leaves, he looks back this world where it still looks beautiful and sings his farewell song,

“Verdant meadows, leafy woods,

you will loose your beauty.

Pretty flowers, purling brooks,

your charm, your loveliness

Is about to be transformed.

Verdant meadows, leafy woods,

you will loose your beauty.

And, the charming prospect changed,

Everything will re-acquire

its former horrid aspect.

Verdant meadows, leafy woods,

you will loose your beauty.”

 “Verdi prati, selve amene,

perderete la beltà.

Vaghi fior, correnti rivi,

la vaghezza, la bellezza

presto in voi si cangerà. 

Verdi prati, selve amene,

perderete la beltà.

E cangiato il vago oggetto

all'orror del primo aspetto

tutto in voi ritornerà.

Verdi prati, selve amene,

perderete la beltà.”