“Partenope” by Lars Ulik Mortensen

This is the Handel’s romantic comedy.

This production was played by the same dream team from the production of Handel’s “Guilio Cesare” which includes Andreas Scholl (countertenor), Inger Dam-Jensen (soprano), Tuva Semmingsen (mezzo-soprano), Palle Knudsen (baritone), Francisco Negrin (stage director), Lars Ulrik Mortensen (conductor) and Concert Copenhagen (orchestra), plus my favorite Cleopatra’s crazy half brother, Christophe Dumaux (countertenor).

The basic story line of this opera is that a young girl, Rosmira (Tuva Semmingsen) disguised as a man goes to Queen Partnope’s (Inger Dam-Jensen) palace in search of her lover, Arsace (Andreas Scholl). There, she finds him courting beautiful, sexy and powerful Partenope. Partenope is a queen bee and she has many suitors. Handsome and dashing Arsace is the front-runner.

Rosmira gets very outraged and accuses Arsace for betraying her and his promise of marriage, especially after she saw him making out with Partenope (though as much as angry she is, neither she can resist not be all over him). Playboy Arsace gets very embarrassed but cannot decide whom he wants to be with. She makes him swear (“on my fidelity, not yours!”) not to tell anyone that she’s woman otherwise she’ll expose him.

Shy and sensitive Armindo (Christophe Dumaux) is also in love with Partenope, desperately. But he doesn’t have courage to confess even though everyone knows it including Partenope. And everyone looks down upon him including Partenope who innocently teases him time to time.

Another suitor is Emilio (Bo Kristian Jensen) who is the macho ruler of neighboring region. He’s so in love with her to the extreme he invades her territory militarily. He gives her the ultimatum that he would surrender everything to her if she marries him otherwise he would take military action. Proud Partenope didn’t like the offer so she goes to war.

She commands her own military because all her suitors (including Rosmira, in order to keep up with her lies) are just too wimpy enough to command. Arsace begs Rosmira not to join the battle but as angry she is, she doesn’t listen. He saves her life when attacked by Emilio during the battle. Armindo’s bravely saves Partenope and forces the enemy to flee. Partenope wins the battle and takes Emilio as POW.

During the drinking cerebration, Rosmira brags that she is the one, not Arsace who took Emilio down and claims how cowardly Arsace was during the battle. From anger, at every opportunity, she verbally abuses and humiliates him in front of everyone.  He takes it all in silence. Everyone starts to think how unmanly he is for taking insults and yet, they also get confused when Rosmira defends him when they even try to insult him.

After the victory cerebration, Partenope realizes that there is no one worthy of her love than Armindo for he has done so much for her. But she goes into complete denial when she suddenly felt attraction for this “looser”.

By this time, Arsace is well aware that he loves Rosmira but is not able to stop her out of control fury. So he suffers in silence. And Rosmira’s anger comes to the boiling point that she challenges him for duel by telling Partenope how he betrayed a young noble lady and he (she) is there to duel in honor of the lady. This news sinks Arsace’s reputation very quickly at everyone’s eyes specially Partenope’s who angrily orders him for duel.

Arsace gets light ball moment right before the duel begins. He proposes the term of the duel as “bare-chested” which forces Rosmira to confess her own true identity at everyone’s surprise.

At the end, Arsace takes Rosmira’s hand and Partenope takes Armindo’s while passing around “fire”, “peace” and “harmony”. And they live happily ever after.

This is not Handel’s best work and yet, musically it all sounded so gorgeous because all the singers and the orchestration from the dream team were just superbly good.

Like his orchestration in “Guilio Cesare”, everything about Lars Ulrik Mortensen’s orchestration in this production sounded just right. His orchestration reminds me the similarities of the orchestra sounds conducted by Daniel Beckwith in “Julius Caesar” at Fort Worth Opera. Their music are not too fast, not too slow and not too much, not too subtle but very rich and flexibly refined.

Tenor, Bo Kristian Jensen who I listened to first time has very virtuosic, full and beautiful rich voice.

Countertenor, Christophe Dumaux has the beautiful textured mezzo-soprano range voice with his own melancholic dark hue. His singing might sound monotone or inflexible on the surface. But you just could feel that he put so much technique and thought into his singing. There is the inner fire in his singing, which has the magical magnetic field.

This production is not only musically outstanding but also visually stylish and hilariously entertaining. The stage directions are very detail-oriented and there is no any dull moment even during long da capo arias. The stage director must’ve had such fun time making this production.

All the singers are not only wonderful singers but also very talented actors. There are quiet a lot of detailed acting directions either comedic or serious, which they had to keep up with while they’re singing.

Specially it was very funny to watch when Andreas Scholl and Christophe Dumaux each sung love songs to the Inger Dam-Jensen look-alike Barbie doll, or during the drunken cerebration while Emilio is singing his misery after being taken as POW, all the characters had great time abusing and hazing him. And also at the battle scene - it’s always interesting to see how opera production handles battle scene -, suddenly they all started playing musical chairs followed by rock-paper –scissors with lots of cheatings, which ended up into fist fights.

It was also funny to see how all the suitors including Emilio the enemy combatant forge easy-going, heat warming, kids’-like friendships with each other centering Partenope.

The stage settings are well thought through including the usage of small objects like the flame of candlelight (fire), the harmony ball (harmony) and the olive branch (peace), which had deeper meanings for each character.

The hand-held cameras were also used as they’re standing besides or behind the singers so not only there is very warm intimacy between cameras and the singers as watching a very good movie, but also you could see the singers’ viewpoints from the stage, which were very neat.