By Reviewed by Michael Shmith
Partenope
Opera Australia State Theatre
May 2 (ends May 8)
Coming at the end of Opera Australia's otherwise lacklustre autumn season, Christopher Alden's gloriously stylish, amusing and wonderfully sung production of the rarely performed Partenope lit up the State Theatre with effervescence and style.
Emma Matthews in Partenope.
It's fairly long (7pm to about 10.30pm), but there's never too much Handel in my opinion, and the night flashed by.
Musically, this was as fine as one could wish for. Anthony Legge's attentive and well-balanced direction of Orchestra Victoria paid dividends, especially given that the opera is hard work for its cast of six (no chorus), who have more than their share of arias and ensembles.
No weak links here: Emma Matthews, Kanen Breen, Catherine Carby, Christopher Field, Victoria Lambourn and Richard Anderson all sang with heart and accuracy, with particular attention to diction that made the music exciting and fresh.
Matthews and Carby, in particular, as the morally conflicted Partenope and her sometime suitor/sometime enemy Arsace, respectively, produced some formidable singing. How Breen managed his Act III aria with various yogic contortions is a mystery between him and his guru. It brought the house down long before he could disentangle himself.
Alden's production (rehearsed by Tama Matheson) abandons any hope of understanding the convolutions of the original mythological plot - don't ask - by moving everything to a Parisian salon of the 1920s and letting sex and Surrealism do the thinking on our behalf. Dali and Dada, let alone the spirit of Man Ray, are never too far away.
Andrew Lieberman's brilliant white set - assisted by Jon Morrell's idiosyncratic costumes and Adam Silverman's wittily appropriate lighting - is practically a character unto itself.
Amanda Holden's English translation was most effective. Don't miss it.