COC’s Hercules sears the soul: review

By George Frideric Handel. Directed by Peter Sellars. Until Apr. 30 at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, 145 Queen St. W. 416-363-8231.

As William Tecumseh Sherman once memorably observed, “War is hell.”

And while the Canadian Opera Company production of Handel’s Hercules that opened Saturday night steers clear of showing us any actual combat, it still makes it heart-wrenchingly clear to us what an inferno the aftermath of combat can be, not just for the soldiers, but for the family members and friends who love them.

Like all COC productions, the musical credentials of the Hercules team are impeccable and the performances they give are as magnificently sung as they are completely felt and the orchestra, under the sure guidance of Harry Bicket, played with both power and subtlety.

Much of the design and the vast majority of the staging is also wildly striking. Yes, there are some things that don’t quite work, but they are like flaws in a diamond: part of its value and charm.

It takes a director like Peter Sellars, a man as bold as he is brilliant, to look behind the seemingly bloodless libretto of Rev. Thomas Broughton — encrusted with 18th-century homiletic aphorisms much the way that certain stars cover their persona with bling — and strip things down to the structure of the original material, Sophocles’ great play, The Women of Trachis.

Sellars’s thesis is that Handel was writing about the horrors of post- traumatic stress disorder centuries before the condition was named. And while it may sound daunting at first, the logic of his contention comes true as you hear those Handel arias anew for the first time.

We’ve all rolled our eyes over the years at hearing the same line or two of lyric repeated over and over again to increasingly glorious music, creating a cultural disconnect that can be hard to accept.

But in Sellars’s mind, people are repeating things because they must, because they are obsessed, because they have no other choice. Whether it’s a grieving friend, a conflicted son, a jealous wife, a tortured mistress or the psychologically ravaged title character, Sellars helps all of them achieve a depth of performance that is painful, but inspiring to behold.

Lucy Crowe’s stellar reputation had preceded her, but for once, all the raves seemed less than she deserved. This woman deserves to be at the very top of the pantheon of living operatic sopranos, as her performance as the captive Iole demonstrates.

At times, especially in more legato passages, her voice takes on a warm liquidity that positively soothes and heals, but in moments when she is recalling the tortures she underwent, it gives you the sensation of being stabbed with an icicle.

As the wronged wife, Dejanira, Alice Coote is equally impressive, capable of turning from the woman wronged to the instrument of vengeance in the course of a single scene, with her darker mezzo tones almost reaching contralto resonance as she plumbs the emotional depths as well.

Eric Owens has what must be one of the most thankless title roles in opera, singing only about a quarter of what the women do, but Sellars has even made that a virtue and his fevered outbursts, booming like rocket fire from his lower register, his halting excuses and roaring grief are all just what the soldiers returning from wars through the centuries have felt.

The pure countertenor of David Daniels captured the essence of Lichas, a good friend who seems unable to help in any way, and Richard Croft, as the struggling son, Hyllus, used his rich tenor to make psychological as well as musical sense of the part.

George Tsypin’s stark set — the mountains of the moon meet California — was just the right framework and the expressionistic lighting of James F. Ingalls kept astonishing us in the right way time and time again.

To end on a minor note, Sellars’ conception of the Chorus didn’t really work for me. I know he was trying to combine the mythic and the modern, but it looked like an Eastern European wardrobe display had mashed up with an army fatigue clearance and a men’s summer-wear sale at Value Village. Matters weren’t helped by all the unison hand movements, which eventually just looked like a chorus of “Skinnamarink” gone horribly wrong.

But those are small prices to pay for an evening that seared the soul as this Hercules did. The recent memory of the many suicides of Canadian veterans returned from Afghanistan, and last week’s fatal assaults by a traumatized combat veteran at Fort Hood made the lyrics of the final ensemble sequence, praising “the theme of Liberty’s immortal song,” touch us in a way they were never intended to.

For Sellars and Handel remind us that, too often, “Liberty’s immortal song” is little more than the screams of the dying and the cries of those left behind.