Arts & Events

I have often said that when attending a Handel opera, even for the first time, as was the case when I heard Partenope on Wednesday, October 15, one comes out of the theater feeling one has heard the opera three times. This is because Handel followed the da capo pattern of his era, structuring each and every aria in an ABA pattern in which the aria is first sung all the way through, then developed with variation, and finally repeated “from the beginning” with or without further vocal embellishment. When listening to Handel, this ABA pattern can be extremely tedious. 

Handel’s Partenope, first produced in 1730 in London, at more or less a mid-point in Handel’s career as an opera composer, is a case in point. Especially, since even the impresario, Owen Swiney, who first introduced Partenope to the operatic stage in London in 1730, admitted that this opera “put me in a sweat… for it is the very worst book … that I ever read in my whole life.” Indeed, the anonymous libretto for Partenope, based on texts meant to serve previous operas, is more than a bit contrived and frivolous.  

Partenope has never before been seen here. In fact, this opera is rarely seen anywhere. Perhaps there’s a reason. However, Director Christopher Alden, who oversaw this staging, had created in 2008 an award-winning production of Partenope for English National Opera. Further, Alden had ties with San Francisco Opera, having previously directed productions, among others here, of Hans Werner Henze’s Das Verratene Meer (1991) and Stuart Wallace’s musically sophomoric (but locally celebrated) Harvey Milk (1996). So San Francisco Opera’s General Manager David Gockley chose, for better or worse—and ’m of two minds on this question—to bring to San Francisco Alden’s staging of Handel’s Partenope in this Fall’s season at the War Memorial Opera House.  

In his staging, Alden tried his best to make Partenope both interesting and relevant to our contemporary audiences. Handel set the plot in the Kingdom of Naples, where Partenope reigns as Queen. Director Alden set the opera in the Paris of the 1920s, in an era of artistic ferment enlivened by revolutionary movements in art and politics such as Dadaism and Surrealism. Alden makes Partenope a socialite hostess of a literary and artistic Parisian salon, where creative types gather around her and seek amorous favor from their “Queen Bee.” While Alden succeeded in some respects, he clearly overreached in others, alternately drawing laughs and trying our patience in an already long evening of listening to Handel’s musical repeats. (To their credit, San Francisco Opera made many musical cuts, shortening Partenope from a running time of over four hours to three hours and twenty minutes. However, even this shorter version seemed tedious and far too long, made only somewhat bearable by a number of sight gags thrown in by Director Alden to alleviate the tedium.) 

On paper, the cast seemed well-chosen. Internationally acclaimed soprano Danielle de Niese as Partenope and countertenor David Daniels as Arsace are both noted Handel interpreters. Mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack seemed—and was—an excellent choice for the role of Rosmira, who dresses as a man (Eurimene) to win back—and/or take vengeance—on Arsace, who has betrayed her before the opera begins. Countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo was selected for the role of Armindo, who moons in vain (until the ending) after Partenope. However, none of these noted singers managed to project anything whatsoever of the Italian text, and several of them, most notably Anthony Roth Costanzo, couldn’t consistently project their voices adequately in the War Memorial auditorium. In this respect, only tenor Alek Shrader, who sang the role of Emilio, exhibited both the vocal power and diction to make the Italian text clearly heard whenever he sang. 

Countertenor David Daniels as Arsace had ample opportunity in this opera to sing melancholy laments and longing expressions of forlorn love. Danielle de Niese as Partenope had a variety of different moods to express in her many arias, all of them beautifully sung, with a few lapses in the high notes, but totally absent of clear diction in Italian. Daniela Mack sang beautifully, expressing a variety of moods; but she too failed to make the Italian text clearly heard. Counter-tenor Anthony Roth Costanzo had a pleasant voice but was simply not strong enough to make much of a vocal impression.  

As the opera gets under way, all the male characters (and one female disguised as a male) seek to court Partenope. For her part, Partenope initially declares Arsace her favorite. Arsace, however, finds a young man named Eurimene dis-turbingly similar in looks to a woman, Rosmira, he has very recently jilted. This ‘Eurimene’, it soon turns out, is Rosmira disguised as a man; and when Arsace dis-covers this fact he is both remorseful and sworn to secrecy by Rosmira/Eurimene. Armindo and Emilio also declare themselves infatuated with Partenope, who seems to have them all wrapped around her little finger. 

In Act I, Director Alden stages much extraneous hi-jinks, such as having Armindo crawl rather than walk up a flight of stairs, then hang by his fingertips from the stairs while continuing to sing, then falling down a whole flight of stairs. Mean-while, Partenope and the other guests playing cards at her salon inexplicably don gas masks—a totally random bit of stagecraft unless one checks out the photograph in the opera program by Lee Miller, Man Ray’s lover, of a man wearing a gas mask from World War I. At this point, Alden’s staging seems all too arch and strained. 

In Act II, the staging becomes even more arch and strained. The action, if one can call it that, is simply a battle by the men for Partenope’s affections. The set includes a bathroom where, first, Partenope, retires, closing the door behind her. Soon we hear a toilet flush. Meanwhile, Emilio, who doubles as the photographer Man Ray, projects on a wall an abstract bit of film (actual footage by Man Ray). While singing, he then uses the projector’s light to throw hand shadows on the same wall. When Partenope exits the bathroom, Armindo replaces her and is locked inside by Emilio, who wants Partenope for himself. Armindo opens the transom and sticks his head out, singing his indignation. Finally, Armindo kicks the door open, but now Arsace is locked in the bathroom; and when the door is finally opened by Partenope, Arsace, seated fully clothed on the toilet, has covered himself with toilet paper. In short, we have descended to toilet jokes. Of course, what can a stage director do to counter the static quality of Handel’s da capo repeats? Christopher Alden has undoubtedly gone overboard; but something— if not toilet jokes—was needed to alleviate the musical tedium. How much coloratura roulades can one take? I am sympathetic to Alden’s problems, if not to his solutions. 

Act III brings about a resolution, of sorts, to the amorous goings on. There is a lovely trio involving Partenope, Rosmira, and Arsace, in which each protagonist expresses different and conflicting emotions. Eventually, realizing how steadfast Rosmira has been in seeking to win back Arace, Partenope renounces her infatuation with Arsace and quickly turns to Armindo, taking on a new lover as easily as she sheds the previous one. These characters are hardly believable! And we care not a whit about any of their amorous ambitions, with the exception of Rosmira and her deeply felt but conflicted feelings for Arsace who betrayed her. 

Finally, a word must be said about the conducting. Due to an illness, the scheduled conductor, Baroque specialist Christian Curnyn, had to be replaced at fairly short notice. Into the breach stepped Julian Wachner, music director of Trinity Wall Street in New York. Wachner has a conducting style that is all too flamboyant for my taste. In the overture to Partenope, Wachner swayed back and forth, flapped his arms, waved his hands, jabbed and pointed, jumped up and down, and lunged hither and yon. He continued in these exertions throughout the opera. While I cannot fault Wachner’s choice of tempos, except in an early aria by David Daniels, which I thought the conductor took too slow, I found myself irritated and distracted by Wachner’s antics. This was Wachner’s San Francisco Opera debut. I hope he will not be invited back.