Going for Baroque

By William Bender

After it was all over, Librettist Giacomo Rossi did not know whether to brag or complain, and so did both. The composer, said Rossi, "scarcely gave me the time to write, and to my great wonder I saw an entire opera put to music by that surprising genius, with the greatest of perfection, in only two weeks." The genius was George Frideric Handel, then 26. The opera was Rinaldo, conceived, composed and staged for London's Haymarket Theater in 1711. Based on an epic about the Crusades by Torquato Tasso, the opera tells the story of the Christian general Rinaldo and the Saracen queen Armida. It is a spectacular mixture of pagan magic, military pomp, vocal fireworks and other trappings of the Italian Baroque operatic style, then the rage in London. During the "Bird Song" of Almirena, Rinaldo's true beloved, a flock of sparrows was let loose. The waspish essayist Joseph Addison had fun with that in The Spectator. "There have been so many flights of them let loose that it is feared the house will never get rid of them; and that in other plays they make their entrance in very wrong and improper scenes; besides the inconveniences which the heads of the audience may sometimes suffer from them." Few listened to Addison. Rinaldo was the making of Handel and remains one of the finest of his 40 or more operas.

Until last week in Houston, it had never been staged in the U.S. Like almost all Baroque music, it fell into neglect with the rise of the classical era in the late 18th century. During the 19th century, romanticism buried it completely. That Rinaldo has only now come along as an afterthought of the post-World War II Baroque revival testifies to two things: the unadventurousness of the average opera company and the scarcity of the special type of virtuoso singer required for the title role.

In David Gockley, 32, the Houston Grand Opera has a general director who will take a chance on the unfamiliar and still pack the house. In Marilyn Home, singing the pants role of Rinaldo for the first time, the company has a guest performer who not only can go easily from velvety mezzo caresses to sparkling high soprano fioriture, but also has the sheer power and poise to make the music conform to her character's needs. Home sings as though she has never had a finer, more rewarding role. That comes close to being the case. Mezzos have an abundance of supporting parts, often villainesses, in their repertory (Amneris in Aida, Ortrud in Lohengrin), but few star vehicles. Home is trying to interest the Metropolitan Opera in Rinaldo, and the Met would do well to listen.

War Machine. The work is true grand opera. Baroque audiences loved a good show. Handel gave it to them, and in Houston so did Director Frank Corsaro. Armida, a kind of ancestor of the Queen of the Night, arrives in a cloud of darkness and swirling smoke, surrounded by a small zoo of reptiles and other phantasmagoric creatures played by dancers. The staging of the final battle between the Christians and the Saracens is a novel affair that can only be called aero-choreography: dancers and acrobats pirouette, somersault, tumble and flip high above the stage in stylized but effective combat. All the while, Home, as Rinaldo, looks on from atop a grim, menacing war machine. It is a memorable image.

For Rinaldo, Handel wrote some of his most striking orchestral music. The blazing forth of four trumpets and drums in Rinaldo's last-act aria "Or la tromba "was an effect that dazzled early 18th century audiences, and it still sounds good today. With a chamber orchestra drawn from the Houston Symphony, Conductor Lawrence Foster, the symphony's regular leader since 1972, makes his players key members of the drama. He cannot draw from Sopranos Evelyn Mandac (Almirena) and Noelle Rogers (Armida) the Baroque bravura he gets from Home, but Mandac is an especially lovely singer with a bright future. In Samuel Ramey (Argante), Foster has a bass baritone of extraordinary dramatic and lyric gifts, and it is easy to see why Ramey is fast filling the shoes and cape of the late Norman Treigle in Houston, at the New York City Opera and else where around the U.S. William Bender

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