Although nominally an opera seria like most of Handel’s other London operas of the 1720s and ’30s, English National Opera’s description of Partenope (1730) as a ‘rom com’ is closer to the mark. It has a levity and comedy that Handel didn’t really explore in his operatic output again until his last three, and all those other operas’ serious message of wise leadership is more or less absent in this. Among Partenope’s suitors, it is the one posing the most apparently destructive threat – Emilio, with the warfare he brings since she won’t marry him – who is the most quickly defeated, so as to become little more than an onlooker to the subsequent drama. Whereas in the typical Baroque opera seria of Handel and his contemporaries a battle becomes a serious, almost tragic narrative counterpart to the warring claims of love upon the hearts of their characters, here it’s a more whimsical metaphor for the playful skirmishes of romance that unfold around the alluring figure of Partenope, the queen of Naples in ancient times.
In Christopher Alden’s production (receiving its second revival by ENO) the game of cards which the principals play at the beginning and end brings out his wittily ironic notion of ‘love as a battlefield’, which aligns perceptively with the libretto’s stance on romance as a matter of chance or luck, rather than an existential confrontation between two parties. He sets the action in a high society Parisian salon of the 1920s, where the opera’s comic elements are channelled through the contemporary artistic movements of Surrealism and Dada. The point is made explicitly by portraying Emilio as the photographer and artist Man Ray, who stirs things up not only by his brief act of aggression (here cast as an overbearing attempt on Partenope) but also by his close observation of the other protagonists (though a bizarre mask of goggles within a piece of paper).
That has the useful result of integrating this otherwise somewhat peripheral figure into the drama, though more as a metatheatrical frame that directs our attention to its interplay of gender and sexual relations, akin to the role of the social media influencer in today’s world. But by developing his ‘queer’ personality, he acts as the prompt to others to identify or reveal their own true desires and motivations, mostly notably in Ormonte’s case as he begins to take a homosexual interest in some of the other characters; and when he appears in a garish pink wide-hooped skirt to preside ironically over that most toxically masculine practice of a duel – already sent up in the original scenario by the fact that it is to be between Arsace and his jilted former lover Rosmira, only dressed up as a man, Eurimene. Cross-dressing and disguise were typical features of late-seventeenth-century librettos, like that from which Handel’s opera derives. The scenario’s gender fluidity – avant la lettre by two centuries – presages contemporary understandings about such matters, and this run is a much better focussed and sensitive study in the topic than I recall from its more lurid and prurient first revival in 2017. No doubt the production has also been sharpened by presentations in Australia and San Francisco.
Its cause is also aided here by a wonderfully engaged and charismatic young cast. In the title role – entertaining four suitors, even if the disguised Eurimene is only in pretence – Nardus Williams brings a sparkle and vivid colour, both warmly personal and sassy, that puts one in mind of Handel’s great tragic heroine, Semele. Those two aspects come together in a vigorous aria near the end, as she addresses Arsace reprovingly and Armindo lovingly. Countertenor Hugh Cutting continues his conspicuous rise in the public’s estimation with his account of the wideboy Arsace. It’s impressive for his combination of vocal precision and emotional expression, especially in his numbers from the end of Act Two onwards, lending the part a depth and introspection as he descends into alcoholic desperation when wrestling with his infatuation for Partenope and Rosmira’s prior claim to his loyalty, having promised to marry her.
Katie Bray, in hot pursuit of him, disguised as Eurimene, is initially quite reserved but unleashes more passion and fury in Act Two, contrasting well as the only other female role with Partenope’s more relaxed approach to dealing with her lovers. The bashfulness of Partenope’s second suitor, Armindo, is finely caught by Jake Ingbar’s crisp but plangent performance, achieving fulsome joy in the last Act when he finally secures Partenope’s favour after she rejects Arsace on discovering his betrayal of Rosmira. Ingbar also treats us to some tap dancing during his last, rhythmically ebullient aria, and his control of the musical line elsewhere is outstanding given the tricky, clumsy manoeuvrings around the set’s staircase he has to negotiate to depict the anxiety he suffers on account of uncertainty as to how Partenope would accept his amorous inclinations.
Ru Charlesworth is blusteringly splenetic in the aria after Emilio’s defeat and adopts a similarly camp demeanour for their other interactions with the participants of this game of love, and the advice they offer to them. In William Thomas’s Ormonte, still waters run deep as his well anchored musical performance belies the psychosexual discoveries the character makes about himself.
William Cole – who has taken over from Christian Curnyn for this run – leads the ENO Orchestra in a robust interpretation that is nevertheless lively and energetic without becoming overdone. There is a judicious balance between period and modern instrumental approaches, with some frisky interjections from continuo harpsichordist Christopher Bucknall too. In short, the stylishness and subtlety of the music and production reveal the opera to be as sophisticated and bittersweet a work as Mozart’s comedies about the affairs of the human heart, as moving as it is entertaining.
