L’Olimpiade: Vache Baroque makes an engaging case for Pergolesi’s penultimate opera

Vivaldi: L’Olimpiade – Natasha Page Vache Baroque (Photo: Michael Wheatley)

Pergolesi: L’Olimpiade; Aoife Miskelly, Nazan Fikret, Natasha Page, Shafali Jalota, Bechara Moufarrej, Frances Gregory, Robert Forrest, director: Laura Attridge, musical director Jonathan Darbourne; Vache Baroque Summer Festival
Reviewed 8 September 2024

Outdoors and in the rain, yet enterprising Vache Baroque make an engaging case for Pergolesi’s penultimate opera, along with some vividly virtuosic singing

Vache Baroque is an enterprising company centred on an annual festival in the grounds of The Vache, a 17th century house in Buckinghamshire. Previous operas presented include Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Handel’s Acis and Galatea and Charpentier’s La descente d’Orphée aux enfers but the company is developed a year-round programme and last year included events celebrating Salmone Rossi [see my review], as well as an educational programme which includes collaborations with Bucks Music Trust and Bucks Council Multi Sensory Imparment team.

This year, Vache Baroque staged Pergolesi’s L’Olimpiade in the grounds of The Vache in a production directed by Laura Attridge, designed by Caitlin Abbott, with movement by Ami Nagano, and directed from the harpsichord by Jonathan Darbourne. We caught the final performance on Sunday 8 September, with Aoife Miskelly as Licida [see my recent interview with her] Nazan Fikret as Aristea, Natasha Page as Megacle, Bechara Moufarrej as Clistene, Shafali Jalota as Argene, Frances Gregory as Alcandro and Robert Forrest as Aminta. The opera was accompanied by a period instrument ensemble of some fifteen players

Pergolesi’s arias were presented in the original Italian but Attridge had replaced the original recitative with her own English script. The presented the plot engagingly, with a nice clarity and whilst never sending up Metastasio’s libretto did have a wry view of the extreme coincidences on which the plot relies.

Vivaldi: L’Olimpiade – Vache Baroque (Photo: Michael Wheatley)

Metastasio’s original libretto for L’Olimpiade was extremely popular, being set some 50 times, and Pergolesi’s opera was a notably popular version. The sheer popularity of this piece of dramatic nonsense highlights the difference between the Baroque audience and the modern one. Not only does Metastasio’s L’Olimpiade rely on coincidence but it has an extreme case of lost baby syndrome – Licida, who has caused havoc for three acts and is condemned to death, turns out to be the long lost son of King Clistene and brother of Aristea whose hand in marriage he was trying to win. 

Not only that, but after two acts where Licida is the main engine of the action, he is found out and then Metastasio loses interest in him and most of Licida’s actions in Act Three take place off stage, whilst the final stages of the plot focuses much more on the positively homoerotic relationship between Licida and Megacle rather then the men’s relationships to their female beloveds. Here all four leads (all sopranos!) were played by women (the original had castrati in all the role was female singers were banned on stage).

Metastasio’s libretto was written for Caldara in 1733 (for Vienna), Vivaldi set the opera in 1734 (for Venice) [Irish National Opera staged it earlier this year, see my review] with Pergolesi’s setting following in 1735 (for Rome). Both Pergolesi and Vivaldi set the libretto uncritically, we must simply accept the work as it is, and Attridge did an excellent job of updating without losing any sense of the original. The only drawback was that with a couple of the arias, the sidestep needed to get this particular aria text into the plot was noticeable. Attridge also managed to delineate the work’s complex relationships with a nice clarity.

The heavy lifting in the English narrative was carried by Frances Gregory as Alcandro and Robert Forrest as Aminta, both secondary characters whose role was to observe. But this was done as proper dialogue from all the characters rather than a narration.

Of course, performing out of doors during an English Summer is always problematical. Whilst the main stage area and the audience were covered, a rain storm that came in the middle of Act One meant an unexpected hiatus in procedings. The performers handled this superbly (including Aoife Miskelly’s Licida and Robert Forrest’s Aminta finishing their scene in the rain), but there is no doubt that the performance was disturbed.

Pergolesi’s writing in the opera mixes highly athletic, quasi instrumental writing with arias that are far more galant and lyrical. In fact, there is something Janus like about the music, sometimes looking back and sometimes forward, and it is worth bearing in mind that Pergolesi was only 24 when he wrote the opera (his sixth full length one) and in ordinary circumstances we would be expecting to see how his talent developed. It was the more lyrical arias that counted the most, allowing the singers to express a wider range, though all were vividly engaging in the more virtuosic writing.

Attridge use the cast members in masks to introduce an extra element to the stage presentation, making use of Ami Nagano’s movement and creating a disturbing feel of the way many of the characters in the opera are haunted by the past.

Aoife Miskelly made a surprisingly engaging Licida, giving us a wonderfully vivid opening aria as Miskelly made the virtuoso runs echo Licida’s enthusiasm. He was a character who allowed this enthusiasm to get in the way of things. As Megacle, Natasha Page brought out the character’s sense of melancholy engagement, despite the vocal fireworks, and Page made Megacle’s almost dogged persistence in supporting the more flaky but charismatic Licida seem almost sensible and rather touching.

Nazan Fikret managed to give a bit of spunk to Aristea, one of those put-upon, passive Baroque heroines. Fikret’s Aristea managed to seethe under that passive acceptance, and she had a terrific revenge aria, yet her duet with Page’s Megacle was finely touching. As Argene, the woman who still moons after Licida, Shafali Jalota provided superb support and she too got fireworks in her revenge aria. At the end, Argene has to be able to marry Licida, after all Licida and Aristea are brother and sister, but Jalota and Miskelly made it seem as if this was the most desirable thing in the world.

King Clistene is important to the plot but a secondary character. Bechara Moufarrej played him with confidence and dignity, and gave a robust account of his aria. Both Robert Forrest as Aminta (Licida’s companion) and Frances Gregory as Alcandro (one of Clistene’s courtiers) were engaging in the way their dialogue addressed the audience directly and slyly broke the fourth wall. Both characters get arias that are somewhat less than necessary, but both Forrest and Gregory made their performances highly musical and very rewarding.

The sound design was excellent and there was little sense of that we were not listening to a natural acoustic.

Vivaldi: L’Olimpiade – Frances Gregory, Bechara Moufarrej, Aoife Miskelly – Vache Baroque (Photo: Michael Wheatley)

Playing period instruments in the open air on a wet evening is not ideal, but the band brought out the energy and vivacity of Pergolesi’s writing. In the quieter, more lyrical numbers sometimes the ensemble felt as it would have benefitted from a greater number of players, individual lines feeling rather bare. But throughout the evening, one marvelled at what the players were able to achieve.