Nicholas McGegan - Handel: Teseo (Highlights) (2014)

In 2011 the Göttingen Handel Festival bid an emotional farewell to its long-serving Artistic Director Nicholas McGegan with a production of Teseo that was performed with a lively sense of humour, knowing theatrical winks and an undiluted affection for the characters. Last year an almost identical cast reassembled in Berkeley with McGegan’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. The spirited élan evident from McGegan’s California concerts makes it a pity that this live document has been reduced to only a selection of highlights. No doubt inevitable disturbances such as traffic noise, audience coughs and a few unfixable bum notes had something to do with why about half the opera is missing, but I lament the omission of Medea’s lovelorn ‘Dolce riposo’.

There are distracting fade-outs during recitatives but compensation is found in a palpable sense of fun and spontaneity spreading through the orchestra and onwards into the cast, and the selected action brims with personality and charm. McGegan’s pacing, his orchestra’s subtle playing and Amanda Forsythe’s singing ensure that Teseo’s ‘Chi ritorna alla mia mente’ is breathtakingly gorgeous, and so is the dulcet partnership between Robin Blaze and a pair of flutes in Arcane’s beguiling ‘Le luci del mio bene’. Agilea’s spellbinding ‘Amarti sì vorrei’ displays the chamber-music sensitivity of the continuo team of David Tayler (theorbo), Phoebe Carrai (cello) and Haneke van Proosdij (harpsichord). Of course, Dominique Labelle’s irascible sorceress Medea steals the show, whether cackling wickedly like a pantomime witch in her turbulent ‘Sibbillando, ululando’ or the devastating seriousness in her explosive soliloquy ‘Morirò, mà vendicata’. Albeit imperfect and incomplete, this is an enjoyable snapshot of genuine flesh-and-blood theatrical fun. -- David Vickers, Gramophone