Handel Meets the Big Top

By Charles Downey
Ion Arts Reviewer
January 22, 2007

American Opera Theater, the inventive company formerly known as Ignoti Dei Opera, have mounted two interesting productions reviewed here at Ionarts last season. First it was the North American premiere of Cavalli's La Didone, followed by an all-original theater work called Ground that uses 17th-century ostinato bass pieces. Now the newly rechristened company brings us Handel's comic masque Acis and Galatea (1718) in a production that will sound absolutely crazy -- and is at least somewhat crazy -- but that was, once again, of profound interest.

In the original libretto, John Gay, Alexander Pope, and John Hughes (all members of the Scriblerus Club -- not a bad writing team) set the mythological story (used in several other operas) against a background of shepherds and shepherdesses. In this production at Baltimore Theater Project, director Timothy Nelson and lighting and production designer Kel Millionie have recast the music for a group of sideshow misfits -- "a traveling troupe of singing circus folk" as they put it in the program notes. Galatea (soprano Rebecca Duren, who sang a number of roles, including a young boy, in La Didone) becomes a tightrope ballerina, the Trapeze Girl. Her beloved Acis (tenor Aaron Sheehan, who was Enea in La Didone) is a mime in striped shirt and face paint. The cyclops Polyphemus (bass Sumner Thompson) becomes the Sad Clown, with a huge tie, bright red nose, crazy wig, and perpetually sour face.

In Ground, the texts that were sung did not match the action on stage, but it was in Italian and no one cared much (including me). Here, the singers declaim in English and the action has even less to do with the libretto. Until the end, that is, when the silliness finally stops and Polyphemus kills Acis with a large rock (well, a pink ball). There is no getting around that tragic ending. I spent the first fifteen minutes or so of the first half thinking that I would leave at intermission. The chorus sings, "Oh, the pleasure of the plains," and Galatea sings, "Ye verdant plains and woody mountains" and "Hush, ye pretty warbling choir." None of this has anything to do with the circus, and at first it all seemed a grotesque distortion of a gorgeous piece of music.

Well, at about the point that the Trapeze Girl climbed onto a pair of fabric ropes suspended from the ceiling, it all became irresistibly fun. A while back, I was impressed when Celena Shafer sang a difficult aria in Santa Fe's Lucio Silla while being lifted in the air and dressed in a corseted costume. Some readers may remember Rebecca Duren's gymnastic turns in La Didone: in Acis and Galatea, she sings more than once while suspended in various positions on these ropes, including one passage hanging upside down. Acis and Galatea sing the duet "Happy we! What joys I feel!" while playing on a seesaw and "The flocks shall leave the mountains" while pretending to be on a tightrope, walking toward one another. Acis sings his aria "Love sounds th'alarm" as a lion tamer, with the bear and Galatea pretending to be lions.

There is no point in pretending that this makes any sense. It turns the plot into a muddle and may annoy a viewer who is familiar with the work. However, if you accept that you are not going to be watching Handel's masque, but instead watching something else to the accompaniment of Handel's music, this production is a lot of fun. All of the singing is fine, and in this intimate theater the listener can hear each voice clearly, even in the choral numbers (especially when, at one point, the cast walks up into the seating and serenades individual members of the audience). I have rarely heard an audience laugh out loud this much at the opera.