Reconstructing Baroque Opera
The recently opened Sam Wanamaker Theatre marks an intriguing step forward in the revival of baroque opera, says Mark Ronan.
This year marks an intriguing step forward in the revival of baroque opera, which has gathered pace over the past half-century with the use of original instruments played in the style of the time. This further step is not the revival of the castrati — those castrated males whose voices carried huge power at a high vocal register — but the creation of a realistic performance space, lit entirely by candles.
Seventeenth century pieces were not performed in the vast auditoriums we have today, and putting on an opera from the Jacobean era in a modern opera house inevitably compromises the result. Over five years ago the Royal Opera at Covent Garden put on Cavalli's La Calisto, a highly colourful romp about sexual desires among gods and humans, but this year for his L'Ormindo, a sexual intrigue about two young men in love with the same queen, they have moved to a new venue specially catering to Jacobean theatre.