Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, La Nuova Musica, Bates, Wigmore Hall review - thrilling Handel at full throttle

Last time I saw the lovelorn Cyclops from Handel’s richly turbulent cantata, Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, he was in a warehouse at Trinity Buoy Wharf earlier this year, posturing moodily as an Italian film director. The London Handel Festival’s specially commissioned Aci by the River seemed to have found the ideal form in which to explore this tale of thwarted desire for modern audiences; a dark tale of #MeToo woe in an alienated urban setting.

Yet the ebullient, passionate performance delivered by La Nuova Musica at the Wigmore Hall last night proved that when it comes down to it, there’s simply no substitute for excavating every emotion in a score till the whole auditorium zings. Under David Bates’ (pictured below) assured, convivial direction, the performers gave themselves so whole-heartedly to their roles that for two exhilarating hours there was no question that this mythological love triangle was the most pressing concern for everyone who witnessed it.

The evening opened with the overture from Handel’s 1711 work Rinaldo, the first Italian opera composed for the London stage and wildly successful when it débuted. It’s an apt introduction to this 1708 work – which is entirely distinct from his 1718 Acis and Galatea – drawing extensively on his time from 1706-10 in Rome, Florence and Naples.

From the off, there was a sense of the joy and vivacity that would suffuse the whole evening – if the players had been horses they would have been galloping with their tails held high. The deft playfulness of the strings was augmented by Leo Duarte’s ravishing, nimble oboe playing as well as lightning fast fingerwork from Inga Maria Klaucke on the bassoon.

Then we were on to the main event as British soprano Lucy Crowe and Singaporean-British mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron took their positions as the shepherd Aci and the nymph Galatea. In the expressive duet that marked the opening, Crowe’s voice soared and swooped with freshness and vibrancy as Barron brought a voluptuous, resinous quality to the lower notes. In Galatea’s aria Sforzana a piangere/Con più dolor (The stars that once smiled/on your suffering), Barron really excavated the pathos of a song in which her character imagines the tragedy of her situation reaching up to the heavens. As the violins wept alongside her, her deep vibrato brought out every nuance of the harmonies, creating the sense of a misery that was as ravishing as it was profound.

Crowe’s thrilling Aci, in response, was energised by her fury – in the ensuing aria Che non puó la gelosia (What can jealousy do?) it was almost possible to see the lightning flashing from the higher notes. Then came the moment we had all been anticipating – the entry of Polifemo. The Italian bass Luigi de Donato (pictured left, below) certainly didn’t disappoint as he stomped on in leather trousers and a jacket, topped off by a stern beard and rebellious ponytail. In his opening aria Sibilar l’angui d’Aletto/E latrar voraci Scille (All around me seems to be full/ of the hissing of Alecto’s snakes) he unleashed a volcanic torrent of rage. At the same time he ranged effortlessly across the musical terrain of a part that’s famously written for a bass who can span two and a half octaves.

Though there was no shortage of posturing and brinkmanship from this semi-acted performance, there was no point at which it descended into caricature. Today you get a sense that Polifemo would get a rough ride from the tabloids – and indeed in court – but De Donato succeeded in making him far more than a monster. In his aria Non sempre, no, crudele, Mi parlerai cosi (No, you will not always speak to me thus cruel one) he conveyed the sense of the black, glistening desolation his character felt. In the exquisite, much softer repeat he shifted the tone so that all we could hear was his vulnerability. It was a haunting, spellbinding moment of the evening.

The second part of the concert opened with a charmingly bucolic rendition of the suite from Il Pastor fido as an amuse bouche, before we were swept into the denouement of the drama. By this point the singers were completely caught up in the tempest of their emotions. Beyond her extraordinarily expressive voice, you could see every emotion of the music playing across Barron’s face. At some points she looked as if she was about to weep at other moments she displayed the quiet burning fury of someone who was about to kill.

One of the work’s most famous arias is Polifemo’s Fra l’ombre e gli orrori (In the shadows and the horrors), a bleak piece about a moth looking for the light of a lamp that it will never find. This was a particularly powerful moment for De Donato as he mined the music for every nuance of grief and regret, shifting from the tenor range to the deepest bass.

Crowe’s dramatic highlight came with the translucent agony she brought to the aria Verso già l’alma col sangue, (My soul is departing me already, with my blood), in which she demonstrated her own astonishing range by reprising it an octave higher. By this point it felt as if we were in an emotional tornado. If Ovid – whose metamorphoses inspired the cantata – could have witnessed the rapt attention the story still inspired from a twenty-first century audience, he would surely have been thrilled. After an evening at such full throttle, it felt like a shock – when the concert finally finished – to step out into the pedestrian comings and goings of the West End on a Tuesday night and calmly take the tube home.

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