Prom 65: Alice Coote sings Handel (3.09.15)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

22:15
Royal Albert Hall

Handel - Arias from operas, oratorios and cantatas

Alice Coote (mezzo-soprano)
The English Concert
Harry Bicket (conductor)
Susannah Waters (stage director)

A programme of arias from Handel's operas, oratorios and cantatas - including Giulio Cesare, Semele, Hercules, Theodora, Messiah and Tra le fiamme - as a window on 'being both': the dilemmas and turbulent emotions experienced by both male and female characters
Few composers express emotion as directly or with greater psychological truth than Handel. British mezzo-soprano Alice Coote explores the full gamut of these emotions in a Late Night Prom featuring some of Handel's greatest arias. Taking on both male and female roles, she delves into what it means to be a man, or a woman, in Handel's world of sorceresses and knights, kings and queens. She is joined in her theatrical journey by regular collaborators and period-performance specialists Harry Bicket and The English Concert.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

No other programme details available I'm afraid.

[french frank]

It sounds - intriguing. I assume that the 'delving' only means singing?

[doversoul1]

... I assume that the 'delving' only means singing?

I don’t know…. It’s got a stage director.

Alice Coote’s thoughts on ‘being both’

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/may/13/alice-coote-mezzo-breeches-roles-my-life-as-a-man

What, then, is the great curiosity and fascination in watching someone assume the opposite gender and be something they are not?

I wasn’t too impressed by the article when it came out (not sure why) but I’ll read it again. I’m not sure if modern audience of Baroque operas find any extra interest or fascination in seeing a woman playing a man, although the other way round may still be fascinating or curious. As far as I am concerned, it is simply a question of how appropriate the casting is and how good the performance is. Alice Coote is a great singer but her Sesto in Giulio Cesare a few years ago was, to me, clearly miscast, at least listening to it on the radio. She sounded far too mature for a young man let alone a (even an old-ish) boy.

All this besides, I am looking forward to this prom.

[Caussade]

More programe details here http://brightonfestival.org/event/5893/being_both/

[Richard Tarleton]

I wasn’t too impressed by the article when it came out (not sure why) but I’ll read it again. I’m not sure if modern audience of Baroque operas find any extra interest or fascination in seeing a woman playing a man.........As far as I am concerned, it is simply a question of how appropriate the casting is and how good the performance is.

This article falls into the category of too much information, IMV. I can't imagine the really great Handelian mezzos of my lifetime banging on like this. Protesting, and too much, spring to mind. I don't care for her voice, but at least she explains why, part of the time (that stuff about sounding more male).

Few composers express emotion as directly or with greater psychological truth than Handel. British mezzo-soprano Alice Coote explores the full gamut of these emotions in a Late Night Prom featuring some of Handel's greatest arias.

The first statement (I assume Alpie is quoting the BBC?) may well be true, but the second makes considerable claims on behalf of Ms Coote - and I can't see that expression without thinking of Dorothy Parker

[jean]

...I’m not sure if modern audience of Baroque operas find any extra interest or fascination in seeing a woman playing a man...

I find the sexual ambiguity fascinating.

[french frank]

More programe details here http://brightonfestival.org/event/5893/being_both/

Thanks. Erm … it certainly gives some idea what to expect with the stage direction … Some may prefer to listen on Radio 3.

[cloughie]

I find the sexual ambiguity fascinating.

Curiouser and curiouser, Alice......

[doversoul1]

More programe details here http://brightonfestival.org/event/5893/being_both/

What is it to be a man or a woman? Are we all in some senses BOTH? How is the soul of the human being, faced with life's most profound challenges, affected by the question of gender?

Well, I wonder how much thoughts Handel invested in the question of gender when he composed his operas. Or is this not about Handel’s music?

jean

I find the sexual ambiguity fascinating.

I wouldn’t say I don't in general but not in Handel’s opera. I am aware that contralto is supposed to have that ‘frisson (in Antonio Pappano’s word)’. It may be in some repertoire like French Melodie but, to me not in Handel.

May be I should change that passage to something like ‘maybe not everyone who watches Baroque opera today, or Just ‘I’m not…’

[doversoul1]

Handel, anybody?

[LHC]

The Telegraph's resident curmudgeon, Rupert Christiansen, wasn't too impressed by the staged concert in Brighton:

"the director Susannah Waters presented a skeletal staging, in which Coote, dressed in androgynous black, let her hair down and cut it off, donned a breastplate and apron, doused herself with water and hung a sandwich board over her shoulders emblazoned with the platitude “I am.” Behind her, gnomic texts were slowly whitewashed on to a wall....

Such pretentious nonsense wouldn’t have mattered if Coote had been singing better. But despite Harry Bicket and The English Concert’s neat, steady accompaniment, she seemed wilfully determined to mash and mangle the music, alternating for the most part between a grainy contralto hoot and a queasy emaciated crooning, breaking the line with violent over-emphases and allowing some phrases to peter out into inaudibility. It was all horribly fussed."

I must admit his description of her singing ties in with my recent experience of her in concert. I suspect her voice has been undergoing some changes of late and is no longer as well suited to Handel as it once was. She is an interesting artist though and I hope that she is in a better voice tonight than she perhaps was in Brighton.

[doversoul1]

Well, this was definitely the most elongated Handel singing I’ve ever heard. It was hard work to keep down with it. No announcement to sit back and take a breath, and the shoddy/absurd playlist made the whole thing frustrating in the extreme. The Proms programme was published, what? three months ago? What excuse do they have for not publishing the playlist prior to the broadcast?

Still, it sounds as if the audience in the Hall enjoyed it. There must have been something interesting to look at.

[Pegleg]

This appeared in a Guardian article in 2010:

“What's the worst thing anyone ever said about you?

Rupert Christiansen of the Daily Telegraph said he was "disappointed" in my performance in Handel's Orlando at Covent Gardenin 2003. It was a big debut for me, but I had a haemorrhage on my right vocal cord that nobody knew about, and I had to withdraw after three performances. I took years to recover – both from the injuryand the impact of the poor review.”

His comments about her Brighton concert must have cut to the quick, but it saddens me to say I found myself in sympathy with some of his criticism after listening to last night's prom.

“breaking the line with violent over-emphases and allowing some phrases to peter out into inaudibility”

This sort of thing was evident at various points in the concert and at the very outset in “Sta nell'ircana”. I've no idea what she was trying to do with the line “The spindle and the distaff wield!” from Dejanira's aria as she sang “distaff” in as many voices as there were repeats, giving the impression Dejanira could be a man or woman, while never deciding which.

Her Scherza Infida seemed to restore some sanity, but Theodra's “Oh, that I on wings could rise ..” was all over the place, nor did I like her rendition of “He was despised”. After the final repeat of “He hid not his face from shame and spitting”, you can imagine Handel saying, “Nein, nein! Gott voman, not to speak, I pay for you to sing!”.

In Cleopatra's “sie pieta”, I thought Ms. Coote was at her best. In “myself I adore”, she sounded anything but pleasing, It sounded if she was under water at the beginning. ( Actually, she virtually was, as at this stage on the concert I believe she was in a bath)

Dopo Notte seemed to go a bit off the rails in the final da capo repeats. In “There, in myrtle shades” things seemed to get a bit forced.

You can make a direct comparison with her singing the same piece live in the studio, accompanied by Harry Bicket on piano, during this Tuesday's “in Tune”. I don't think we can say Ms. Coote was not in fine voice, it's all about what you do with that powerful instrument. Maybe it was the influence of the Hall, the staging, or both, but to my ears Tuesday was an example of less is more, and her singing impressed me.

Perhaps the Handelian cognoscenti will bang some sense into my head and tell me I'm talking rubbish. But I'm not sure this concert was either the best advert for Handel's music, or Ms. Coote's talents.

[ardcarp]

I'm afraid I just stopped listening. Ms Coote's approach to singing Handel seemed at odds with the 'early music' approach of the English Concert. Sorry.