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‘Straight to the heart’: Rebecca Evans, Iestyn Davies and John Mark Ainsley in Rodelinda at the Coliseum. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
‘Straight to the heart’: Rebecca Evans, Iestyn Davies and John Mark Ainsley in Rodelinda at the Coliseum. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

Rodelinda review – as restrained as it is over the top

This article is more than 10 years old
ENO's outstanding new production of Rodelinda at the Coliseum is a reminder of the everyday brilliance of Handel

He wrote at top speed. He improvised. He stole – from himself, from others, from all Europe. At a stroke he made the French, the Italian, the German, even the English style his own. Daily he drew fresh invention from the same patterns his hands had made on the keyboard all his life. The results, an occasional flop notwithstanding, still dazzle. And it all sounds so easy. Beethoven summed up the genius of Handel – for it is him we are praising – saying he achieved "the greatest effects through the simplest means".

This terse maxim should be worn like an amulet to every new Handel encounter. It sharpens our ears to his ingenuity. It helps us understand the nature of a musical miracle. It turns scepticism – I've been prone to it myself – to ashes. As ENO's new Rodelinda reminds us, with a few basic ingredients the German-born English composer could create opera that devastates. The librettos may be burdened with cryptic comments on the politics of Georgian England. The music goes straight to the heart.

Richard Jones, the director, and Christian Curnyn, the conductor, have understood this in a staging as restrained as it is seemingly over the top, as embellished and at times crazy as it is raw. The main set is a partitioned box of connecting rooms with one side open to the audience, a device Jones used successfully in his staging of Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk for the Royal Opera House. Jeremy Herbert's designs, with costumes by Nicky Gillibrand and lighting by Mimi Jordan Sherrin, revel in detail.

Musical standards throughout, on stage and in the pit, are outstanding. Curnyn's approach is brisk and buoyant. The ENO orchestra perform with period-instrument vigour and springy definition. An expert and responsive continuo section of cello, theorbo and harpsichord add texture and aural colour. Whether or not you like the production – I did – will depend on taste. "It's so ENO," commented a friend, in no mood to pay compliments. She might have objected to the sexy onstage tango or the noises off: the bangs, stomps and sighs of Handel's tortured characters as they raced across the stage in hope of fulfilling their dubious ambitions.

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Full house… Jeremy Herbert's connecting rooms set. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

The work's original setting is 7th-century Lombardy. The cocktail bar in which Bertarido (Iestyn Davies) sings his pastoral aria, or the seedy surveillance room where his rival, Grimoaldo (John Mark Ainsley), in shiny suit, slavers over the CCTV feed, may not be everyone's idea of what used to be called the dark ages. (Do they want tights and vassals?) But Milanese rivalries don't change much, whether updated to post-second world war as here, or as witnessed in the berlusconismo of Lombardy today. Then, as now, the moral compass ricochets in search of north, disabled by rival thugs and hooligans.

Among Handel opera plots, Rodelinda is mercifully straightforward. King Bertarido, thought dead, has been ousted from power by Grimoaldo, who then tries to woo the grieving queen, Rodelinda. Bertarido pretends to be dead and, while he's at it, tests his wife's fidelity. Yet essentially he is honourable, as is his sister, Eduige – a monster who eventually softens, especially when she gets her own way – and Rodelinda too, whose glorious, noble music ranges from grief to anger to tender reunion.

Rebecca Evans excels in the title role, lavishing each aria with finely measured expression, now spitting outrage, now hushed in loving embrace. Susan Bickley's Eduige is a deft liaison of ferocity and wit. Richard Burkhard's Garibaldo, sidekick to Ainsley's overbearing but convincing Grimoaldo, conjures lively villainy. As the hapless adviser, Unulfo, Christopher Ainslie offers a more occluded but still beautiful version of the countertenor voice, in contrast to Davies's glowing Bertarido.

John Mark Ainsley, Susan Bickley, Iestyn Davies, Rebecca Evans (Rodelinda)  in  Rodelinda
John Mark Ainsley (Grimoaldo), Susan Bickley (Eduige), Iestyn Davies (Bertarido) and Rebecca Evans as Rodelinda. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

The cast is small, the pairings of amity and enmity instantly clear. By dress and gesture, as well as staging and action, Jones has ensured the narrative is transparent. Yet no single concept is rammed down our throats. The production is helped further by Amanda Holden's new translation. She uses concise language to ensure audibility. With phrases such as "I loathe you", "I'm suspicious and anxious and lovesick" or "My darling husband", sung repeatedly as the da capo aria form demands, we know exactly what is happening. A longer than usual rehearsal time has paid off. Each word could be heard.

There's plenty of Handel about right now. British musicians lead the world in this repertoire. The London Handel festival, run by Laurence Cummings (who is also the new director of the Göttingen Handel festival), runs until 18 April. Jane Glover, a skilled Handelian, will conduct Ariodante at the Royal Academy of Music from 20 March. The ever-pioneering John Eliot Gardiner – celebrating 50 years of his illustrious Monteverdi Choir last week – has recorded all the major stage works and oratorios. After 40 discs in the catalogue I stopped counting. Nicholas McGegan, Harry Christophers, Richard Egarr, Harry Bicket – the list of top UK Handel exponents is long, and apologies to those not even mentioned.

Yet no single organisation has brought the composer's operas back to life more assiduously or persuasively than ENO, whose radical reinvention began with Nicholas Hytner's Xerxes in 1988. Jones and Curnyn, like others since, have continued that tradition. It helps when a production has a big star. The night belonged to Iestyn Davies. An ex-chorister of St John's College, Cambridge, Davies has suddenly accelerated from "promising British countertenor" to world-class artist. He can sing, whether full blast or hushed pianissimo, with a strength, steadiness of tone and musical confidence almost unknown in a voice type which has tended – shout me down – to prefer ethereal frailty as a calling card. He also has an understated sense of comic timing.

Rodelinda is not a funny opera in any sense. Yet there were many laughs, not always for obvious reasons. Handel might have enjoyed the response. Nothing reveals his elliptical character more than the observation of his friend Charles Burney, the musicologist father of Fanny: "[His] general look was somewhat heavy and sour, but when he did smile it was his sire the sun, bursting out of a black cloud. There was a sudden flash of intelligence, wit and good humour… which I hardly ever saw in any other." As early spring struggles to reveal itself, a smile from Handel may be the tonic we all need.

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