Orlando, Welsh National Opera, review: 'a game of three halves'

For much of the interminable first act of this opera, I was overcome by a fit of uncontrollable yawning.

This is no reflection on a more than able cast, the competent staging or even the Wales Millennium Centre’s ventilation system: no, my affliction was entirely caused by Handel’s music - the worst of him in this genre, an extended succession of superficially illustrative arias that do nothing to advance the plot or portray character, as robotically formulaic in their rhythm as a washing-machine cycle, and the antithesis of everything that gives opera theatrical life.

Fortunately, things picked up with a deliquescently lovely final trio, and then came the interval and a steadying slug of alcohol was at hand.

The second act shut me up with some pretty “nightingale” twitterings, an achingly melancholic lament and the titular hero’s descent into madness, where Handel finally breaks free of the straitjacket of baroque convention and produces something that comes from the heart rather than off the style sheet.

The third act has good things in it too - but contrary to scholarly opinion, I personally can’t rank this with Ariodante, Alcina or Giulio Cesare as one of Handel’s most inspired operatic scores.

The original scenario is loosely based on Ariosto’s romantic-historical-pastoral Orlando Furioso, and shows the warrior-hero losing his wits and the urge to fight because of a love tangle.

In Harry Fehr’s production, designed by Yannis Thavoris and originally mounted by Scottish Opera, this is translated to a Second World War mental hospital, where Orlando is an RAF pilot being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder by the wizard-turned-shrink Zoroaster. It’s an effective enough conceit, nicely executed without excess intellectualising, and a decent solution to the problem of staging the piece on a limited budget.

The baroque expert Rinaldo Alessandrini conducts crisply and robustly, but what matters most is the singing, and I fear that some of that first-act yawning was caused by a lack of variety in the vocal types on offer - two counter-tenors, two light lyric sopranos and one peripheral bass.

Yet individually they were all first–rate: Daniel Grice the omniscient shrink-magician, Fflur Wyn and Rebecca Evans the elegantly twittering and lamenting ladies, Robin Blaze their second-string suitor, and most of all Lawrence Zazzo, that most manly and forthright of counter-tenors, as a handsome Orlando whose insanity was expressed with graphic and moving power.

Until 14 October, then touring to Southampton, Bristol, Llandudno, Oxford and Birmingham. Tickets: 029 2063 6464, www.wno.org.uk