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Alcina   
Washington National Opera

 Alcina is a sorceress living on fantasy island who turns her lovers into stones or other objects when she is through with them. There is a long backstory before the complex history of all the characters surrounding her in  Handel’s opera Alcina even starts to unfold.  In short by the end,  Alcina gets what she deserves.  
Handel’s opera Alcina also got what it deserves— Washington National Opera’s  assembly of a cast of grand singers, set on a glorious stage with lighting to evoke their emotional states along with graceful dancers flowing throughout. 
It leaves no surprise that Angela Meade would take ownership of this role of Alcina, adding sorceress to her impressive resume of fantasy characters like the Druid high priestess Norma and the Babylonian queen Semiramide.  Her singing is the stuff that legends are made of, her power in unleashing the hidden glories in Handel’s score.
Elizabeth DeShong is Ruggiero, her current lover, who has deserted his fiancee for this fantasy romantic escapade.  The mezzo soprano has one of the most beautiful arias  "Verdi prati" ("Green meadows”)  when he knows he must depart this beautiful illusion for real life.   DeShong captures our hearts in her rendering, as convincingly as Alcina has captured Ruggiero.
Ying Fang is Morgana, Alcina’s sister who is also a sorceress.  Fang sings with delightful youthfulness, her voice well suited for Baroque opera.
Daniela Mack is Bradamante, the jilted fiancee of Ruggiero, who disguises herself as a man to find him,  only to add to the confusion of the two sorceresses who see Bradamante as a possible boyfriend.   Her role has the most relationship complications with her determination fueling emotions from jealous anger to devoted love. All this she must  experience and which Mack conveys in her singing. 
Neil Patel’s  scenery and Christopher Akerlind’s  lightening meld together as the moon-shaped background change shades of colors as the moods changed.  Choreographer Barney O’Hanlon  created illusions in the imagination with four spirits whose twisting movements like waves arise  and then disappear into shadows.  
This is WNO’s first production of Alcina,  an opera with  the core theme of obsessive attraction that is  wide open for interpretations.  There are the didactic possibilities like a  recent production which emphasized a modern day  theme of Alcina representing  drug addiction (as seen in an illusionary fascination which  also  turns people into stones, or animals or whatever and which in the end has to die out,  so that love and life can return to normal).  The other extreme, interpreting this with a 18th century staged setting and costumes  is impractically for  most budgets.     
What WNO has achieved with their production led by director Anne Bogart with renowned Baroque Music  Conductor June Glover is to appeal to modern sensibilities with an artistic production, giving  the music its due while being pleasing to the eye.
What more could you ask for, but this treat of art for its own sake, and let the  moral lessons fall for another day.  
In  The Eisenhower Theater at The Kennedy Center, Washington DC,  Nov. 4-19 2017.




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