Review

Handel Acis and Galatea at the CMP Festival, Brighton

The second CMP Festival ended with a flourish with Handel’s Acis and Galatea in a concert performance by the Baroque Collective.  Defined by the composer as a Masque, its staging would require a one-eyed giant, a mermaid and a shepherd who ends up under, rather than on, a rock.  The company prudently spared us these shocks and provided instead a musically distinguished excursion into the baroque, leaving the imagination free with the visuals.

The seven-instrument ensemble was in perfect accord throughout, adding two baroque oboes to a string quartet and harpsichord continuo. The oboes provided a suitably rustic, albeit virtuosic colour to the prevailing sophistication of Handel’s string writing, led by Alison Bury’s eloquently bowed fiddle.

The Baroque Singers made a major contribution as chorus, enjoying themselves infectiously. Amongst the stylish and nimble vocal quartet, the Acis of Julian Podger (tenor) impressed with the forceful masculinity of timbre always presumed by Handel’s writing (even for castrato!): Love sounds the alarm was the high point. Doubling as Polyphemus and conductor, John Hancorn was an amiable monster in both, leaving his rival crushed and his audience equally rocked by the excellence and brio of the whole affair.

John Cox

John Cox has held senior posts with the Glyndebourne, Royal and Scottish opera companies, as well as pursuing an international career as a freelance opera director. His next production will be Massenet’s Thais for the Metropolitan Opera, New York.