A Sheep Chorus? - What's not to like?
Tonight’s opera is Acis and Galatea at Opera Holland Park.
To be honest, you either like Handel and baroque opera, or you don’t. I do.
Acis and Galatea is described as ‘the pinnacle of pastoral opera’ and has never fallen out of the repertoire.
To listen to the principals [Anthony Gregory (Acis); Elizabeth Karani (Galatea); Chuma Sijeqa (Polyphemus); Ruairi Bowen (Damon)] singing, and to the 16 strong City of London Sinfonia playing is magical, as curiously is the familiar setting of the Holland Park ruins, this time with added foliage and a very strange roundabout.
Although Handel only calls the chorus to open the first and second acts, and, effectively to close the second act as well, eight of the indomitable Holland Park Chorus elbow their way in everywhere, including, absolutely bizarrely, as (aggressive) sheep. When they are not sheep they are nymphs and swains, dressed from a grab bag of Jacobean costumes lifted from the Merry Wives of Windsor and Midsummer Night’s Dream laundry baskets.
The plot of the opera is as mad as ever, though that doesn’t matter.
What does, in the end, is ‘did we enjoy it?’ – and we absolutely did.
Even the quite mad direction of the chorus, and a feeling that every inch of the extended Holland Park stage should be used didn’t detract from a great evening of opera.
Oh, and the sun shone beneficently – a first for us this season.