Although it’s not clearly articulated in this abridged concert version of the opera, the springboard for the drama really begins with Bradamante (Elizabeth DeShong), whose betrothed Saracen lover, Ruggiero (Ariosto crossed lines the authors of the original Chanson de Roland never dreamed of) has somehow wandered onto Alcina’s island.

The ring isn’t exactly the ‘McGuffin’ here (as Alfred Hitchcock might have put it), but it is a kind of switch-the key to the illusion and more specifically, isolation at the center of the enchanted island reigned over by the mysterious siren/queen/sorceress-magician (but really more simply put, illusionist), Alcina. (Odd that the legacy invoked here comes down to a single prop-a ‘magic ring’-but then the entire opera itself is drawn from just a few episodes in Ariosto’s epic poem.) It’s really the weight of an entire legacy of war, romance, betrothal and betrayal (which begin to look like two sides of the same coin). Scarcely into the second act of Alcina-the third of Handel’s operas based on material from Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (fourth if you count the not-unrelated Rinaldo)-you can feel the collective weight of the characters’ anger, frustration, regret, remorse, vengeful bitterness, and plain fury crashing down all around them, and sweeping the audience up along with them (even in this slightly pared-down concert performance), in the English Concert’s spare, but sonorous and richly articulated orchestration with period instruments (including theorbo, a kind of Renaissance bass lute-played by Sergio Bucheli). “Now I want Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,…” William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Alcina la opera