Berenice

Berenice is one of those slightly problematic operas which seem to work better in the theatre where the gender of the characters is (usually) more obvious. Here we have a pair of low voices, one singing a man and one a woman, and a pair of high voices similarly paired. Curtis has chosen a beautifully balanced cast. But it is one where the voices are not highly distinctive so that you sometimes have to concentrate to tell whether Berenice or Alessandro is singing, or Selene or Arsace. If you listen to the opera with the libretto these sort of problems disappear.

Titus n’aimait pas Bérénice alors que Bérénice pensait qu’il l’aimait.
Titus n’aimait pas Bérénice alors que tout le monde a toujours pensé qu’il n’avait pas le choix et qu’il la quittait contre sa propre volonté. …

Every child who ever learnt the recorder or played in a school orchestra will probably know the famous ‘Minuet’ included in the Overture, but they can be forgiven for knowing little else from the work since it is so rarely performed. That its premiere in London in 1737 was a failure had little to do with Handel’s score but more with a growing public indifference to Italian opera. The music, as seasoned Handelians will not need to be told, is of high quality (though not perhaps at once among his most alluring scores), and Antonio Salvis’s libretto, concerned with politics and romance, provides the composer with opportunity for lively duets and evocative ‘simile’ arias. The cast is strong, though not uniformly so, with soprano Julianne Baird in the title role.

Berenice (Navarro) is a woman with a mysterious past. A scar crosses her face and nightmares of fire and horses fill her lonely nights. She maybe killed her husband but nobody can be sure. In the present, Berenice lives with her godmother (Roldán) a money lender so fragile that she's always resting in her bed. The two women live in an almost perpetual seclusion, except on Sundays when they go to the church and to the movies. One day, the godmother's doctor dies and she asks Berenice to go to his velatory. There they meet Rodrigo (Armendáriz Jr.) the doctor's son, a handsome and free-spirited young man for whom Berenice falls in love.