Listening to Handel
LIKE EVERYONE else, I have not heard a live opera for a number of months. By chance, the very last opera I saw in person—in February, at the Metropolitan Opera House—was Handel’s Agrippina. Starring the brilliant Joyce DiDonato as the eponymous empress, and conducted with attention and grace by the Handel expert Harry Bicket, this four-hour marathon turned out to be surprisingly hilarious as well as musically thrilling. Comedy in Handel productions can easily fall flat (I once had to walk out of a West Edge Opera production of Agrippina, it was so annoyingly over-the-top), so I was especially aware of how beautifully DiDonato and the rest of the fine cast were triumphing over difficult material.
I say “by chance,” but it is not so odd that my last opera should have been a Handel work, because whenever I am in the vicinity of a live Handel production, I make every effort to see it. He is, I would say, my favorite opera
