Handel's Rinaldo from Glyndebourne

St Trinian's versus Harry Potter,

first love, rites of passage,

bicycles, bullies, bondage...

It's a young boy's fantasy.

Welcome to Handel's Rinaldo, 21st century style.

Hello and welcome to Glyndebourne

for Rinaldo

by George Frederick Handel.

It's 300 years since it was first performed

at the Queen's Theatre in London's Haymarket.

And it was the first opera that Handel had written in England.

He was writing to show off.

But he was also writing against a very tight deadline,

so he cobbled together various arias and arrangements from other works.

Well, despite the hotchpotch origins of the piece,

it's been hugely popular ever since day one,

partly, of course, because of the beautiful music,

but also because of the startling visual effects that he used.

For example, on the very first night,

he released a flock of starlings into the auditorium.

The Spectator critic was scathing about it

and said that they were shitting on everybody from up above

for hours afterwards and days to come.

And they couldn't get the birds out.

Director Robert Carsen's vision echoes Handel's 1711 production

by having special effects at every turn,

but in a much more modern setting.

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When you set about directing a production

you don't usually start by,

"Oh, I know, we'll put it in this set

"or we'll put it in that."

You try to figure out

what it's about.

And in the case of Handel's Rinaldo, it's quite difficult

because the piece goes in so many different directions...

The crusades are there, but it's not really about the crusades.

And it occurred to me that one of the ways

that we could deal with the strangeness of the construct

was if one looked at all the elements through the eyes of a young boy.

The whole adventure story,

a young boy who wishes he were a hero but isn't,

dreaming a kind of big daydream about the crusades.

It's a big daydream about not being bullied,

about being the hero of all of his own adventure stories,

so that led us into this school setting.

And so, the plot centres around a familiar backdrop for us all.

The key characters are Rinaldo, played by a woman,

whose fantasy as a crusader knight we follow throughout the opera.

Goffredo, also played by a woman, leader of the Crusader army,

with his brother Eustazio.

And Goffredo's kind and gentle daughter Almirena,

whom Rinaldo has fallen in love with.

On the enemy side, we have Argante, the general of the Saracen army,

and his lover Armida, formidable sorceress and Saracen Queen.

In this production, I play Armida,

who, in the beginning, is a school teacher,

and then, in Rinaldo's fantasy,

turns into a domineering,

evil seductress,

who wears this amazing tight rubber costume

which makes her even more like Miss Whiplash.

I'm supposed to be the King of Jerusalem

but in this production actually I am a teacher.

And in the dream of Rinaldo,

I turn out to be actually an evil teacher.

It's always nice to be the bad guy in a production.

And I play the poor schoolboy

that is being beaten for real

in the overture,

pretty hard actually.

Well, Rinaldo, the dreaming schoolboy,

is about to make his first appearance

and it's time to join him in the classroom.

And I should just say, it is meant to be funny,

and you are allowed to laugh.

Tonight's conductor is Ottavio Dantone,

directing the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

from the Harpsichord.

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WOODWIND IMITATES BIRDS SINGING

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So Rinaldo has had his ET moment

and has galloped away on his flying bicycle to rescue Almirena.

Now, when Rinaldo was first performed,

the role was written for a castrato,

a male singer castrated before puberty

so that his voice would stay high.

Now, obviously, happily, this doesn't happen any more.

So Rinaldo, like many of Handel's operatic roles, is sung by a woman.

In this production, by contralto Sonia Prina.

She's played Rinaldo many times before,

but never as a tormented schoolboy.

It was funny, because the first two weeks, Robert Carsen says to me,

"You are a schoolboy, you are a schoolboy, you are a schoolboy.

"But you are a very unlucky and...

"a very nerd and strange schoolboy,

"so you have to change completely your attitude

"because we don't want to see the hero.

"Maybe later on you can be a hero."

He wanted to see this frail boy,

that wouldn't become really something,

accomplishing things in the opera.

Singers are actors, but to be in the role,

you have to do it from the inside.

In the case of Sonia, it took a little while for her to understand

that what I really wanted,

because the whole story is told

through Rinaldo's point of view,

it's all happening to him

because his imagination...

He sees himself in these different adventures.

So, like in a dream, or daydream,

he kind of, you know, "I'm over here,

"and I'm fighting these bad guys,

"and then, I'm saving my girl,

"and then, I have a disaster and I'm kidnapped."

And all these things happen to him.

And I'm really happy with how she has embraced that now.

Actually, when I was at school I was really much studying,

kind of a nerd, so I was like,

so I really did my best to get rid of this kind of me,

that was really me in a private life.

And when he asked me to do that, I kind of said,

"Not again, not again."

So to be, I mean, the weak person, the weak guy,

was very strange because I like very much to be a male on stage,

but being very strong.

This is my double personality.

And, yeah, so it was very hard.

But, actually, we...we got there.

We've all been there, yeah?

I mean, I was incredibly unpopular

because I liked,

when I was in high school,

because I liked opera

and nobody else did.

I think she's discovered a way throughout the process

to find a balance

between this macho knight

and this kind of scared little boy

who gets bullied all the time at school.

I find Sonia to be one of the best contralto singers

at playing male characters.

Having worked with her before, with her singing a male role,

it feels pretty natural to me.

Not that she's a manly woman, she's a beautiful woman as well,

but when she gets on stage, you just, you...

For me, I forget that she's a woman playing a man.

It's a huge part she's got, I don't know how many arias

and they range from these fast and furious revenge pieces

to beautiful long lyrics, slow things to all kinds of stuff, really.

As well as physically being very demanding, as you can see.

I think audiences should appreciate the fact that

they can hear something that is rare.

Because there are not really so many contralto nowadays

that can sing, you know, this kind of role

and have this kind of coloratura and dynamics and colours in the voice.

Act Two is about to start.

And there's a very funny moment coming up

when Armida's school girl warriors,

now dressed up to look like Rinaldo's sweetheart Almirena,

rise up from the waves like sirens

to lure him into Armida's evil clutches.

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SHRILL BATTLE CRY

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ALL: Rinaldo! Rinaldo! Rinaldo!

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Subtitles for deaf and hard of hearing viewers by Red Bee Media Ltd.