The beloved old London Handel Festival has always had a bit of a problem compared to its German cousins in Halle and Göttingen – to wit, of course, money. But it’s a great thing nonetheless, and over the years its shows have been absolutely at the front of the Handel revival – now so complete that you pretty much expect to see the old dude in the organ loft when you arrive at his old church of St George’s, Hanover Square. Since becoming the festival director, Gregory Batsleer has made a great virtue of necessity by not putting on expensive full stagings of mainstream works, but rather using the available money very imaginatively on smaller-scale, eccentric and original stagings of lesser known pieces.

Brockes Passion

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Handel’s Brockes Passion is performed rather rarely and there’s a reason – it’s long, and a lot of it is frankly a bit humdrum. Periodically, people try to redeem its reputation (AAM and Richard Egarr put in a big effort in 2019), and then away it goes for a few years again.

But despite the quibbles, it is sober, beautiful, vividly violent in its language and in the end deeply affecting – even though all the way through you feel that its sobriety is oddly out of character for Handel. What is most noticeably lacking is the gorgeous vocal writing that we take for granted with this most fecund of melodists: you feel the vocal lines here are still bound to the harmony, are not breaking free as you expect. It feels a bit like his first opera Almira, written before Handel found whatever magic pen it was that turned him into the world’s greatest ever writer for voices. Yet this Passion is dated to after Rinaldo and Amadigi, about when he went to Cannons. It feels a bit like a first draft – you hear hints of what will finally emerge as ‘Cara speme’ and Galatea’s ‘Hush, ye pretty warbling quire…’, and much besides. Rush job? Who can say. But it shows what a huge lot of work went into the truly finished articles.

Yet it has a dramatic impetus and conviction about it, and Harry Bicket’s lively and considered performance led us unflinchingly through the horror – Brockes’s words are notoriously visceral – to the final, folkily simple chorales where the unimaginable prize won through all that blood and torture is humbly and lovingly treasured by the chastened chorus.

The outstanding things here were the cello of the always outstanding Joseph Crouch (and the continuo arias in general), the evangelist Rob Murray (living every violent emotion of this story) and soprano Hilary Cronin, the discovery of whose singing has been one of the great pleasures of the past couple of years.

Aci, Galatea e Polifemo – 'Aci by the River'

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Hard to believe Handel wrote Aci, Galatea e Polifemo to adorn a wedding celebration – in Naples in 1708; had the guests seen this traumatising production it would have put a damper on the party, no mistake.

But it is a dark story, however distanced by its origins as Ovidian myth. And this early Italian version has little of the pastoral softness of Handel’s later English serenata written for Cannons. It is also quite long, 90 minutes, and a proper drama – more psychological than action, and not performed that often, mostly because there aren’t many basses who can convincingly handle Polifemo’s extraordinary music, which stretches for two and a half octaves from low D.

The last time I saw it was also at the London Handel Festival, but back in 2008, with Laurence Cummings conducting in Middle Temple Hall. Cummings is still there this year – his last as LHF Music Director – in a somewhat different venue, Trinity Buoy Wharf Lighthouse down the river near Canning Town – reached by a nice boat trip from Westminster with some oboists tootling and chirruping away to beguile the journey.

Mary Bevan as Aci and Claudia Huckle as Galatea in Aci by the River | Photo: Craig Fuller

It seems Handel was having a bit of slightly risqué fun with his casting: Aci sung by a female soprano, Galatea by a mezzo castrato. LHF didn’t go down that route, sadly; Mary Bevan and Claudia Huckle were Aci and Galatea, Callum Thorpe the angry Polifemo.

Jack Furness had come up with a tricksy production that threatened to be annoying but turned out powerful and beguiling. The premise was the 'live-shooting of a performative film based on Ovid’s myth', so the hangar-like space of the Chain Store was done up like a studio, with director Paolo Polifemo’s (geddit?) workspace at one end. You can see where this is going: the overbearing director gets over-involved in his scenario, comes on a bit strong to his leading lady – the mezzo, since both Aci and Galatea are undisguisedly female here – and things get a teeny bit out of hand. A bit Carmen, a bit Pagliacci, with a drawn-out death scene that reminded me of Tim Roth in Reservoir Dogs. So yeah, not really wedding party stuff – but actually a strong and effective reimagining.

The musical journey is beautiful and various, as you’d expect, Handel in his almost fantastic Italian mode of imaginative freedom. The high voices share a beguiling series of arias and duets, sweet, tormented and passionate; Aci’s ‘Dell’aquila’ was a gorgeous thing with gentle harpsichord cascades and guitar, Galatea’s ‘S’agita in mezzo all’onde would slot easily into Acis, melting recorders over pizzicato strings. Mary Bevan was on committed form, a convincing portrayal of the turbid teenage emotions of the piece, and Claudia Huckle’s warm and deep mezzo was a marvellous foil. Polifemo is an odd role – crazed and violent, he’s also lovelorn and sensitive, hard things to present without seeming like a psycho, but Thorpe did a fine job as the insistent and entitled male – with all the familiar echoes of the film world – who nonetheless realises the extent of the havoc his untrammelled anger and jealousy have caused.

And like all good shows, this became more involving and affecting as it went on. Cummings managed to keep the elements together despite being quite a way away (and unsighted) from the singers. Durassie Kiangangu as cameraman and dancer was a nice presence. The moment when Galatea opened the riverside hangar doors to return to her watery element, a few steps away, was a magical coup. Risky and fearless, this was really a special show.

www.london-handel-festival.com