You think your family is dysfunctional? Take Hercules' crew—please. The half-god, half-mortal strongman has problems galore, woes which tended not to make it into any of those Steve Reeves Italian opuses from half a century ago. You have to go several centuries further back, in fact, to get to Francesco Cavalli's little known and very rarely performed Ercole Amante, a wonderfully silly (at least in this production by the Nederlandse Opera) piece which takes nothing seriously as it explores the vagaries of love and desire. Ercole Amante (Hercules in Love) finds our muscled hero (Luca Pisaroni) desperately in love with his own son's paramour, Iole (Veronica Cangemi) not exactly the basis for fun family dinners. Unfortunately, Hercules also happens to have killed the poor lass' father when he rebuffed Hercules' advances toward his daughter. That leaves Iole less willing than ever to consider Hercules' amorous aims. Of course, there's also Hercules' long suffering wife, Deianira (Anna Maria Panzarella), who watches her husband's middle aged crisis with alarm and outrage. Seemingly everyone either has a God or two in tow, or manages to invoke one (or more) to aid their cause, so there's a whole Heavenly retinue along for this roller coaster ride of an opera.
That may the classic representation of Hercules, but get ready for "something completely different."
The name Francesco Cavalli is probably not that familiar to even many opera aficionados, but he had a rather amazing reputation throughout the 17th century. A student of Monteverdi, Cavalli was hailed not only as a composer of some repute, but also as an incredible organist and an excellent singer. Cavalli actually was instrumental in helping to make Venetian opera the paradigm of the idiom during the Baroque era, and the composer was also one of the progenitors of tragédie lyrique. Ercole Amante finds Cavalli working in more traditional buffa territory, at least in this outlandish production recorded live in 2009 at the Het Musiektheater Amsterdam. With a slyly winking direction by David Alden complemented by simply amazing sets and costumes by Paul Steinberg and Constance Hoffman, this Ercole is a wonder to behold, a brilliantly buffoonish trip through both oversized emotions and biceps.
Ercole Amante's libretto by Francesco Buti is adapted from Ovid's Metamorphoses, and we indeed are witness to several metamorphoses throughout this splendid production. The piece was written to honor the arranged marriage of Louis XIV with Spain's Marie-Thérèse, though problems with a specially built theater able to handle the massive stagecraft demands of the piece kept Ercole from actually being premiered until two years after the nuptials. Ercole begins with a Prelude exulting the joys of being French, as well as an end to the long war with Spain. The Ensemble morphs itself, via cascading ribbons of purplish blue fabric, into various rivers and seas, as we see Louis XIV (Pisaroni) and his bride in their marriage chamber.
One of the funniest metamorphoses of the evening occurs when we get into the main story of the Hercules clan itself. Pisaroni comes downstage and dons a gigantic muscled rubber suit to become the Greek semi-God. Wearing a "Gorgeous George" blonde wig and a skimpy pair of briefs capped by a sort of gigantic WWF heavyweight champion belt, it's a delicious send up of everything you've ever thought about dunderheaded strongmen. We then begin to wend our way through five (yes, five) acts of completely ridiculous mismatched couples, all aided (or in some cases, literally put to sleep) by various Gods and Goddesses who reveal themselves to be their own dysfunctional family, each working at cross purposes to the other to attain their individual goals.
Hercules' son Hyllo (Jeremy Ovenden) is a sort of petulant teen, here wearing denim shorts and a more classical top. You almost half expect him to erupt with a sighed, "Da-ad," with eyes rolling. Iole seems the model of virginal correctness, even when she's alight a magical, leafy couch which lessens her resolve not to give in to Hercules. Surrounding this daffy bunch of mortals is an equally absurd group of immortals, including Juno (Anna Bonitatitus), who repeatedly simply puts the humans to sleep (courtesy of Sonno, the sleep God) to keep more craziness from occurring.
The original production of Ercole Amante was slated to be the first offering at the then highest of high-tech theatrical palaces the Salle des Machines. While the actual building did take several unexpected years to complete, the final edifice sat no fewer than an astounding 7,000 audience members. While the Het Musicktheater may not match those numbers, this is a gorgeously managed production, with so much fun in the stagecraft that at times Cavalli's rhythmically acute and wonderfully melodic music almost takes a back seat. (It should be noted that the ballet segments feature the music of Jean-Baptiste Lully, as was the case in those days of forced collaborations). This Ercole features one stunningly rendered costume after another, a riot of color and pomp and circumstance, mixed with some outré elements, such as gigantic blow-up seraphim and mummy-like denizens of the underworld. It makes for a pageant of unending color and surprise, with just the right amount of humor and silliness sprinkled into the proceedings.
We're entering what I consider to be the late adolescence of the Blu-ray era, and we're finally getting some really interesting offerings from distributors like Naxos, which handles these Opus Arte Blu-ray releases. While I'm never one to complain about multiple releases of classic works (and even less than A-list pieces, as in the strangely multiple-released Sylvia by Delibes, for instance), it's wonderful to finally be delving into pieces like this, wonderful little treasure troves that have never really made it into the repertory of most major companies, and which yet offer glories untold in both their music and their libretti. Ercole Amante may seem like a strange piece to "celebrate" a marriage; after all, it takes five acts of dalliances and misunderstandings to get to its putative "happy ending," which is only arrived at by seemingly killing off its hero. But it's a celebratory piece, nonetheless, and that very ambience should spill over to the release itself, yet another reason to celebrate.
I get occasional complaints from some readers who want these usually live-for-television HD tapings to look more like feature films. They decry the typical 1080i resolution as if it were a throwback to VHS days. All I can tell them is I find a lot of Opus Arte's AVC encoded 1080i 1.78:1 images absolutely spectacular, if at just a hair less than full 1080p splendor. Ercole Amante is one of the best opera releases we've been treated to from an image standpoint, with absolutely jaw-dropping colors and detail. What a symphony of colors this beautiful production offers us, from the relatively staid and reserved golds, grays, purples and reds of the opening Prologue to the really eye-popping saturation of golds and blues in the final, "Heavenly" Postlude. Detail is exceptional throughout Ercole, with fleshtones accurate, excellent contrast and no artifacting to report, especially impressive when one witnesses the exceptionally busy patterns of the closing Heavenly palace sequence.
Likewise, the DTS-HD MA 5.1 recording is, to put it simply, practically perfect in every way. Cavalli's music is frankly lesser known than the major composers who more frequently dot Opus Arte's releases, but this performance, helmed by conductor Ivor Bolton leading the marvelous Concerto Köln, is a model of Baroque floridity grounded by a more classically restrained balance, especially in the gorgeous choral singing of the Nederlandse's chorus. This is a warm and inviting soundtrack with exceptional clarity and good dynamic range. Surround channels are utilized quite effectively in the antiphonal moments, as in the Prologue when the offstage chorus is clearly discrete from the onstage chorus. Solo and duet moments are also very well handled directionally, with Pisaroni's commanding voice spilling over the music with luscious liquidity. You may not have heard much Cavalli before this outing, but my hunch is you're going to want to hear a lot more after you listen to this superb recording and performance.
Several excellent supplements are on disc 1 of this two-BD set. Along with the expected illustrated synopsis (which due to Ercole's rather labyrinthine plot runs well over 10 minutes) and cast gallery, there are 10 minutes each devoted to costars Pisaroni and Johannette Zomer. A 29:27 Making of featurette rounds out the extras.
We reviewers tend to be an awfully jaded lot at times. But every so often a wonderful little surprise comes down the pike to reawaken our love and enthusiasm. Ercole Amante is a near perfect soufflé, wonderfully melding Cavalli's gorgeous music with an outlandishly expressive physical production. Thank Heaven (literally in this case)--it's time to have fun at the opera again!
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