Scorned sorceress
- Lyn Richards
- Jun 11
- 6 min read
Alcina (1735) was composed for Handel's new company, the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. It ran for 18 performances, the last, and arguably greatest of Handel's opera seria, and then the fashion turned against such works. The company failed and he turned to oratorio. Saul came 4 years later; compared to the tangled tale of Alcina, a relatively straightforward operatic setting of a Biblical text.
The Story (told by Tom).
Set in a mythical age of chivalrous knights, their lady loves, and wicked but seductive enchantresses ruling desert islands, the rather gothic plot makes for good operatic fun. The story comes from Ludovico Ariosto's poem Orlando furioso (1516), romancing about characters such as Roland (song of), Arthurian queen aka enchantress Fata Morgana, Tristan, and the usual Arthurian ensemble of characters. Handel was on to a good thing here, and based two other operas on the poem, Orlando and Ariodante.
Following Wikipedia, you can delve in to the plot and follow the Law of Expanding Hyperlinks to find a treasure trove of medieval legends, all it seems related to each other and Arthur. In the present story we have a noble knight (of course) Ruggiero who through no fault of his own got plonked on an enchanted island ruled by sisters Morgana and Alcina.
Side plot – a nearby bush tells Ruggiero it (the bush) really is Sir Alstolfo, transmogrified by the evil sisters. (Familiar story?) He’s got a son Oberto wandering the island looking for him.) Ruggiero rushes off to deal with the evil sisters, and of course falls under their spell and is besotted with Alcina.
And here’s where the story really begins. Ruggiero’s lady love Bradamante arrives on the island looking for Ruggiero, accompanied by friend Melisso. Bradamante is dressed in armour and passes herself off as a male -- her own brother Ricciardo. (Familiar story?) Vital point: the enchantresses don’t have all the magic powers to themselves, for Bradamante has a magic ring that sees the reality behind illusions, such as bushes. Anyway, Morgana greets Bradamante/”Ricciardo” (her/him), falls head-over-heels in love, and abandons her own lover, Oronte. (Familiar story?)
Now you have all the ingredients to brew a good opera: two abandoned lovers, mistaken identity, cross-dressing, magic spells. I suggest you read for yourself on Wikipedia how this terrible brew gets cooked. Or write a story for yourself. I’ll just tell you (no surprise) at the end evil is punished and goodness gets sorted out.
Synopsis
For a spirited detailed synopsis of Handel's opera, go here to the Kennedy Centre (yes, the website is still up!)
Go to Bachtrack, for a fuller exploration: "Alcina is one of Handel’s most wonderful creations: truly seductive, she invokes in every listener to pity and terror. Her love for Ruggiero is devouring, at least until his long-lost wife reappears. The battle for the heart and soul of Ruggiero is fought between sensuality and duty, between the taste of the present and the insistent sound of memory. No other opera is such an attractive – and clinical – examination of love and illusion. "
The scorned sorceresses in opera
There's no better lament than that of a powerful queen deserted by the man she loved - she's lamenting her power and her loss. As Dido sings, "Remember me, but ah! forget my fate!" (Sung here by Joyce DiDonato with contemporary illustrations!)
The Met puts it well: "Scorned women have intrigued storytellers throughout the ages—and giving them magical means of both seduction and retribution is also a time-honored way to up the dramatic ante. Armida’s forebears include Medea and Circe in Greek mythology and Alcina in another famous Italian epic, Orlando Furioso... Each is humanized by her discovery that magic is not enough to keep herself from falling in love or to keep the man she loves from leaving her."
The Alcina legend gave Handel a chance to explore in music the complexity of sorcery-driven characters, not least in the magic of transformation of the lady's ex-lovers. Ruggiero, once transformed, wins one of the sweetest arias, "Verdi prati" - "Verdant meadows, pleasant woodlands/ You will lose your loveliness.". Here's Sarah Connolly (yes, it's a castrato role, usually played now by a mezzo or countertenor.) And as for Alcina, she's one of Handel’s most complicated women. (Written for a soprano voice but as Joyce DiDonato comments, suiting mezzo for the depths of emotion.)
"She is both witch and woman, villain and victim. Her music shifts from fiery to sympathetic and back and again, but overall she comes over as surprisingly vulnerable. ‘Ah! mio cor!’ (sung when Alcina discovers Ruggiero’s plans to leave) is a true grief aria, full of emotion – the phrases come in isolated chunks as if she is too distraught to sustain them." Opera North. (Here's Joyce DiDonato's Ah mio cor in concert.)
Don't expect modern directors to resist the comic opportunities in this medieval saga. Here's Alcina with her transformed lovers as envisaged by Richard Jones, at the ROH in 2022. But will these comic interpretations do justice to Handel's great piece on love, desire, loss?
As modern, but returning to the themes of Handel, is the production by Konzerthaus Wien, in 2021, which played the characters as puppets, the themes of pretense displayed in masks. As in the original saga, Alcina's beauty is all enchantment, her downfall the failure of her magic. Watch brilliant soprano Julia Kirchner singing for the Alcina puppet in "Ah mio cor" and "Ah Ruggiero & Ombre pallide" (Alcina, act 2).
Our production
Leaning into the comic, our Glyndebourne production, from the Italian director Francesco Micheli , takes Ariosto’s story to a revue show in 1960s Italy, called L’isola d’Alcina. She's a showgirl, he's a businessman, and according to most revues it works wonderfully - at one level. But what does it lose from Handel's twisting story? To be discussed!
Tim Ashley for the Guardian: "Theatrical illusion and offstage reality are the dominant metaphors.. Lavish, unsettling and, at times, teetering on camp, it’s a finely crafted piece, though whether it ideally serves Handel’s great 1735 examination of the mutable nature of desire and transience of beauty is, perhaps, debatable... The mutable natural world evoked by the libretto is now conspicuous by its absence... And there’s a hardness of edge in tone and style throughout that doesn’t quite capture the sad ambiguity at the work’s heart, namely that Handel views the destruction of Alcina’s world as a moral necessity, while at the same time mourning its passing in music of often wrenching poignancy."
Opera Today: "In some ways, Micheli’s conception makes perfect sense. Alcina’s island exists only in the imagination of those duped into suspending their disbelief – just as her beauty, too, is illusory, freeing those who are entranced from the social conventions which bind them, allowing them to dare to explore realms they would otherwise deny and from which they would desist. Why not present her palace as a fragile theatrical set, a magical manifestation of what those who enter it desire – a self-indulgent representation without constraint, a temple of pleasure, fascinating but flimsy. And, Alcina herself is indeed a ring-master: her own sorcery, or theatrical ‘act’, sustains the illusion as she works her magic from within a stage set which teeters on the cusp of crumbling."
and Bachtrack: "Camp cabaret makes for a visually striking show, but in demoting Alcina from island sorceress to showgirl whose appeal is waning, Micheli lowers the stakes and the tragedy often feels shallow as a result. “Ah! mio cor!”, Alcina’s griefstricken aria when she discovers Ruggiero has betrayed her, is delivered into her dressing room mirror before she forces herself to get back on-stage… on with the motley. When Ruggiero, wearing armour over his pyjamas, “defeats” her forces and the theatre shuts down, Alcina and her troupe clear their dressing rooms and pack their suitcases. Sad, yes, but tragic? "
Lyn, 11/6/25
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