All the king's men

Göttingen hosts an exemplary early music festival

The Lower Saxony university town, which is remembered for the great crowd of students on the streets and the parks with centuries-old oak and linden trees, has been hosting one of the largest forums of early music in the world - the Göttingen Handel Festival - for almost ninety years. He appeared here by pure chance: George Frideric Handel himself had never been to Göttingen, even just passing through, but local professor Oskar Hagen happened to be an ardent admirer of the master’s operatic work, and in 1920, after almost two centuries of oblivion, he staged one of his operas, which gave impetus to the most powerful Handelian renaissance in Europe. The consequences are well known - Handel is now one of the five most performed opera authors, along with Mozart, Verdi, Wagner and Puccini. But calm and cozy Göttingen seems to hide this glorious historical fact from everyone - the fact that small revolutions are still taking place here, fundamentally shaking up the world of early music, can only be guessed from the inscriptions on the posters: ausverkauft (sold out).

The recipe for the success of this festival is quite mysterious from the Russian point of view: here they do things that would be considered wrong here. They choose the summer “off” season to hold it - and get crowded halls. Concerts are held on weekdays, from noon to midnight. They limit themselves to the music of one author - and manage to avoid refinements that are incomprehensible to the general public and maintain a democratic tone. They are not afraid to invite young, unpromoted performers - and they do not rely on stars who guarantee full houses. And every time they come up with a new theme for the festival, which often allows even the most played hits to sound in an unusual context, to sparkle with new facets. This year's festival motto was the witty motto Macht und Ohnmacht - a play on words literally meaning "power and swoon", but implying the theme of "power and anarchy". The gallery of Handel’s monarchs of various calibers turned out to be fascinating: there were Julius Caesar from the opera of the same name, Belshazzar and Solomon - characters from biblical oratorios, as well as Jupiter, who joined them, from the opera “Jupiter in Argos”, which was performed for the first time, composed by the composer from his best arias (analogous to modern compilations the best of...).

It is surprising that at a time when the best European minds were already dominated by the ideals of the Enlightenment with its cult of the ideal monarch, Handel made his kings very human and charmingly “non-ideal” - doubting, subject to momentary passions and vices, often arrogant and infantile. This was especially noticeable in the production of “Julius Caesar,” Handel’s most famous drama, which, in the reading of the German director Igor Folwill, acquired a brightly ironic sound. The lanky and unlucky Caesar (Kai Wessel) and the cheerful soubrette Cleopatra (Sophie Daneman) greatly reduced the serious degree of the plot, although all the lyrical culminations were voiced by them with due seriousness (in this he was competed by the performers of supporting roles - Diana Moore and Cecile van den Sant ), and the conductor - festival artistic director Nicholas McGegan - provided solid orchestral support. King Solomon turned out to be much more noble - the young British countertenor Tim Mead in the title role looked great in the frame of the strongest partners - Handelian vocal experts Roderick Williams, Dominique Labelle and Michael Slattery, and the Westminster Abbey Boys' Choir, sent from London, gave the oratorio British elegance . In terms of the totality of achievements, the concert version of “Solomon” has overtaken the stage version of “Caesar,” which is difficult to compete with the performances of major European theaters, where millions of euros are spent on productions.

One can and should admire the efforts of the organizers to create something of their own at the festival, without borrowing a banally archived performance from some opera house. Here they generally claim exclusivity, which was proven by the third culmination of the festival, the opera “Jupiter in Argos”. Sounded for the first time after two hundred and fifty years (!) of oblivion, “Jupiter” in no way resembled a dusty rarity. In the interpretation of the American conductor Alan Curtis, a strong cast of singers and the Il Complesso Barocco orchestra, the simple story of an Olympian seducing naive nymphs sounded fresh and dynamic - three hours flew by in one breath, and the Göttingen Festival once again refuted the widespread prejudice that opera is in concert performance it is boring and inexpressive.

Mikhail FICHTENGOLTZ, Göttingen - Moscow