Lyric Opera 2018-2019 Issue 11 Ariodante

L Y R I C O P E R A O F C H I C A G O 30 | March 2 - 17, 2019 Ariodante stands out as one of Handel’s more melancholy works. It’s full of psychologically rich and interesting characters, with innocent lovers Ariodante and Ginevra at the center of it all. Inspired by the original Edinburgh setting of the opera, we set this production on a remote Scottish island in the late 1960s or early ’70s. It’s a close-knit, male-dominated community with a strong moral center rooted in Calvinism. eir industry is based on fishing and wool, which is reflected in the cos- tume designs that have islanders dress in Aran-style sweaters and kilts. It’s a physical, working community, so while the production is set in the twentieth century, there is a sense of timelessness in the costumes and the dress is similar for men and women. Only Ginevra stands apart, with her more feminine clothes. e islanders are essentially good people. ough they may have weak- nesses, they have a strong moral compass. ere is only one character who is really, actively bad amongst them: Polinesso. In our production, he takes the form of an outsider: a charlatan preacher from a city on the mainland. He’s charismatic and interested in young women who haven “ecstatic” qualities, such as Ginevra. But he has a very cruel, misogynistic streak, reminiscent of certain passages in the Old Testa- ment. e king of the island is in a psychological slump after the death of his wife and takes comfort in Poli- nesso’s teachings, blind to the evil infiltrating his community. While the opera is titled Ariodante , Ginevra is the other character at its heart. She’s a young woman singled out and punished by a male-dominated community for her sense of imagination and fantasy. In our production, she makes a very important decision, in the light of everything that happens to her, that radically reinterprets the opera’s traditional ending and paradigm of redemption. Her betrothed from a neighboring island, Ariodante, is sensitive, sincere and noble-hearted, both in happiness and defeat. Lurcanio (Ariodante’s brother), driven by his anger and sense of justice, encourages the king to act violently. Dalinda (the other main female character in the opera) is tor- tured by her own blinkered desire and Polinesso’s machinations. In the midst of this, Ginevra is always moving forward, while the others are immobilized by their anger, their masochism, or their depression. While we’ve taken inspiration from the nineteenth-century theater of Ibsen and Strindberg for the over- all style of the production, we’ve added a choreographed dimension to our sense of realism that responds to the formality of eighteenth-century musical forms, punctuating our psy- chological exploration of Ariodante . A significant feature of the produc- tion is that we stage the “Dances” composed at the end of each act as puppet sequences performed by the island community as expressions of their hopes and fears, in response to unfolding events. — Benjamin Davis, Revival Director Reprinted courtesy of the Canadian Opera Company. Notes on Ariodante Ariodante at the 2014 Festival d’Aix-en-Provence: Ginevra (Patricia Petibon, center left) and Ariodante (Sarah Connolly, center right). PASCAL VICTOR/FESTIVAL D’AIX-EN-PROVENCE