Neither a true opera nor an oratorio, Handel’s Hercules has been described by one authority as “the highest peak of late Baroque music drama”. That drama centres not on the eponymous hero, but on his wife Dejanira, who surfs an emotional tide from love for her absent husband, through raging jealousy to madness.
It needs a mezzo soprano of exceptional quality to encompass such a range, but fortunately Alice Coote was on hand for the task. Her sarcasm in confronting her (for once) blameless husband was as lethal as her remorseful mad scene was electrifying.
Harry Bicket lashed his English Concert to fury, but paced the entire performance faultlessly. Rupert Enticknap was an eloquent Lichas.
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Matthew Rose as Hercules lacked nothing in operatic bluster — perhaps not inappropriately for a man who demands a funeral pyre so he can join the gods — but some precision of line and intonation was sacrificed in the process.
In the role of his son Hyllus, James Gilchrist could not have been surpassed: the sweet-toned expressiveness of his wooing of the reluctant captive princess Iole (the equally admirable Elizabeth Watts) would have melted one of Hercules’s own pillars. Happily Jupiter (via his priest, sung eloquently by Andrew Rupp) decrees their union, resulting in a duet opportunity which Handel duly seizes.
