Deidamia: a welcome opportunity to catch Handel's final Italian opera in Wexford, though George Petrou's production feels a little self-indulgent

Handel: Deidamia - Nicolò Balducci - Wexford Festival Opera (Photo: Pádraig Grant)

Handel: Deidamia; Sophie Junker, Nicolò Balducci, Sarah Gilford, Bruno de Sá, Rory Musgrave, Petros Magoulas, George Petrou, Wexford Festival Opera; National Opera House, Wexford
Reviewed 30 October 2025

Handel's final opera in a stylish production that combines playful elements with some powerful singing but which lingers a bit too lovely over details leading to an over-long evening

It is likely that Handel did not write his opera Deidamia in 1741 with a view to it being his final Italian opera. But Handel's tussles with the rival Opera of the Nobility, even though his company had ultimately come out on top, had perhaps not only left him feeling somewhat jaded by Italian opera but left the opera going public in London jaded too. Add to this that Handel had started to discover the possibilities of oratorio and you have a situation where everything could change. Oratorio did not require expensive sets, and its focus on English singers led Handel to work with a group of soloists many of whom he had trained himself. Somehow the complexities and costliness of staging Italian opera got left behind.

And if we focus on those final Italian operas it becomes clear that Handel was experimenting with the form itself. Whilst Ariodante and Alcina from 1735 both seem to hark back to Handel's glory days, his later operas included Arminio (1737) which is so compressed as to be almost telegraphic, Giustino (1737) and Serse (1738) where the plots incorporate rather more of the early Venetian plot than was usual in 18th century London. Serse's semi-comic elements also bring forth a Handel we are not used to. This sense of the sly satirical continues in Imeneo (1740) where the heroine ends up with the 'wrong' man - she chooses the robust baritone whilst the noble (castrato) hero does not get the girl. Something similar is happening in Deidamia (1741) where the hero spends most of the opera pretending to be a women, except in Handel's performance the singer was a woman. Structurally these operas also reveal a Handel who is experimenting with form, no longer reliant solely on the large scale da capo aria.

Handel: Deidamia - Bruno de Sá, Sophie Junker - Wexford Festival Opera (Photo: Pádraig Grant)

Deidamia was not a success and Handel did not even raid the opera as a source for later works. Instead it languished until more recent 20th century performances, but even then it remains a real rarity. Wexford Festival Opera included it in their Myths & Legends season in a co-production with the Göttingen Handel Festival whose artistic director, George Petrou conducted and directed. We caught the final performance on Thursday 30 October 2025, with Sophie Junker as Deidamia, Nicolò Balducci as Ulisse (Odysseus), Sarah Gilford as Nerea, Bruno de Sá [last seen as Cleofide in Vinci's Alessandro nell'Indie at Bayreuth, see my review] as Achille (Achilles), Rory Musgrave as Fenice (Phoenix) and Petros Magoulas as Licomede. Designs were by Giorgina Germanou with video by Arnim Friess.

As stage director George Petrou said he was 'inspired from that sensation one experiences when standing in places of history and glory...upon the Acropolis of Athens, Socrates or Plato might step forth at any moment.' This was beautifully realised by Giorgina Germanou whose designs combined style, wit, naturalism and a striking number of bare male legs.

The setting was the island of Skyros 'today' with tourists of various kinds (the production used eight supers) and the Ancient Greeks inhabiting the same spaces, seemingly oblivious, except not quite. The interaction between the two groups was, at first, amusing but became somewhat too clever for its own good as the opera developed. There was also the suggestion that Petrou did not quite trust the music enough. Each aria had some sort of background entertainment, and the three large scale arias performed in front of the drop curtain included animations or video projections - as if music and performer on their own were not enough.

Handel: Deidamia - Rory Musgrave - Wexford Festival Opera (Photo: Pádraig Grant)

The opera tells the story of Achilles hiding as a maiden amongst Lycomedes' daughters and being discovered by Odysseus because of his fondness for hunting and weapons. As in Imeneo, Handel misdirects us in the opera and the most developed male heroic character is Odysseus (Nicolò Balducci) who even makes (feigned) love to the heroine but us ultimately left alone. After all, the audience knows that he has Penelope at home. The role of Achilles (Bruno de Sá) is less developed with the character focused mainly on unfeminine interest in hunting and weaponry. The other surprise is that Handel and his librettist Paolo Rolli develop a real relationship between Nerea (Sarah Gilford) and Phoenix (Rory Musgrave), the latter being a baritone rather than an heroic high voice. It may be no coincidence that the first Phoenix was William Savage who had played the title role in Imeneo, the baritone who got his girl in that opera. As a treble, Savage had had the role of Oberto in Alcina created specially for him.

The tone of Deidamia mixes the satirical and the serious, with it being closer to early 19th century Italian semi-seria operas with their mix of serious and comic characters. Deidamia is an entirely serious character, expressing herself in large, highly developed da capo arias. But her lover Achilles (disguised for most of the opera as Pyrrha) is less serious with much of the 'comedy' coming from his/her blokey fascination with male things - hunting, weapons, fighting. There was something rather Cherubino or Octavian-like about the whole setup particular as Handel's Achilles was in fact a female singer!

The problem with Wexford's performance was that it took a long time for any real plot to happen. By the time of the interval (part way through Act Two), we had hardly begun and Petrou seemingly relished the leisurely exposition. The pace of the drama felt a little too sedate what with pauses and a rather steady approach to recitative. Also, Lycomedes (Petrou Magoulas) got three arias, all of which did little for the dramaturgy and rather held things up. The first half ended with a scene where Lycomedes told Odysseus about the fine hunting to be had, and then sang an aria about how he was now too old to hunt! As if acknowledging that this was dramatically redundant, Petrou and Germanou gave us a spectacular (and entirely unnecessary) underwater scene.

Handel: Deidamia - Bruno de Sá
Wexford Festival Opera (Photo: Pádraig Grant)

Sophie Junker turned in a spectacular performance as Deidamia, really drawing us into the character's worries. Her music ran the gamut from a joyful bird imitation aria to two powerful anxiety ones. The first when she worries that Achilles might leave her, the second when she learns his true destiny. It was not Junker's fault that Handel never gave us a scene of real tenderness between Deidamia and Achilles.

Odysseus was projected as romantic hero (not surprisingly as he was originally played by the cast's only castrato). This is Odysseus as youthful hero, though there was little of Homer's 'cunning Odysseus'. Nicolò Balducci matched Junker in the terrific range and depth of his performance. His aria when he was seducing Junker's Deidamia was some of the finest and most beautiful singing of the evening. But he also had a nice line in virtuoso swagger and his big final aria, when he draws all the kudos to himself, was rightly a bravura triumph.

Bruno de Sá camped thing up something rotten as Achilles disguised as Pyrrha, both in the blokey, I love hunting and armour moments and in his fake seduction of Odysseus. De Sá did it all with a knowing smile, yet when called upon produced Handelian pizzazz and bravura with the best of them. A soprano falsettist, his voice is light and agile, very much suited to the role, but in his final aria he showed some steel too.

As Nerea, Sarah Gilford played the heroine's livelier friend and Gilford entered with a will into the requirement to keep Deidamia's spirits up when she got mopey, which was a lot of the time. But then Gilford started sparring with Rory Musgrave's Phoenix and the resulting will-they, won't-they was rather a delight, much closer to Mozart than a lot of Handelian opera seria.

Rory Musgrave made an admirable, robust Phoenix, the character transitioning from almost supernumerary to secondary hero. Musgrave brought a rough amiability and swagger to his music and the whole felt good humoured. Petros Magoulas sang Lycomedes' arias handsomely and with a fine musicality, but could not disguise that they were rather dramatically redundant.

The continuo of harpsichord (Pano Iliopoulos), theorbo (Francesco Tomasi) and cello (Iason Ioannou) was richly imaginative and most definitely filled the theatre but as I have said, the generally pace of the sung recitative felt a little steady and lacked real impetus. The modern instrument orchestra delivered a fine, stylish performance and there was nothing old fashioned about the musicians' approach, it all felt very period influenced.

Handel: Deidamia - Wexford Festival Opera (Photo: Pádraig Grant)

This was a welcome outing for an opera only rarely seen in the theatre. But it was a long evening - 7:30pm to 10:50pm including 30 minute interval - and it felt too long for opera-goers unused to Handelian opera seria. And frankly, the evening seemed to stretch the original material beyond what was sustainable.

I found George Petrou's production to be wonderfully entertaining in its way. Yet talking to fellow opera-goers at breakfast the next morning, some found the plot to be a little confusing still. 

 

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