Partenope

We're going to Handel's Partenope at the Proms on Sunday (our first Prom of the year). The performance comes from Royal Danish Opera with Inger Dam-Jensen and Andreas Scholl. I can think of Handel operas I would rather see, especially as Partenope does crop up rather more than most. Not only has there been an ENO outing recently, but Opera Theatre Company did it at the Linbury not so long ago. And further in the past, there were productions by the Handel Society (with Paul Esswood) and Midsummer Opera. It crops up, I think, because whilst not quite a comedy it is a satirical look at the conventions of opera seria (something the ENO production seemed to miss rather). A big plus point of the Proms performance is that it is being done properly, with 2 intervals. Too often, we've found concert performances of Handel's 3 act operas and oratorios shoehorned into a single interval format, which inevitably makes for a long sit as well as not giving the work the structure that Handel intended.