Opera is often ridiculed for its twisted plotlines. Sometimes they can be unpicked quite easily, but the plot of Handel’s Alcina is truly complicated. We are on an enchanted island (in 1735, they would not have called it Love Island; today we might), ruled over by a sorceress – Alcina herself. She bewitches any man who takes her fancy, wiping his memory clean so that she has all his attention. The current victim is poor Ruggiero, whose betrothed, Bradamante, dressed as a man, sets out to free him. She succeeds, but only after three hours of gender-blurring amorous tangles.
Rather than trying to untie the narrative knots, Francesco Micheli’s new Glyndebourne production adds a few of its own. The highly mobile sets are by Edoardo Sanchi, inventively lit by Bruno Poet, and the costumes – what costumes! – are by Alessio Rosati. Appropriately enough, given the artifice of Handel’s operas, the action takes place in a theatre called Alcina’s Island. There, a variety show unfolds, an extravagant mash-up spanning Handel’s 18th-century and the 20th, mainly Italy in the 1960s but with hints of punk and the 1930s: Marie Antoinette’s ship headdress and Anita Ekberg are among a profusion of visual references.
