The appearance of the band of Puritans who feature at the beginning and end of Richard Jones’s production of Handel’s Alcina, revived at Covent Garden by Sarah Fahie, is at first sight puzzling. But they date approximately from the age of Handel’s primary source, Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, and are key to Jones’s ingenious twist on the story, turning out to be revellers in the realm of hedonism indulged in on Alcina’s enchanted island in which former lovers have been turned into wild beasts.
While the Puritans’ values of mercy and kindness are urged on the more vengeful characters, they themselves, when returned to human form, reflect on what they have experienced and reject their black, leather-bound Geneva Bibles in favour of The Joy of Sex. In between Jones unfolds a delectable fable full of imaginative touches, often comic, often affecting, with Handel’s glorious score offering an endless sequence of arias each more ravishing than the last.
