Theatrical illusion and offstage reality are the dominant metaphors in Francesco Micheli’s new Glyndebourne staging of Alcina. Lavish, unsettling and, at times, teetering on camp, it’s a finely crafted piece, though whether it ideally serves Handel’s great 1735 examination of the mutable nature of desire and transience of beauty is, perhaps, debatable.
Micheli relocates the opera from the Renaissance to a 1960s Italian metropolis in the process of reconstruction, its skyline dominated by cranes and a concrete skyscraper modelled on the Torre Velasca in Milan. Alcina’s enchanted island is now a nightclub-cum-variety-theatre (called Isola di Alcina) in the skyscraper’s shadow, with Alcina herself (Jane Archibald) both its proprietor and one of its principal stars, alongside Soraya Mafi’s Morgana.
