Amadigi di Gaula
- Robert Beale
- Jul 17
- 3 min read
Handel
Buxton International Festival, The English Concert
Buxton Opera House
July 12,16,20, 2026: 2 hrs 30 mins
The main baroque opera production this year at Buxton International Festival is a Handel work from 1715, Amadigi di Gaula. Its story is about a magic island – like Francesca Cacchini’s La liberazione di Ruggiero, written 90 years earlier (and also on this year's festival bill, see here).
There is also a sorceress called Melissa, as in that earlier opera. This time she’s in charge of the island of love, where Amadigi and Dardano are both in love with a girl called Oriana (in Amadigi’s case it’s reciprocated) – but Melissa wants Amadigi for herself and tries every trick in the book to get him, or at least prevent Oriana having him.
In Olivia Fuchs’s production, with Eleanor Bull’s design, it’s all brought gaudily and colourfully to life as an episode of Love Island.
“Melissa’s Island” as designed by Eleanor Bull (with lighting by Ben Pickersgill) is the bright and gaudy beach location we see being made ready during Handel’s overture. Camera, lights… contestants pout and pose for their introductory shots and Melissa, in shining silver suit, is doing the presenter’s spiel (in mime). The two men whose fortunes we are to follow are best mates at the outset, and then the screen prompt tells us we’re shifting to “Day 7”, as things begin to go horribly wrong.
The text Handel set (no one knows for certain who wrote it) calls for a trial by fire in the first Act, as Amadigi seeks to set Oriana free. In this version there are TV “trials” entitled “Cross The Threshold” and “Free Your Love”, as Oriana is put inside a locked cage and cardboard “flames” are carried on to set – a rather 18th Century type of scene-setting….
In the second Act, things shift off-set, to the make-up room and costume store, where Melissa tries to get her evil way by tying the unfortunate lovers to chairs with silver duct tape. It’s all told tongue-in-cheek with an eye to fun, but within that the music is still free to shine. Handel wrote a succession of arias exploring every “affection” the story provides: Olivia Fuchs ingeniously provides little pieces of business to accompany every da capo repeat, and the illusion is that things are always moving on, even when they aren't.
Erin Helyard conducts the English Concert to provide period sounds from the pit. Speeds are gratifyingly lively when required, and in the performance I saw, the slower arias were given full rein to blossom in emotional impact too.
The four performers are very strong, and Tim Morgan’s Amadigi is the more impressive for having been formed over just two weeks, after a late cast change. James Hall is a match for him in passionate intensity (both men’s roles are for high voices) and Rowan Pierce acts and sings Oriana as to the reality show born, bristling with young-madam indignation as she imagines her lover has two-timed her. Hilary Cronin not only goes all-out to give us the smarmy personality of the TV show host, but rises to the heights of arias of frustration and fury with richness and virtuosity.
More info and tickets here
