Handel is assured a place in Heaven (with a little help from Clori, Tirsi and Fileno)
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Your support makes all the difference.The leading gay nightclub in London may appear to be an unlikely setting for the performance of a 300-year-old opera by Handel. But a new interpretation of Clori, Tirsi and Fileno suggests that Heaven is exactly the type of exotic venue that the German-born composer would have chosen to air this work.
The leading gay nightclub in London may appear to be an unlikely setting for the performance of a 300-year-old opera by Handel. But a new interpretation of Clori, Tirsi and Fileno suggests that Heaven is exactly the type of exotic venue that the German-born composer would have chosen to air this work.
Traditionally, the opera has told the tale of a love triangle in which two men, Tirsi and Fileno, vie for the attention of Clori, but tire of her and end up going off with each other - although strictly as friends. A new version of the work, to be unveiled on 16 May as part of the Covent Garden Festival, will put a rather different spin on the plot. Tirsi and Fileno will once again spurn Clori in favour of each other but, no doubt to the pleasure of Heaven's clientele, this time their relationshipwill turn out to be anything but Platonic.
Both the new ending and setting may well have earned the approval of Handel, who lived for 36 years in central London. The composer's deeply private life and failure to marry has belatedly aroused much speculation about his sexual orientation.
The one-act work, written in 1707, at first ended with a duet in which the two men depart with each other. The work was later watered down with a conclusion involving a trio in which the characters sing of the difficulty of winning love.
The work then disappeared and was rediscovered only in 1960. It was mentioned to the opera director Lee Blakeley, who became intrigued when he could find no record of the original "gay" ending being performed since. "People had said it was misogynistic, but Isaid it was not necessarily misogynistic if you looked at it through 21st-century eyes," he said yesterday.
Tess Gibbs, the opera's translator and choreographer, said: "The idea [of the venue] started as a joke, but like most good ideas it lingered in the air. Heaven were thrilled to be asked and have been great about it. I think they will get people through the doors who don't normally go to a club and the festival hopes it will attract a new audience to the opera."
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