Alcina review: A morality tale full of sexual and musical magic

With a plot that makes the brain reel, Handel’s music itself becomes the drama in Richard Jones’s production

The Cuban-American soprano Lisette Oropesa as Alcina in the ROH’s ‘Alcina’ (Marc Brenner)

Time was, not so long ago, that Covent Garden and the Coliseum were in friendly and fruitful opposition. While the Royal Opera did its gold-plated thing, English National Opera – like David facing Goliath – put up a feisty menu of music-theatre, drawing on interesting works the ROH wouldn’t touch.

With ENO now facing extinction after a 100 per cent funding cut last week (it will instead be given £17m over three years to relocate outside of London), it behoves us to treasure everything we can get at Covent Garden – though the current Arts Council cuts have bitten deep there, too. Opera on a shoestring can be marvellous, but while grand opera may be an expensive commodity, at its best it speaks to everyone. The potential loss of a major opera house – even if it has been mismanaged for years – is a shocking cultural impoverishment. 

The ROH has now unveiled the latest and greatest work in its Handel series – Alcina. It’s about magic, both musical and sexual, and about the breaking of those spells; it’s about jealousy and unbearable frustration, and its plot makes the brain reel. Predatory Alcina has fallen in love with the knight Ruggiero, and has detained him on her enchanted island. Blinded by obsession, he doesn’t know the danger that awaits him when she tires of her infatuation: she turns her discarded lovers into trees and wild beasts.