Even for baroque opera, a genre which thrives on all manner of craziness, Handel’s Orlando (HWV 31) is a curious animal. It was first performed at the King’s Theatre, London, on 27 January 1733, and announced itself in more or less serious terms as a fable on ‘the imperious Manner in which Love insinuates its Impressions into the Hearts of Persons of all Ranks; and likewise how a wise Man should be ever ready with his best Endeavours to re-conduct into the Right Way, those who have been misguided from it by the Illusion of their Passions’. The argument is as straightforward as the plot is confused, and sits comfortably with eighteenth-century beliefs in the power of reason, and in the essential reasonableness of that belief. Orlando thematizes (unrequited) love, loss, and reconciliation through a bold and genre-defying exploration of the darker human passions this side of insanity and violence. But at its dramatic core is the triumph over self and the conquest of those passions: ‘Qual sia d’Orlando la più bella gloria. […] Di se stesso, e d’amor oggi ha vittoria’ (‘This’, the hero sings at the end of Act 3, ‘will be Orlando’s greatest glory. […] Today, he triumphs over himself, and love’).

The opera sees Handel stretch himself, both musically and entrepreneurially, between the two popular genres of commedia dell’arte on the one hand, and the more serious opera eroico-comico on the other. Indeed, comic elements – notably in the famous mad scenes of Act 2 – exist side by side with the magical and the tragic; as René Jacobs wryly remarks in the programme notes, it would seem that for artistic and financial reasons Handel, ever the businessman, did not concern himself too seriously with questions of dramatic unity. The result is an intriguing hodgepodge of ideas, styles, and characters.

Although it suffered a little from the self-conscious newfangledness of Pierre Audi’s psychedelic mise-en-scène, of which more below, the recent production at the Opera La Monnaie / De Munt in Brussels fully captured the dramatic complexities of the work. Under the expert musical direction of René Jacobs, an exceptionally able and wonderfully dedicated cast, which included American countertenor Bejun Mehta as Orlando, German soprano Sophie Karthäuser as Angelica, Swedish mezzo soprano Kristina Hammar Ström as Medoro, South Korean soprano Sunhae Im as Dorinda, and the German bass-baritone Konstantin Wolff as the magician Zoroastro, quite literally breathed life into this gloriously garbled version of Ludovico Ariosto’s epic poem, Orlando furioso (1516/32). Orlando, or Roland as he is called in the medieval chansons de gestes, is in love with the Chinese princess Angelica, who, unbeknownst to Orlando, secretly loves the pagan prince Medoro. Medoro returns Angelica’s affections, but finds himself compromised by the unwanted amorous attentions of the peasant girl Dorinda. While Dorinda outgrows her infatuation through a sheer application of will, Orlando, here portrayed rather fittingly as something of a pyromaniac, crashes headfirst into psychosis. In Act 2, as he begins to perceive the hopelessness of his suit, love gives way first to jealousy, and later on, to violent insanity – both houses and hearts burn (as did Mehta’s lungs, one suspects). Help arrives in the shape of Zoroastro, whose best known aria, ‘Sorge infausta una procella’, sung with aplomb and great integrity by Wolff, announces the untying of this impossible lover’s knot in Act 3.

As indicated earlier, the libretto, adapted by an anonymous hand from Carlo Sigismondo Capece’s Orlando ovvero La gelosa pazzia (1711), vacillates between a disturbingly realistic psychological portrait of the eponymous hero and burlesque humour, which is coded into its plot in the same way that it is written into the music (René Jacobs particularly notes Handel’s ingenious use of major key changes and melodies like the chaconne for comic and tragic effect). As such, it requires an extensive dramatic range and lightness of touch, both of which the principal cast were able to supply in abundance. Bejun Mehta gave a stellar performance as the tormented hero, which earned him well-deserved standing ovations. He commands a beautiful, expressive, and highly versatile instrument capable in equal measure of astonishing leaps and quietly introspective recitatives. Throughout, he managed to walk a very fine line between ludicrousness and pathos, infusing his character with the right amount of seriousness for the psychological drama to ring true, but never shying away from the ridiculous, a necessary prerequisite for the grotesque transformation of the military hero into a lovesick dupe. In the mad scenes of Act 2 in particular, Mehta displayed not only immense vocal stamina, but also a surprising and well-received talent for physical comedy.

In terms of sheer vocal prowess, both Sophie Karthäuser and Sunhae Im are Mehta’s equals. Karthäuser’s elegant but incredibly powerful soprano lent her Angelica an understated authority which made her rejection of Orlando all the more plausible, while Im earned spontaneous applause throughout the evening for her utterly charming and believable portrayal of the naïve young Dorinda, whose dreams of happiness are dashed twice, first when Medoro rejects her in favour of Angelica, and a second time when Orlando inadvertently burns down her house.

Kristina Hammar Ström cut a dashing figure as Medoro and her warm, expressive mezzo harmonised perfectly with Karthäuser’s soprano in a number of deeply moving duets. Konstantin Wolff, moreover – tall, thin, and wearing suitably long hair – gave his quietly hovering Zoroastro an eerily supernatural quality which pleasantly offset his strong, almost regal baritone, the sole voice of reason amidst the love-induced madness and, as such, readily identifiable with the eagle that artistic director Pierre Audi had adopted as a central motif for the production. Ironically, when that eagle finally descended to symbolically reawaken the mad Orlando to a world of reason and personal responsibility, it turned out to be nothing more than an unfocussed quivering shadow projected onto the gigantic white screen set up at the back of the stage to accommodate a number of equally unfocussed and bland video installations. If this was conceived as a clever visual comment on Orlando’s fuzzy brain, or indeed on the phenomenological and emotional proximity of reason and madness in general, it fell curiously flat.

Unfortunately, this is true for most of Audi’s undoubtedly ambitious plans. He opted for a minimalistic, postmodern, but somewhat incongruous approach to the staging of the production, which for some bizarre reason saw Orlando and his warriors transformed into rather listless members of the fire brigade. This makes sense insofar as Orlando, equipped with nothing but a lighter and his uniform when we first meet him, likes to play with fire (at one point, Dorinda contemplates whether love is more akin to fire than ice). In Act 1, however, this somewhat crude device involved a number of extras noisily shifting enormous blue plastic barrels across the stage for no apparent reason, an annoyance and of no dramatic value whatsoever. Audi fared better in Act 2 by far. Here, the darkened stage, covered in madly criss-crossing gangplanks and lit only by an army of cleverly suspended, will-o’-the-wispy candle lights, turned into a powerful visual articulation of Orlando’s insane mind. As Audi explains in his production notes, the idea was to transform the entirety of Act 2 into a nightmarish vision or dream sequence taking place inside the hero’s head, and populated with distorted versions of familiar characters who haunt Orlando’s tortured descent into an underworld of his own making. In Act 3, however, we were back to another bland scene involving Dorinda’s skeletal house and one very postmodern tree. Altogether, the staging seemed contrived, and just a little inconsequential.

Nevertheless, as multimedia extravagances go, Audi’s foray was just palatable, and mercifully, did not interfere with the music or indeed with the performances of the soloists. After all, on this last night of a triumphant run at the Opera La Monnaie, this was their moment, and the audience awarded them, the brilliant Baroque Orchestra B’Rock, and conductor René Jacobs with well-deserved standing ovations.

Handel’s Orlando was at La Monnaie, Brussels, from 19 April to 11 May 2012.