Handel's Alcina

Francesco Micheli (stage director), Jonathan Cohen (conductor) — With Jane Archibald (Alcina), Beth Taylor (Bradamante), Samantha Hankey (Ruggiero)...

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Cast

Francesco Micheli  — Stage director

Edoardo Sanchi  — Set designer

Alessio Rosati  — Costume designer

Mike Ashcroft  — Choreographer

Bruno Poet  — Lighting designer

Beth Taylor  — Bradamante

Alastair Miles  — Melisso

Soraya Mafi  — Morgana

Program notes

On an enchanted island outside the passage of time, the powerful sorceress Alcina reigns supreme. A master of illusions, she seduces the knights who land on her shores before transforming them—once their love has faded—into trees, rocks, or beasts, frozen for eternity. When the knight Ruggiero falls under her spell, Alcina believes that love might break the curse trapping her in a cycle of seduction and destruction for the first time. But Bradamante’s arrival and Ruggiero’s flight shake her power, revealing the fragility that lies behind her omnipotence. 

In Handel’s final opera Alcina, magic serves as a mirror for a deeply moving exploration of love, illusion, and self-annihilation. A witch, woman, victim, and tormentor all at once, Alcina embodies one of opera’s most complex female characters. Making its Glyndebourne debut, Francesco Micheli’s sumptuous production magnifies this ambiguity, while Jonathan Cohen’s baton reveals the full emotional and dramatic richness of this work, in which only true love might offer redemption…

 

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