Les Arts Florissants/Handel’s L’Allegro at Barbican Hall review - heart-meltingly beautiful

This rendition by the French group confirmed the view of those who rate the piece as one of Handel’s most inspired creations
Mark Allan
Barry Millington15 March 2022

In Handel’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, the dramatic interaction is not between two characters but between two humours: the cheerful and the melancholy. Basing his text on a pair of odes by Milton, Handel’s favoured librettist Charles Jennens fashioned a vehicle for the composer that’s rich in nature imagery (the hawthorn in the dale, the song of the lark, the strutting cock) and full of arresting if quaint phrases (“Jonson’s learned sock” being one of many). In the first two parts the two humours alternate, number by number, affording maximum contrast.

Part 3 has often been disparaged as being the work of Jennens alone. Certainly he was no Milton, yet he offered Handel a celebration of “the middle way”, Moderation, that chimed with the Georgian ideal of temperate living, more often aspired to than practised. And Handel responded by writing, in the duet As Steals the Morn, one of the loveliest things to come out of the 18th century.

Last night’s performance by the France-based group Les Arts Florissants under its founder-director William Christie confirmed the view of those of us who rate L’Allegro one of Handel’s most inspired creations. With a team of outstanding soloists – Rachel Redmond, James Way, Sreten Manojlovic and a highly talented treble, Leo Jemison, with a very promising career ahead of him – and his own choir and orchestra, all impeccably rehearsed, Christie gave us a masterclass in the Handelian style.

Too many performances of Handel in the UK, even at the highest level (no names!), sound rigid, rushed and routine. Christie lets every phrase breath, often taking liberties but always within the style. He leans on dissonances almost unbearably, heart-meltingly. With a mien ever more benign and avuncular, he directs with sometimes a hand movement of just a few millimetres, at other times sculpting the air gracefully, willing his performers to match his eloquence.

The ensemble was impeccable
Mark Allan

Among the orchestral soloists deserving a special mention are the flautist Serge Saitta, chirruping merrily with Redmond in Sweet Bird, the multitasking Béatrice Martin on harpsichord, organ and celesta, and oboists Pier Luigi Fabretti and Yanina Yacubsohn and bassoonist Claude Wassmer exquisitely plangent in As Steals the Morn.

Christie’s and Manojlovic’s pocket squares sported the Ukrainian colours of blue and yellow, with Redmond’s turquoise dress lending moral support. For an encore, following the hymning of Moderation, the tenor aria depicting “Laughter holding both his sides” was riotously reprised with Way and Christie himself cackling like a pair of Hogarthian revellers in a Fleet Street tavern.

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