Collegiate Chorale

Elizabeth Futral

Photographer: Christian Steiner

Avery Fisher Hall (at Lincoln Center);
Apr 28, 2008

As the New York City Opera turns toward 20th-century works for the immediate future, the large, avid audience for the operas of Handel must take every opportunity to feast. This week Robert Bass’s often-inspired Collegiate Chorale offers a genuine novelty: a concert reading of the 1739 Jupiter in Argos (Giove in Argo), marking the American premiere of this recently reconstructed pasticcio.

At a time when Handel’s London fortunes were dissolving and his stable of singers changing, the pragmatic composer reworked much of his music into “instant” shows such as this, utilizing preexisting librettos and sometimes filching an aria or two from rivals, with results that are often fascinating. Here, the ever-straying god Jupiter pursues two love objects, with sitcomworthy plot complications.

The cast looks highly promising, including soprano Elizabeth Futral (Calisto), sensational in City Opera’s Semele in 2006, and mezzo Kristine Jepson (Iside), fresh from a bel canto triumph as Bellini’s Adalgisa in Philadelphia. English stylist Rufus Müller sings Jupiter, a part shaped for Handel’s star tenor John Beard. Qualified low-voiced male Handelians are thin on the ground, but Bass has corralled two of the best: bass-baritone Wayne Tigges, recently a fine heavy in Giulio Cesare for both the Met and Chicago, and bass Valerian Ruminski, with his outstanding coloratura facility. The Met’s plucky Heidi Grant Murphy appears as Diana. The sturdy Orchestra of St. Luke’s provides the orchestral framework.