Saturday, March 20, 2010

Partenope Redux?

This spring, Handel's extraordinary Partenope will once again be performed at the New York City Opera. My question is: which version? I know that Francisco Negrin, the talented director, has staged at least two different versions of the opera. The first, which debuted at Glimmerglass in July 1998, was an impressive and revelatory production that subsequently traveled to the NYCO in September of that year. But in the fall of 2008, Negrin directed another rather different version for the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen. Exegette was fortunate enough to see (and enjoy) both the Glimmerglass and the Danish productions (and was impelled to write a few enthusiastic words about the marvelous Copenhagen staging in a blog entry that year). So one wonders whether this year's NYCO production will be Partenope I or Partenope II. Or has the imaginative Negrin prepared yet another version for NYCO's audience this time around-- a Partenope III?