Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno review – imaginative staging transforms Handel’s oratorio

Buxton festival, Derbyshire
Its sermonising libretto was never meant to be this much fun, but in Jacopo Spirei’s characterful production, with Christian Curnyn conducting, Hilary Cronin’s delightfully truculent Pleasure emerges as the moral heart of the piece

There’s a dash of good faith needed from director and audience alike to conjure up a discernible plot for Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, Handel’s first oratorio. Written by one Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili, the libretto is, despite its author’s day job, relatively light on religious language – and certainly no biblical epic in the vein of Handel’s later English oratorios – but dense with allegory and heavy-handed in its morality. The “triumph” in the title is Tempo (Time) and Disinganno’s (Disillusionment) success in turning flighty Bellezza (Beauty) away from superficial earthly pleasures and towards the more solemn bliss of piety.

Handel’s score gives both Beauty and Pleasure such ravishing music that it’s hard not to feel he was on their side all along, and Jacopo Spirei’s production takes a similar tack. Here, the pair are two wayward adult daughters, both dressed for very different parties, and home for Christmas with their painfully upstanding parents. The fight over Beauty’s future plays out – first as farce, then as tragedy – as her family’s dogmatic crushing of her spirit.

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