Photo by Mark Frohna
Milwaukee Opera Theatre's ‘Alcina’
Milwaukee Opera Theatre's ‘Alcina’
There will be a bit of magic in the air this fall when Milwaukee Opera Theatre (MOT) returns to the stage with Handel’s Alcina. The opera’s setting is an enchanted island where the sorceress Alcina turns the lovers she tires of into objects, plants or animals.
“We were looking for a project to do with Early Music Now,” says MOT’s artistic director, Jill Anna Ponasik, referring to the baroque chamber musicians organized last year by Milwaukee’s longtime early music concert series. “I knew we didn’t want to perform in one of their typical venues. Then I strolled into Dandy and was enchanted by the venue.”
Dandy (5020 W. Vliet St.) is a unique combination of vintage shop and event space. “You walk into what looks like a great secondhand store and then, through back passageways, you find yourself in an incredibly stylish, artistic, eclectic room that has a weird, quirky opulence about it. The chair you sit on could have been one of Alcina’s lovers!”
Handel Condensed
MOT has scaled down Handel’s two-hour opera into a 75-minute performance, condensing the story without losing the plot line. The sung portions will be performed in the original Italian but tethered to a fresh script by Danielle Gedemer narrated in contemporary English. There will be two dance sequences in baroque style choreographed by James Zager. Scott Stewart helped condense Alcina to a manageable length.
Handel’s 1735 opera debuted in a Baroque age not known for artistic minimalism. The golden lamps and brocade upholstery of Dandy’s objects are meant to engender a suitable meta-period ambience for Alcina, enhanced by candles and low lighting. The performers are costumed in an eclectic dandyism derived from clothing purchased at Dandy and other local vintage shops. The outfits belong to no certain era but help transport the audience out of our own time. “We put people in as many sparkling things as we can and hope they will twinkle,” Ponasik says.
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The Early Music Now ensemble will perform on period instruments including harpsichord and a baroque flute called the traverso. “For Milwaukee Opera Theatre, Alcina at Dandy is a return to site-specific performances—it’s the first one since the piece we did in a parking lot with Danceworks during Covid.”
Alcina is MOT’s return after a brief stretch of dormancy. “We wanted to be sure that there was still work for us to do and a place for us in the artistic ecosystem,” Ponasik explains. “We took a few months to focus on news staff and a new strategic plan. We rethought everything and what’s funny is that we haven’t so much changed as returned with renewed specificity to our commitment to work in a multi-modal way as an entirely artist-led organization, a hive of local artists making work together.”
Milwaukee Opera Theatre and Early Music Now present Alcina, Nov. 12-17, at Dandy, 5020 W. Vliet St. For tickets, visit milwaukeeoperatheatre.org.
