My print review of City Opera's Orlando doesn't run until May, but I can offer a one-word précis to readers within striking distance of New York: Go. The cast is superb, the production is intelligent, and conductor Antony Walker (in his City Opera début) pulls off big-house Handel better than anyone I've ever heard.
Following the show, someone remarked, "Boy, this Ariosto dude is all over everything, isn't he?" You bet. A few links, for your pleasure and ædification:
My NYCO program essay for Handel's Alcina, designed as an introduction to Ariosto
A brief biography of Ariosto, from the Catholic Encyclopedia
Orlando furioso in Italian and in English
Sir John Harington's beautiful 1591 translation (nasty site, though)
Gustave Doré's 1879 illustrations, from a Russian site
Glimmerglass Opera's excellent bibliography for Handel's Orlando and snippets from Ariosto and his commentators
A few words of warning: I have no stomach for flame wars and tend to see a multiplicity of views as a good thing. (Is this a cause or an effect of my love for Ariosto? Who can say.) However, if you should encounter drivel like the following about Ariosto, I do advise you to *run.*
[Ariosto's] poetic and human vision is characterized by a desire for Man's complete harmony with himself and the world, by a faith in human reason and dignity and by a full involvement in worldly things… [T]he traditional chivalric style is just a pretext for an imaginative pageant of duels and battles…
No, no, no, no, no…
My favorite books about Ariosto (for more advanced readers): Albert Russell Ascoli's Ariosto's Bitter Harmony and Sergio Zatti's Il 'Furioso' fra epos e romanzo.
i doubt that the deep love i feel for ariosto can be put in any words yet invented.
pages aglow with magic, what more could you wish for?
Posted by: syro | 24 March 2005 at 01:25