Handel: Arminio, Karlsruhe 2017 – Max Emanuel Cencic

   in Opera Now (Jun, 2018)
There is yet more of Cencic in Handel’s Arminio, filmed at that composer’s festival in Karlsruhe last year. This time Cencic directs the opera too, and proves generally as much of a success in that task as in his singing of the title role. The production is essentially traditional but with an updated twist: as Germanic leader Arminio and his wife Tusnelda flee their following defeat they are betrayed, and the plot moves through the machinations of their Roman enemy Varo to dispose of them, before the tables are turned. Here, the royal couple is Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette (an idea presumably inspired by their failed flight to Varennes in …