Sweet surrender

Opera loves a sexy witch, and none runs hotter than Armida, the creation of Torquato Tasso, whose epic ­sixteenth-century poem La Gerusalemme liberata introduces this beguiling Saracen anti-Crusader secret weapon, around which Gioachino Rossini built his eponymous three-act work, first performed in 1817.

Dealing as it does in sensual magic, opera is fundamentally in Armida’s camp, even as its heavy Enlightenment baggage requires its personnel to overcome base nature: these enchantresses allow it to explore the conflict.

As a Romantic – even one almost as ironic as Byron – Rossini allowed his hero so much wallowing in Armida’s realm, we could be forgiven for concluding he belongs there, despite his comrades’ constant jibes about mooning around rather than whacking the infidel. It is notable that Rossini wrote the part of Armida for his lover, Isabella Colbran: if any music represents happy male surrender to the power of women, this is it.

Not just surrender, but glorification. The text insists on Rinaldo, the knight who is unmanned by Armida, finally returning abashed to his mates, but we hear the real message: as with Handel’s Alcina, all the good tunes, all the life is hers. And this is what director Mariame Clément picks up on in this hit-and-miss Flanders Opera production, by turns silly and acute, entering yet again the old ring where men and women meet and fail to understand each other.

Clément’s Crusaders are an absurd bunch – at one point breaking into a Pythonian dance routine – whose male camaraderie involves much unpleasantness with a blow-up doll. Clément’s approach is noticeably less generous to the opposite number than Rossini’s: this bonding is the result of fear and hatred – a fear pretty well-founded as it turns out. Armida whistles up a gang of well-endowed magic nymphs to disarm the Crusaders, which they manage with childish ease.

It is the sexiest of Rossini’s scores: trans­lucent woodwind cadences transform the aural scenery from the jaunting horns of the Crusaders to a landscape dripping with languor where solo instruments cavort and delicate dances charm the ears and eyes. Bouncily conducted by the beatific 87-year-old doyen of Rossinians, Alberto Zedda, leaping around like a joyous elf, the intricate musical delight exactly reflects Rinaldo’s bewitched state.

Armida is notable for six tenor roles of fearsome difficulty, here dispatched fairly amazingly by (in particular) Robert McPherson and Enea Scala as Rinaldo – a real manly passionate pinging voice, this one – and the tenor trio of disenchantment in Act Three was a moment of transporting musical perfection that reminded you what opera can do.

The heroine herself was more problematic: from her first entry, yodelling through the whole panoply of bel canto curlicues, she is tasked with embodying feminine magic in all aspects, and Carmen Romeu took a while to warm to the task, making heavy work of aerobatics that should sound effortless. But her duets with Rinaldo wove their woozy spell, and her final magnificent outburst of fury, vowing revenge on the world after being dumped, made Fatal Attraction look like Miss Congeniality.