Handel Ariodante Royal Academy of Music, November 2023 Director Olivia Fuchs Choreographer Monica Nicolaides Lighting Jake Wiltshire

Reviews 

Designs by Yannis Thavoris were minimal and elegant, with monochrome, gender-fluid costumes. (The Observer)

Olivia Fuchs directed, with designs by Yannis Thavoris, and the result wouldn’t have looked out of place on a professional stage: located inside an abstract white box and peopled by what appeared to be refugees from London Fashion Week. Fuchs began with a whiteboard on which the cast took turns to write out the basic moral principles of the baroque universe… (The Spectator)

The oppressive presence of a rigid society fills the stage of Royal Academy Opera’s production of Handel’s Ariodante, effectively demonstrated with a whiteboard detailing the rules in this court - infidelity will result in death for the woman, only a man can defend a woman’s honour, and she will be judged by her purity. Immediately the dynamic sharpness is reflected in Yannis Thavoris’ stark set design and Jake Wiltshire’s cold lighting. (Opera Now)

Thavoris’s designs were crisp and modern, a plain yet stylish box for the production to inhabit. Costumes were modern too, with that type of cutting edge design that leverages the blurring of gender roles. The action during the overture began with a sort of allocation of roles, the two women playing Ariodante and Polinesso assuming their chosen gender, and at the very end, during the final coro, these were joyfully abandoned. (Planet Hugill)

‘The Rules’ define a male-centric world as oppressive and restrictive as Margaret Atwood’s Gilead. Kings rule by divine right.  Gender is binary. The value of a woman is her purity. A woman who deceives will be punished by death. Only a man can defend a woman’s honour. Duty comes before family. 

Written on a transparent whiteboard during the overture to this production of Handel’s Ariodante, directed by Olivia Fuchs at the Royal Academy of Music, these Rules establish a patriarchal domain of dehumanising convention. The cast and chorus enter this world, selecting their stylish monochrome costumes from a clothes-rail, choosing their roles, and their gender – both Ariodante and Polinesso are taken by mezzo-sopranos.  Between the gleaming white donned by Ariodante and Ginevra and the shining black of Polinesso and Dalinda, there are countless shades of grey. The theatricality is enhanced by striking baby-blue eyeshadow and cheeks daubed with white and silver.

The monochrome palette extends to Yannis Thavoris’ minimalist set: a sparse cube, in which square frames are swivelled … to demarcate particular spaces and suggest confinement. They are used to good effect in the later scenes, reinforcing the condemnation of Ginevra within a patriarchal prison. Jake Wiltshire’s dramatic lighting deepens the opposition of light and dark, good and evil, freedom and restraint. (Opera Today)