Partenope – English National Opera, London Coliseum
Partenope
A white staircase curves up the back of the stage. Doors line the walls like a smart Paris apartment. People drift in with martinis and playing cards. There is a camera flash, a hint of cigarette smoke, and Handel’s music starts to thread through the room.
This revival of Partenope brings back Christopher Alden’s 2008 staging for English National Opera, now firmly part of the company’s Handel identity. The Neapolitan queen becomes a 1920s salon hostess, holding court in a world of Surrealist artists, louche hangers-on and restless lovers. The visual language, Andrew Lieberman’s crisp modernist set and Jon Morrell’s sharply tailored costumes, leans into that atmosphere: part cabaret, part art-world gathering.
The plot is a tangle of desire and disguise. Partenope is surrounded by three suitors, Arsace, Armindo and Emilio, while Rosmira, the woman Arsace once abandoned, turns up disguised as a young man called Eurimene, determined to expose him. ENO performs the piece in Amanda Holden’s English version, which keeps the recitatives quick and conversational with the occasional jolt of present-day slang. Underneath the jokes and wordplay, the story tracks the slow unwinding of pride, jealousy and loyalty in a group of people who know they are being watched.
Nardus Williams leads the ensemble as Partenope, every entrance controlled, the voice riding Handel’s long lines with a bright, focused sound. There is a coolness to her hostess persona that suits the salon setting. She moves between suitors, weighing them up, and lets the surface crack in brief moments of exposed feeling. Hugh Cutting’s Arsace, written for a high male voice, brings an agile, expressive countertenor to the role. The character’s bravado and confusion sit in his phrasing, especially when the music stretches into longer, more unsettled paragraphs. Katie Bray’s Rosmira, crossing the stage in trousers and hat, carries a different kind of tension; someone keeping a disguise in place while still carrying the bruise of an old betrayal. Jake Ingbar’s Armindo, Ru Charlesworth’s sharp-eyed Emilio and William Thomas’s watchful Ormonte complete a company that feels at ease inside Alden’s stylised world.
The sound of the evening is distinctive. Handel wrote several leading roles here for castrati, and ENO’s use of countertenors preserves that unusual balance of colours with multiple high male voices interlocking above the continuo line. At times the stage picture becomes busy with visual gags, sightlines through doorways, characters climbing and peering out of windows. When the production settles and simply places a singer centre stage with a looping da capo aria, the focus sharpens and the emotional line comes through clearly. The ENO Orchestra, under Christian Curnyn, keeps textures clean and rhythms buoyant, and the continuo detail sits clearly underneath the voices.
Across the evening, patterns repeat and shift. People circle each other, change seats at the card table, swap partners in doorways, apologise and provoke again. What lingers is less a single image than the sense of a group locked together in a long party that has slipped slightly off its axis; desire, vanity and genuine feeling all sharing the same room while Handel’s music shapes their impulses. For anyone curious about how a Baroque comedy can inhabit a modern visual language, this Partenope offers a clear, stylish example.
Cast & Creatives
- London Coliseum - St Martin’s Lane, London WC2N 4ES
- Buy tickets: https://www.eno.org/operas/partenope/
- Dates: 20 Nov 2025 to 6 Dec 2025 | Running time: approx. 3 hours 30 minutes, including two intervals
- Conductor: Christian Curnyn, Assistant conductor: William Cole
- Director: Christopher Alden
- Set design: Andrew Lieberman
- Costume design: Jon Morrell
- Lighting design: Adam Silverman
- Movement director: Claire Glaskin
- Revival movement and intimacy director: Elaine Brown
- English translation: Amanda Holden
- Production photography: Lloyd Winters / English National Opera
- Cast:
Hugh Cutting – Arsace
Ru Charlesworth – Emilio
Jake Ingbar – Armindo
Katie Bray – Rosmira
William Thomas – Ormonte
Partenope – English National Opera at the London Coliseum
Summary
ENO’s revival of Handel’s Partenope places a tangle of lovers and disguises in a chic 1920s Paris salon. Christopher Alden’s staging, with its white staircase set and sharp tailoring, creates a cool, slightly off-kilter world for the looping arias to unfold in. Strong singing across the cast and a clear sense of style make this a confident, characterful Handel evening at the London Coliseum.
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