Handel Alcina Royal Academy Opera, October 2016 Director Olivia Fuchs Lighting Jake Wiltshire

Reviews 

Handel's opera re-invented in a brilliantly engaging performance... Fuchs and Thavoris placed the audience up in the balcony, using the ground floor nave space as the playing area. Alcina's 'island' (here the club Amnesia) was placed in the centre, a large black platform with the orchestra on one side and the rest of the floor space filled with white balloons. Access to the 'island' was via a walkway, but there were also trapdoors providing access but also allowing a little bit of 'magic' as hands would mysteriously appear holding objects... What Fuchs and Thavoris had come up with was a night-club presided over by the performance artist Alcina, her magic is the magic of performance, helped along by a generous helping of drugs. The result was an intriguing contemporary take on Handel's version of Ariosto's magic island, setting the work in a milieu with which the young performers were familiar. Thavoris's set was simple and effective, but he had gone to town on the costumes so that this Alcina was completely dazzling. Star rating: 4.5 (Planet Hugill)

...Wonderfully audacious production... The staging is simple but effective, with Alcina and her cohort as sinisterly glamorous Goths who use the power of drugs and alcohol to lure their amorous prey to their exploitative ends. ***** (classicalsource.com)

I can say without any hesitation, still less exaggeration, that this is the best staging and performance of a Handel opera I have seen. Olivia Fuchs’s production takes us to AMNESIA, an S&M club with mind-altering substances – and activities... The sorcery of Alcina’s enchanted island lends itself readily to such a relocation. In the twinkling of an eye, or the snorting of a line, the transformation of pleasure-seeking fashion-victims into drugged captives perhaps speaks more clearly to us than would a spell that turned heroes into beasts, rocks, trees, or streams... Yannis Thavoris’s stunning designs and Jake Wiltshire’s lighting – the headrush moment of transformation a memorable flash of inspiration – prove especially provocative, given the location... (Seen and Heard International)

Stylish and conceptually clever... Fuchs transforms Hackney’s Round Chapel into a fetish club – the suggestively named “Amnesia”. A circular island of a stage is suspended in a sea of oversized balloons... glowing neon-bright under Jake Wiltshire’s lighting scheme. Queuing to enter are a motley collection of punks and goths, all piercings, latex, faux-fur and fuck-me boots in Yannis Thavoris’s exuberant designs. (the arts desk)