Ruggiero’s Liberation from the Island of Alcina review – 17th-century liberation is the 17th-century liberation is we forget to be volunteers | Opera

There’s magic in the air at this year’s Buxton festival – and it’s not just hopping from the brewery. Witches, witches and fairies curse and charm their way through three different games spanning three centuries. Handel and Pauline Viardot manage 18 and 19 respectively, but bringing the cauldron to a boil is Francesca Caccini’s 1625 La Liberazione di Ruggiero – the first opera with a mother.

Started at the Medici court – then under the reign of regent Maria Maddalena of Austria – it’s no surprise that the work on Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso is more girl power than most. The warrior Ruggiero is transformed into a romantic prisoner, while the witches Alcina (evil) and Melissa (good) fight him. Add in the cast of Alcina’s former lovers (now transformed into plants and herbs) and you have a very sweet, fanciful song whose first act ends with a ballet of horses.

Director Eloise Lally is brilliant for such silliness, and what we get from her is the young Buckinghamshire company. Baroque bull It’s a meditation on power and authoritarianism that is at its best when it forgets to be selfless and is as happy as Jonathan Darbourne’s band.

Adding to the volume of Caccini, sound and instruments from the Florentine period, the music explodes with colors and magical power: three recorders weave with twine in the same way as silvery, answered by three hunts. The violin dances and swings to the theorbo and the guitar, the texture is now grey, gold-plated, above it is always the interest of the voice.

Lally and producer Zahra Mansouri bring us the shepherd through Skid Row. A blindfolded Ruggiero (Jon Stainby) is tied up with a shower curtain, while Melissa’s henchmen’s game is boring, and Alcina’s production appears to be cooking meth. The problem is that once you get too high, the music has to follow, and apart from Stainby, whose conflict with Alcina grows gloriously, these are small voices – full of detail and vibrancy, but not powerful enough to pull off a full psychodrama.

Camilla Seale’s Alcina doesn’t give a damn, her tenacity and she had a winning mezzo and the brilliance of Phoebe Rayner, the perfect singer for Melissa. Harriet Burns is excellent in a variety of roles – a watery-lovely soprano in Caccini’s ensembles that are clear and expressive – and Filippo Turkheimer has a lot of personality in his voice as Neptune.

No horse ballet, disappointingly, but this Liberazione still makes for powerful music.