Since 1708, Handel’s pastoral masterpiece — you can positively hear the sheep frolicking — has been heard in more versions than you could dunk in a vat of sheep dip. The most recently rediscovered, Mendelssohn’s 1829 version of Handel’s “definitive” 1743 score, graced the Usher Hall on Sunday night.
A tale of love between a beautiful nymph and an heroic shepherd destroyed by the jealous giant Polyphemus, it’s gently funny, startlingly brief and full of lovely arias, although the most famous, Polyphemus’ O Ruddier than the Cherry, tends to eclipse the lot.
Working to the German translation by his sister Fanny, Mendelssohn, then 19, added flute, timpani and trumpets with a few dramatic excisions. The result is richly full-bodied, no problem for the FestpielOrchester G?ttingen, fluid and zesty under Nicholas McGegan’s baton.
McGegan’s vocal forces were much the same as at the G?ttingen Handel Festival premiere last year. Dominique Labelle’s Galatea was the only new girl in town among a richly burnished line-up, singing in the original English rather than Fanny’s German.
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The niggling problem was some rather wayward diction. Labelle, in particular, struggled, despite a fine Hush, ye pretty warbling choir. Christoph Pr?gardien’s upper register seemed to be taking the night off (perhaps he had the cold afflicting most of the audience) but his dying refrain was heart-stoppingly beautiful, and the coloratura Happy We with Labelle, a mahogany delight.
Wolf Matthias Friedrich was a galumphing giant Polyphemus – that’s a compliment – blustering deeply through O Ruddier than the Cherry with an amusing giant lack of emotional control.
The received English intonation was left to the diverse shepherds of the tenor Michael Slattery, and the SCO Chorus, joyously bucolic in The Pleasure of the Plains, their only off-note coming in their Act II chorus Wretched Lovers, begun in thin, uncertain voice, its interwoven dissonance holding on to unity by its teeth.