http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/arts/music/alcina-from-r-b-schlather-at-the-whitebox-art-center.html 2014-09-24 00:55:52 ‘Alcina,’ From R. B. Schlather at the Whitebox Art Center Handel’s “Alcina,” at the Whitebox Art Center, aroused memories of the adventurous New York City Opera, which folded last year. === So much has been missing since the dissolution of New York City Opera last year. While smaller organizations and festivals have filled some of the void, a particular regret is losing the intriguing, inventive directorial vision City Opera showed at its best. Imagine comparing Christopher Alden’s staging of Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro,” scheduled for that company last season and canceled, with the traditional Richard Eyre version that It was partly its whiff of that old adventurousness that made Mr. Schlather has been Mr. Alden’s frequent assistant, at City Opera and elsewhere, and the mentor’s style has left its fingerprints here in some physical ways: a taste for slow motion; characters crumpling to the floor, their hands covering their faces; and a judicious sprinkling of cross-dressing. Mr. Schlather’s work has also inherited from Mr. Alden a mood of artful melancholy, shot through with antic humor, as well as a gift for drawing out vivid performances. Her voice full of heat as the sorceress Alcina, the soprano Katharina Hagopian was sometimes poignantly needy and sometimes a fiercely funny caricature of rage. The production’s variegated, slightly surreal feel had room for both the bright-toned soprano Anne-Carolyn Bird’s endearingly dopey Morgana and the mezzo Jamie Van Eyck’s haunted, vacant-eyed Ruggiero, eloquent in her character’s exquisite slow arias. As Bradamante, who travels to rescue her lover from Alcina’s clutches, the mezzo Eve Gigliotti, her voice powerful and agile, was comically yet movingly torn between her mission and her desires. The tenor Samuel Levine was a volatile Oronte, and the baritone David Adam Moore a resonant Melisso. The score, one of Handel’s most glorious, was substantially yet smartly trimmed — losing a minor character and some ballet music — by Mr. Schlather and the conductor, Geoffrey McDonald, who led a performance alert to both the overall momentum and the shape of individual numbers. The designs were ingenious, including Paul Tate dePoo’s deceptively simple set, full of clever exits and entrances; Terese Wadden’s stylish costumes; JAX Messenger’s lighting, which did a great deal with very little; and Dave Bova’s evocative hair and makeup. The production’s two weeks of rehearsals were free and open to the public, and the performances were streamed live on the Internet as well as broadcast on a television in the gallery’s front window, a welcoming and welcome degree of openness for an art form that intimidates many. Mr. Schlather has said he and the Whitebox Art Center would like to do something similar with “Orlando” and “Ariodante,” completing the trio of Handel operas based on Ludovico Ariosto’s epic “Orlando Furioso.” This is a valuable project that deserves enthusiastic support.