Countertenor Hugh Cutting Steals Handel's 'Riccardo Primo' at Teatro Real

Countertenor Hugh Cutting earned more ovations than anyone else at Teatro Real on Oct. 21, singing the title role in Handel's "Riccardo Primo, Re d'Inghilterra" in concert performance with Les Arts Florissants. He was a late substitute. Jakub Józef Orliński withdrew before the premiere, and Cutting has carried the role since the first performance on Oct. 14 in Dijon, then at the Philharmonie de Paris, arriving in Madrid with a finished interpretation rather than a debut.

The Madrid evening offered no sets and no staging. That suited the material. Handel's 1727 opera — his only work built on an English monarch, written for the coronation of George II — played as three hours of intimate, slightly otherworldly music, with the expressiveness of each role flowing entirely into vocal nuance.

What is the plot, and why does it matter?

Richard the Lionheart travels to 12th-century Cyprus to collect his betrothed Costanza, shipwrecked and imprisoned by the island's tyrant Isacio. Isacio loves her himself and tries to pass off his daughter Pulcheria as the bride, since Richard has never seen his intended. Pulcheria already has a betrothed, Oronte, Prince of Syria, who exposes the trick.

Handel builds the drama on a double deception. Costanza hides under the servant's name Dorinda; Richard arrives disguised as his own ambassador. The composer, as the source review notes, uses the device not for comedy but to show how power and desire blind even the perceptive.

How did the singers fare?

Cutting sang with filigree fioriture (elaborate vocal ornamentation), baroque ornaments and an organic sense of breath. His voice was high and transparent yet dramatically charged, soaring upward while holding a firm lower register. The martial arias "O vendicarmi saprò con l'armi" and "Atterrato il muro cada" sat beside genuine tenderness; his Ivanhoe-like appearance completed the portrait of a 12th-century English king.

Mélissa Petit's Costanza revealed an unexpected dimension. Known for a rich voice with splendid coloratura that can fill any hall, she chose instead a silvery, crystalline piano with warm amber overtones. Handel wrote the part for Francesca Cuzzoni, famed not for machine-gun coloratura but for softness and astonishing pianissimo. Petit followed that lead. In the arioso "Morte, vieni," over a solo transverse flute, her heroine teetered on despair; the final aria "Il volo così fido," with solo sopranino recorder, blossomed into luminous elegy.

Mezzo-soprano Juliette Mey, Isacio's daughter Pulcheria, astonished the house into stillness that broke into loud applause after her first aria. A Queen Elisabeth Competition laureate and 2024 Victoires de la Musique Classique "Révélation artiste lyrique" winner, she is an alumna of William Christie and Paul Agnew's Jardin des Voix Academy. Her "L'aquila altera" — a proud eagle teaching its chicks to look at the sun — sparkled from first note to last.

German bass-baritone Andreas Wolf sang the tyrant with power, bronze timbre and dramatic credibility. His "Nel mondo e nell'abisso" confessed he would sooner see Costanza dead than yield her — yet Wolf kept Isacio a father, not a cartoon villain.

The hidden jewel was the second countertenor, Paul Figuier, a graduate of the Paris Conservatoire and the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles. His softer, warmer voice contrasted with Cutting's denser warrior sound — like Onegin and Lensky, as the review puts it, each fighting for his beloved. American bass Alex Rosen, a Juilliard graduate who debuted with Les Arts Florissants under Christie, made a single aria, "Dell'empia frode il velo," impeccable.

What did the orchestra bring?

Conductor Paul Agnew, the strictest of baroque purists, led Les Arts Florissants — a gold standard of period performance — with precision accents and rhythmic energy that never sagged. The brass sounded spacious and soft-bright, without modern metal's hardness. Percussion supplied the weight of battle and storm scenes, substituting for absent staging. The Act Two duet "T'amo, sì; sarai tu quella" fused Cutting and Petit's timbres so completely that Teatro Real seemed to contract to the dimensions of an alcove.

Handel ends in coronation spirit: Riccardo spares Isacio and gives Cyprus to Pulcheria and Oronte. Costanza, the character who suffered most, receives the jubilant final aria — baroque convention turning her liberation into the evening's virtuoso triumph.