Renee Fleming Reprises Title Role in "Rodelinda" on Met Saturday Matinee on December 3

St. Louis Public Radio will carry the Met Opera broadcast of George Frideric Handels’s Rodelinda on their HD channel, KWMU-3 beginning at 11:30 a.m. Please note the half-hour earlier starting time.

You may also listen to Rodelinda via a live stream of the broadcast. Approximate running time 4 hours, 5 minutes. Intermissions at 12:30 p.m. and 2:00 p.m.

Renée Fleming, sensational in the 2004 Met premiere of Stephen Wadsworth’s much-heralded production, reprises the title role. She’s joined by Stephanie Blythe and countertenor Andreas Scholl, and Baroque specialist Harry Bicket conducts.

In the November 15, 2011, New York Times, James Oestreich writes:

In addition to Ms. Fleming’s star power, Stephen Wadsworth’s direction has received much credit for the production’s initial success and durability. And direction is surely needed.

The plot —- here updated more or less to the time the opera was written, 1725 -— defies quick description. It involves Bertarido, a king of Milan thought by most onstage, including his wife, Rodelinda, to be dead; his sister, Eduige, betrothed to Grimoaldo, who is now bent on claiming Rodelinda and, not incidentally, the throne; and two counselors to Grimoaldo: the sweet Unolfo, loyal to Bertarido (and aware that he is alive), and the irredeemably base Garibaldo, who meets an appropriate end at the point of Bertarido’s sword.

Opportunities for drama are obvious, but the work’s structure is unyielding. Ms. Fleming, in a Playbill interview, calls Rodelinda “a Handel opera with 30 arias and no ensembles.” Though she discounts the gorgeous duet that ends Act II and the lively quintet that ends the whole, she might have added that the arias are of the da capo variety: an A section giving way to B, then returning, however decorated or transformed.

Mr. Wadsworth’s pointed direction keeps the action moving forward even when the music circles back, though not without occasional distractions. For one, as Eduige, the formidable mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe, sings at center stage, Rodelinda travels to a remote perch in the palace library — which, in Thomas Lynch’s set design, spans the stage —- to fetch a book for her son, Flavio. Who can ignore Ms. Fleming even when she is marking time?

The High Definition transmission of Rodelinda will be presented at AMC Esquire 7, 6706 Clayton Road; St. Louis Mills 18; 5555 Saint Louis Mills Boulevard; AMC Chesterfield 14, 3000 Chesterfield Mall; and O'Fallon 14, 900 Caledonia Drive. Click here to buy tickets.