Handel’s Solomon, one of the central productions at this year’s Göttingen Handel Festival, received its premiere at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie. Under George Petrou, the FestspielOrchester Göttingen and NDR Vokalensemble shaped an ideal of wise and harmonious rule. With a refined cast, the performance built a world of clarity and persuasion. In an age where such ideals feel remote, this emotionally sincere evening left a quietly powerful impression.
As a reputed Handel interpreter, Petrou set a noble, steady pace from the very beginning, letting Handel’s orchestration – horns, winds and divided strings – resound with clarity and weight. Across nearly three hours, he sustained both structural poise and vivid dramatic tension, shaping each scene with alertness to Handel’s brilliant emotion building. With too many striking moments to count, Solomon emerged as a living gallery of emotional display and theatrical detail.
In the role of Solomon, Lena Sutor-Wernich struck a remarkable balance between authoritative command and deeply human warmth. Her voice – centered, focused and tinged with a mature, rounded timbre – projected the wisdom and self-possession befitting a king already seasoned in rule. This vocal maturity lent credibility to Solomon’s deliberations, imbuing them with both moral gravity and empathetic nuance. The duality of strength and compassion became especially clear in the pivotal Act 2 scene, the famous ‘Judgment of Solomon’. Even when issuing the dramatic order to divide the child, her tone remained judicial rather than theatrical, allowing the surrounding tension and emotion to unfold with organic intensity.
Francesca Lombardi Mazzulli, in the dual roles of the Queen of Sheba and Second Harlot, revealed striking emotional range. As Queen, she exchanged ceremonious lines with Sutor-Wernich’s Solomon, projecting mutual admiration through graceful restraint. In contrast, her portrayal of the pleading mother was raw and immediate, her voice charged with urgency and vulnerability. With subtle vocal shading, she drew two vividly distinct figures, highlighting not only Handel’s dramatic depth, but also her own expressive finesse.
As Zadok, James Way provided a vital dramatic and musical foil to Solomon’s restraint. His tenor was bright yet pliant, especially in “Sacred raptures cheer my breast”, where he conveyed the spiritual enthusiasm of the priestly order without ever tipping into affectation. Throughout the oratorio, Way’s phrasing brought clarity to the text and buoyancy to the musical line, helping to animate both ceremonial scenes and moral reflection.
The supporting cast brought distinct colour and purpose to the performance. Carlotta Colombo, as First Harlot, set a pointed contrast to Mazzulli’s vulnerable mother, her bright, cutting tone sharpening the dramatic edges of the Judgment scene. Isaak Lee’s Attendant shaped the narrative flow with clean diction and unobtrusive style, echoing the calm authority established by Sutor-Wernich’s Solomon. As the Levite, Armin Kolarczyk lent ceremonial weight to the oratorio’s outer frame, his firm, grounded presence giving both the prologue and epilogue a quiet sense of gravity.
While Solomon may seem alien from today’s stage – more allegory than action – it also speaks to a persistent human question: how can power be made just, and justice made visible? Handel answers not with argument, but with architecture – of voices, of harmony, of ritual. This Göttingen presentation embraced this architecture fully, not by monumentalising it, but by revealing its intricate inner workings. That clarity, more than any single character or aria, was what made the performance feel both timeless and urgently present.
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