Meet Emily D’Angelo: the cool girl of opera breathing new life into Handel’s Ariodante after nearly 300 years
‘He’s quite bratty,’ she says. ‘But like spoiled bratty, not cute bratty. He’s a little entitled, I think. I don’t judge him because that’s not my job, but I assume the audience will.’
It was the music primarily that drew her to the role. The opera’s de capo arias are famous. ‘The story is great, but the music is just so beautiful and everything that the character goes through. You get every colour of the rainbow in terms of emotions and vocalising. You have the fast and the slow; the crying, the hopelessness and the joy… it’s really a whole spectrum.’
The rehearsal process will last six weeks but it is a daily effort to keep in tip-top shape to perform such roles. As D’Angelo puts it: ‘It’s a life-long endeavour to sing well.’ Physical exercise is essential too. ‘It’s about really having a strong core and being able to be nimble on stage and support your breath.’ She does cardio, strength training, walking, swimming, biking – ‘anything, except running’ – to stay at the top of her game.
Director Jestke Mijnssen has taken a distinctly psychological approach to the characters where no one is completely good or completely bad in this production. In short, she brings some modern messiness to the opera – particularly evident in its ‘happy ending’ with Ariodante and his love Ginevra reunited.
D’Angelo revealed that she was playing the role of Ariodante as ‘bratty’. She said: ‘Like spoiled bratty, not cute bratty. He’s a little entitled, I think’
