Page 90 - FINAL_Guildhall Media Highlights 2019-2020 Coverage Book

There’s a colourful cast of characters too, including Melibeo, the crooked High Priest
(here looking like the Witch-Finder General in his menacing leather coat and gloves,
though his spy-goggles were designed to wheedle out faithful lovers than that supposed
sorceresses), and Amaranta, a grand ‘lady’ who hails from the sticks but gives herself airs
and graces. Flirtatiousness and falsehood seem to be leading to tragedy before an honest
swain’s self-sacrifice sees the sea-monster struck by a thunderbolt and its lair
transformed into the Temple of Diana: the goddess descends, deus ex machina, the true
lovers are re-united and all live happily ever after.

The finer details of the plot of Giambattista Lorenzi’s libretto remained elusive, though,
even after this engaging and committed performance of Stephen Barlow’s new
production by the postgraduate students of GSMD. In the first scene, Amaranta
essentially sets out the stall by reading the inscription on the Temple of Diana which
proclaims that, ‘Every year two faithful lovers will be sacrificed to the sea monster until a
heroic soul offers his own life. Only then will peace return to the land of Cumae’.

So, the hunt begins for a pair of faithful lovers to appease the goddess of hunting and
chastity, the chase being led by Melibeo who has his own lustful eye on Amaranta. The
problem is that faithful lovers are in short supply, not least because to publicly declare
one’s true devotion would mean certain death. There thus ensues a parade of private
professions of love and swift public denials: necessity makes a virtue of fickleness.
Essentially Nerina loves Lindoro (Amaranta’s brother), but he loves Celia (who is Fillide
in disguise), who in turn loves Fileno (who, for an unexplained reason, thinks Fillide is
dead - bitten by a snake, presumably a wry nod to Gluck). Perruchetto loves everyone,
especially himself. The intrigues, betrayals and back-tracking pile up until Melibeo,
exasperated by the repeated thwarting of his plans to matchmake some lovers whose
death will revoke the curse, and by Amaranta’s wild wilfulness, imprisons Celia in a cave
with Perruchetto, presumably assuming that she will emerge unchaste. When she insists
upon her preserved purity, he determines that they will be serve to satisfy the sea
monster anyway, prompting Fileno to offer himself as a sacrifice instead. Cue Diana,
waving her magic wand - and skilfully wielding her long-bow to strike the dastardly
Melibeo with an arrow.