Clive Paget

Clive Paget

Clive Paget is a former Limelight Editor, now Editor-at-Large, and a tour leader for Limelight Arts Travel. Based in London after three years in New York, he writes for The Guardian, BBC Music Magazine, Gramophone, Musical America and Opera News. Before moving to Australia, he directed and developed new musical theatre for London’s National Theatre.


Articles by Clive Paget

CD and Other Review

Review: Handel: Partenope (Il Pomo d’Oro/Minasi)

Handel’s Partenope is one of those inexplicable rarities. A tuneful, light romance, it has everything that one could want from a Baroque opera – love, intrigue, cross-dressing… Back in Handel’s time, however, the opera claque had it in for the piece. “Senesino put me in a sweat in telling me that Parthenope was likely to be on the stage, for it is the very worst book (excepting one) that I ever read in my whole life,” sniped the rival Academy’s purse-lipped Italian agent Owen Swiny. Poppycock, said Edward J Dent who described it in 1959 as “perhaps the best libretto that Handel had ever set,”likening it to Shakespeare no less. As always, the truth lies somewhere in-between. A tale of love, jealousy and betrayal, the plot revolves around the un-historical titular Queen of what would become Naples and her three suitors. Arsace, Prince of Corinth is the front runner, but when Rosmira, his former betrothed arrives disguised as a knight, it throws the field wide open. Arsace is forced to dissemble rather than admit his falsehood, and Partenope’s affections are diverted towards Armindo, the timid Prince of Rhodes. After Arsace forces Rosmira to reveal her identity by challenging her to…

March 23, 2016