Reconstructing ‘Sant’ Alessio’ at UCLA

The life of St. Alexis, a 13th-Century Florentine aristocrat who left his family to join an order of penitents, might not seem an operatic subject of compelling interest. In fact, says Nicholas McGegan, “The character of Alexis is totally humorless and somewhat overpious.”

The British-born musician has a problem there, since he will be conducting a fully staged revival of Stefano Landi’s “Sant’ Alessio” (opening tonight in Royce Hall) three times this week at the Nakamichi Baroque Music Festival at UCLA.

He also says he wants to entertain.

In that pursuit, McGegan gets a little help from Landi and his librettist, Giulio Rospigliosi (who would become Pope Clement IX), who spiced up their life of Alessio “with dances, with elaborate stage mechanisms like flying machines, with dancing bears. And with the pseudo-historical and colorful character of the Devil,” to be sung at these performances by the venerable British basso, David Thomas.

The core of the story unfolding in this opera, McGegan relates, is “the Devil’s attempts to make Alessio, who lives anonymously as a beggar under the stairs in the palace of his own family, reveal himself as the rich kid gone wrong. And then to renounce his vow of poverty.”

Alessio himself “does not do much actively in this opera, though he never gives in to temptation.

“But, with the dancing--there are three dance interludes in the three acts of the work--the Devil and the flying machines, there is a lot going on. (Soprano) Mary Rawcliffe actually does a Peter Pan flying number three different times, as different characters, during the course of the evening.”

The wealthy Barberini family, who staged the opera in 1634 at their Roman palace, then published the score, complete with engravings of the production, might be pleased at this reconstruction. According to Frederick Hammond, general director of the festival, only the actual colors of the scenery and costumes were unknown, since the engravings lack color.

“It was easy to guess about the colors, however,” Hammond says. “We just consulted the original site, in Rome, of the 1634 production--a building still standing, and accessible. The colors in the original room provided the colors of the reconstruction.”

Questions of authenticity, McGegan explains, are important in planning productions and in all the details of rehearsal. But they should not detain those opera-lovers who have come to enjoy the performance.

“The historical reconstruction of the opera is my problem and the problem of the production team. The audience shouldn’t worry about it,” he says.

“We have worked very hard to get it right,” McGegan continues. But scholarship “just gives us a foundation. What adds life are the performers.”