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Argante (Luca Pisaroni) in Glyndebourne's 2011 Rinaldo

#I LOVVEEE this guy and his beautiful evil sorceress lover #KISSING THROUGH THE CHAINMAIL COIF #hehehehehe #rinaldo #rinaldo opera #Argante #Armida #opera #baroque #baroque music #luca pisaroni #Glyndebourne #chainmail #love me some chainmail coif #operablr #handel #handelian hookah lounge

anyways, i should probably talk about my vision for the cast of rinaldo. funny little chess piece fellows.

♞ rinaldo ( black knight ) - i mean, he’s a knight. oh, yeah, and the leaping movement of the knight piece is reflected in some scenes, i suppose. in particular, i’m thinking of “venti, turbini” and the scene where he disappears, only to reappear as armida’s captive ( does this make sense? )

♚ almirena ( black king ) - utterly powerless, but also a central figure in the game. her capture by armida ends the first act ( and is the indirect catalyst for things to go south in the later acts ).

♛ goffredo ( black queen ) - i’ve explained this before, i’ll explain it again- he doesn’t do much in the beginning ( like how a queen normally comes into play later, due to being blocked ), but he is powerful. he’s in charge.

♝ eustazio ( black bishop ) - begins right by his queen’s ( goffredo’s ) side. also worth the same amount of points as the knight ( rinaldo ), and i feel like that adds a nice balance to things.

♕ armida ( white queen ) - similar to goffredo. she’s in charge. but by the point where we enter the story, her “pawns” are all over the place and thus she has the space to move. also one of the reasons i made her WHITE queen specifically was for the sake of visuals- the white queen’s starting square ( armida’s “home base” ) is a black square, and i really liked the image of armida contrasted against all these shadowy backdrops.

♔ argante ( white king ) - he’s a literal king, though here his role is also meant to reflect his subservience to armida. we love him for that.

and the side characters… the herald is a pawn, the weird magical guys are just whatever because by that point, it’s not even a game of chess anymore.