Baroque program didn't need fixing by puppets

The unlikely fusion of baroque-era cantatas and string-free puppets inevitably posed some fairly steep compatibility questions - without particularly positive answers - during the weekend's collaboration between the baroque orchestra Tempesta di Mare and the Bethlehem-based Mock Turtle Marionette Theater.

The three-performance program, "No Strings Attached," featured that pairing in Monteverdi's 1638

Il Combattimento di Tancredi e di Clorinda

and Handel's 1707

Tra le fiamme

. And though visual and audio elements were accomplished at such a level that Friday's audience at the Plays and Players Theater seemed mostly engaged, the most relevant question is whether anybody truly got what they came for.

Were the family audiences, drawn in by puppets, up for the rarefied musical worlds of Monteverdi and Handel? Did the Monteverdi and Handel crowd see the puppets as anything but an extraneously cute visual intrusion?

Both pieces - the former a madrigal of sorts, the latter a cantata - have characters, plot and implications of physical action, but also a sense of self-presentation (Monteverdi has a narrator) that suggest anything more than minimal staging elements would compromise the music's communicative powers. And the performances by Tempesta di Mare with the dramatically adept vocal soloists David Newman and Marguerite Krull (who was especially superb) were a strong reminder of how vital and inventive this music is on its own. Aside from a few momentary mishaps, Tempesta's playing and musical comprehension has never been higher.

The dramatic elements in Monteverdi's plot mostly involve a battle to the death by male and female opponents. Puppets engaged in remarkably realistic sword fighting, but required a small crowd of puppeteers that subverted theatrical illusion. With combat masks, the puppets also were robbed of their emblematic facial expressions - the exception being Clorinda's post-battle apotheosis, when she ascended into the heavens, literally and effectively.

Handel retold the legend of Icarus, flying into the sun with melting wings before plunging to Earth. In this, Mock Turtle became a dance troupe, with four members wearing elbow-length, bright-red gloves and performing interpretive choreography.

The Icarus puppet wasn't a romanticized version but an amiably bug-eyed kid who was sent swooping around in the air in this questionable experiment. But even in the most effective lighting moments, you realized the music set the scenes in ways more stimulating to the imagination.

Handel had already done the work - better. So now we know that an endeavor like this needn't happen again.