Bizarre love tale, captivating music

Handel’s most popular work during his lifetime was not “Messiah,” but rather “Acis and Galatea,” a masque derived from Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” with a collaborative text by such luminaries as John Gay, Alexander Pope and John Hughes.

Its Arcadian story of a shepherd’s love for a nymph arousing the fatal jealously of a Cyclops seems pretty fanciful and remote from us today. But Handel wrote such lovely, varied and interesting music that despite changes in historical taste, the piece has never fallen out of the repertory, unlike his more demanding operas.

Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra closed its season with an engaged, spirited performance led by a crouching, dancing, joyous Martin Haselbock on Friday at Zipper Hall in downtown Los Angeles. (A repeat was scheduled for Sunday afternoon at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall.)

Elizabeth Futral, who laid down such solid, seductive baroque credentials as Cleopatra in Handel’s “Giulio Cesare” for Los Angeles Opera in 2001, brought a plumy soprano, a statuesque beauty and a committed sense of character to Galatea, especially in the final air transforming her dead lover into an eternally bubbling fountain.

(Futral will return to sing Violetta in Verdi’s “La Traviata” for L.A. Opera in June.)

As her doomed shepherd-lover Acis, tenor Tony Boutte proved a more contained singer, fluent and flexible in line, but rather monochromatic in color and limited in dynamic range. In their duet, “Happy We!,” however, the two sounded like giddy teenagers in love, which was just right.

Wolfgang Bankl sang the role of the love-smitten, jealous Cyclops Polyphemus with big, rounded bass barrel tones, vocal agility and memorable rolled Rs (making the rhymes of “cherry” and “berry” quiet, comic treats).

Marc Molomot was confident and sweet-toned as Damon, a fellow shepherd who gets one of the work’s hit tunes, “Would You Gain the Tender Creature.” He also sang with the honed, blended chorus, which otherwise consisted of soprano Corey Carlton, tenors Daniel Plaster and Will Rawley, and baritone Jason Snyder.

Concertmaster Elizabeth Blumenstock presided over a buoyant ensemble.

The obbligato soloists included Judith Linsenberg (sopranino recorder), Kathryn Montoya (oboe) and Phoebe Carrai (cello).

The performance was dedicated to Musica Angelica co-founder Michael Eagan, who died in 2004. His birthday would have been Saturday.