Alcina - Schedule, Program & Tickets

Alcina

Dramma per musica in three acts (1735)

Music by Georg Friedrich Händel

Libretto after Antonio Fanzaglias L'isola d'Alcina

In Italian with German surtitles

With magical powers, the mighty sorceress Alcina has transformed a desert island into an Elysium, while on the European mainland Charlemagne is busy involving all the noble heroes in the fight against the Moors in Spain. Again and again she lures knights from the campaign away on their island. She prepares the chosen pleasures of love until she becomes tired of them and transforms them into animals, plants or even stones. Several heroes from Charles's army are already missing. After all, the young Oberto, in search of his father Astolfo, has already made his way to Alcina, but can not find him - no wonder he now vegetates as a lion in the Island Menagerie. Currently Alcina has chosen the glorious Ruggiero as a lover. He completely succumbed to her. But his fiancée, the knight Bradamante, and her educator Melisso, who is also a sorcerer, set out to look for the missing person. Finally, they arrive on Alcinas island. Bradamante is disguised as a man and pretends to be "Riccardo". In this costume she gets into confusion: Morgana, Alcinas sister, falls in love with the alleged "Riccardo" and leaves for him her previous lover Oronte. Bradamante joins in the unplanned deception because she hopes to get through to Ruggiero so easily. Meanwhile, deeply offended, Oronte tries to get rid of the visitors and intrigues against them. Nevertheless, Bradamante's plan goes on: With the help of Melisso's counter-magic, Ruggiero finally realizes the reality behind Alcinas magical scenery and frees herself from her influence. Carefully, the three then prepare their escape, because Alcina realizes that Ruggiero eludes her. Because she really loves him, her power is dwindling with his love, the spirits of the underworld refuse her followers. As Ruggiero leaves the island, he destroys Alcinas magic power. All her former victims get their real shape back, the island turns out to be a desolate place, and Alcina becomes a lonely, old woman, barren of all magic. The knights go back to war. A victory of love?

Between 1733 and 1735 Georg Friedrich Händel composed three operas based on material from Ludovico Ariost's fantastically towering epic Orlando furioso (1516-32): Orlando, Ariodante and, most recently, Alcina. The stories about fight, love and magic were still immensely popular in Handel's time and met the then interest for exotic places and emotional exceptional situations. According to the enlightened reason, the emotional exceptional situation had to be mastered in favor of a socially acceptable mental balance, the madness is overcome, the magic is broken. The characters are in the end again realistic and return to their routine. Alcina was a particularly successful opera with 18 performances at the Covent Garden Theater - Handel once again proved his brilliance in the musical interpretation of the psyche of his characters. Prominent singers were at his disposal: the celebrated Italian soprano Anna Strada and the castrato Giovanni Carestini. In addition, the Covent Garden Theater was a new house - a magic island was exactly the venue, with which the theater could present his technique impressive. This magical island is a utopian paradise in which lustful experience is not a sin, love becomes an end in itself, but also a deceptive illusion, in which the characters have to find their way amidst many exciting, amusing and frightening adventures. As if in an attempt, they are unleashed on each other and need to find out who they are, who they love how, why, and what that love makes of them. Handel throws a wise, impartial view of life: there are no good or bad characters, Handel always understands every motivation, even the Alcinas, or maybe even the very ones. With him, this demonic Verderberin becomes a human, because love makes them suddenly vulnerable, they lose their magical energy and eternal youth. In the end she is a broken figure. In his music, Handel combines grief and joy, joy and pain in often light and melancholy irony.

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