Oreste - Schedule, Program & Tickets
Oreste
Opera pasticcio in three acts (1734)
Music by Georg Friedrich Händel
Libretto by Giovanni Gualberto Barlocci
Concert performance in Italian
Iphigenia narrowly avoided the sacrifice by her own father Agamemnon on Aulis. For this, her mother Klytämnestra later stabbed Agamemnon. Iphigenie's brother Orest avenged the father and killed the mother. The curse of the Tantalids hovers over Iphigenia's fate: As long as the wicked ancestor Tantalos still has descendants, each of them should kill another family member. At the beginning of the 1734 season, Handel was once again forced to found a new opera company in London. His lease at the Haymarket Theater had expired and the theater was to be used by his competition, the Opera of the Nobility, which had also hired all the singers popular in London. Handel moved to the new Covent Garden Theater and put the Pasticcio Oreste together, under great time pressure, from parts of his own works, which he had composed over the course of 27 years. The plot follows a libretto by Giovanni Gualberto Barlocci based on Euripides ’drama Iphigenie with the Taurians, but does not make Iphigenie, like later Gluck and Goethe, but her brother the title character. The Handel Pasticcio shows clear deviations from the ancient myth and the later Goethe version due to the pragmatism of the opera company. In Oreste, Iphigenia also serves as a priest on Tauris, but her brother Oreste arrives alone. His friend Pylades follows Oreste's wife Hermione, who is not yet included in Euripides and was designed as a role for Handel's prima donna Anna Maria Strada. In the presence of King George II, Oreste was premiered on December 18, 1734 in the Covent Garden Theater, the predecessor of today's Royal Opera House, "with great applause", but only managed two further follow-up performances. Although Handel viewed the Oreste as an independent, full-fledged drama and pasticcio practice was widespread in the Baroque period, the work was completely forgotten for two and a half centuries. It wasn't until 1988 that it was rediscovered at the Handel Festival in Halle, and in 1991 it was included in the Halle Handel Edition, the historical-critical overall edition of Handel's works.
Subject to changes.
Music by Georg Friedrich Händel
Libretto by Giovanni Gualberto Barlocci
Concert performance in Italian
Iphigenia narrowly avoided the sacrifice by her own father Agamemnon on Aulis. For this, her mother Klytämnestra later stabbed Agamemnon. Iphigenie's brother Orest avenged the father and killed the mother. The curse of the Tantalids hovers over Iphigenia's fate: As long as the wicked ancestor Tantalos still has descendants, each of them should kill another family member. At the beginning of the 1734 season, Handel was once again forced to found a new opera company in London. His lease at the Haymarket Theater had expired and the theater was to be used by his competition, the Opera of the Nobility, which had also hired all the singers popular in London. Handel moved to the new Covent Garden Theater and put the Pasticcio Oreste together, under great time pressure, from parts of his own works, which he had composed over the course of 27 years. The plot follows a libretto by Giovanni Gualberto Barlocci based on Euripides ’drama Iphigenie with the Taurians, but does not make Iphigenie, like later Gluck and Goethe, but her brother the title character. The Handel Pasticcio shows clear deviations from the ancient myth and the later Goethe version due to the pragmatism of the opera company. In Oreste, Iphigenia also serves as a priest on Tauris, but her brother Oreste arrives alone. His friend Pylades follows Oreste's wife Hermione, who is not yet included in Euripides and was designed as a role for Handel's prima donna Anna Maria Strada. In the presence of King George II, Oreste was premiered on December 18, 1734 in the Covent Garden Theater, the predecessor of today's Royal Opera House, "with great applause", but only managed two further follow-up performances. Although Handel viewed the Oreste as an independent, full-fledged drama and pasticcio practice was widespread in the Baroque period, the work was completely forgotten for two and a half centuries. It wasn't until 1988 that it was rediscovered at the Handel Festival in Halle, and in 1991 it was included in the Halle Handel Edition, the historical-critical overall edition of Handel's works.
Subject to changes.
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