Alcina - Schedule, Program & Tickets

Alcina

Dramma per musica in three acts (1735) HWV 34
Libretto by an unknown author after the textbook for Riccardo Broschis L'isola di Alcina, after Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando furioso

In Italian with German and English subtitles

LEADING TEAM

Gianluca Capuano, Musical Director
Damiano Michieletto, production
Paolo Fantin, stage design
Agostino Cavalca, costumes
Alessandro Carletti, light
rocafilm, video
Christian Arseni, dramaturgy
Alois Glaßner, choir rehearsal

OCCUPATION

Cecilia Bartoli, Alcina
Philippe Jaroussky, Ruggiero
Sandrine Piau, Morgana
Kristina Hammarström, Bradamante
Christoph Strehl, Oronte
Alastair Miles, Melisso

Les Musiciens du Prince - Monaco
Bach Choir Salzburg

FOR PRODUCTION

The castrato Giovanni Carestini, for whom Handel wrote the role of Ruggiero in Alcina, is said to have been little pleased when he first saw the aria "Verdi prati": Such a lack of virtuosity for a star like him? Handel did well to contradict Carestini's demand for a new aria: Even at the first performances, the audience regularly demanded the repetition of "Verdi prati" and today the aria is one of Handel's most famous.

"Her green meadows, her lovely woods": in music of captivating simplicity Ruggiero conjures up the beauties of Alcinas Reich, the "center of pleasure" that knows no constraints. At the same time, the aria is a wistful farewell. Camouflaged as a man, Bradamante has come to recapture her "enchanted" fiancee. So Ruggiero awakens from his existence as a lover Alcinas to his old self, and the one form of love gives way to another.

Handel's opera resembles a kaleidoscope of love in all its various forms, but especially its downsides. No one experiences this more painfully than Alcina: The seductress, who for the first time feels real love, loses her magic - and her lover. Their inner development traces the music with a fine nervousness that touches Alcina in its tragic humanity.

Subject to change.

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