Asteria Medievale News
medieval music ensemble
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2024-03-28
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2022-06-13 09:07:49
Grange festival, HampshireTwo superb countertenors enact the love-hate relationship between the emperor and his rival in Daniel Slater’s superbly acted and sung production An examination of the psychology of power, Tamerlano, first performed in 1724, is one of Handel’s greatest operas, and arguably his darkest. We know its title character better in English as Tamburlaine the Great, the central Asian warlord and emperor, whose life and career were famously dramatised by Christopher Marlowe. Here, as in the play, Tamerlano has overcome the Ottoman empire, but in place of Marlowe’s violent militarist, Handel gives us an unnerving portrait of a sadistic psychopath, playing lethal mind games with his unwanted fiancee, Irene, and also with the deposed Ottoman emperor, Bajazet; the latter’s daughter, Asteria; and Andronico, Asteria’s lover and one of Tamerlano’s unwilling political allies. Slowly and insidiously accumulating tension, it is a difficult work to get right in the theatre, though […]
2022-06-13 08:41:20
Baroque mind games: Handel's Tamerlano at The Grange Festival
Handel:Tamerlano - The Grange Festival (Photo Simon Anand) Handel: Tamerlano; Raffaele Pe, Paul Nilon, Sophie Bevan, Patrick Terry, Angharad Lyddon, director: Daniel Slater, conductor: Robert Howarth, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra; The Grange FestivalReviewed 10 June 2022 (★★★★★) Strong performances and an intelligently modern-dress staging make Handel's darkest operatic drama a gripping evening Tamerlano is regarded as one of Handel's greatest operas yet productions of it in the UK have been few and far between in recent years, but that has all changed. Cambridge Handel Opera, the Grange Festival and English Touring Opera are all addressing the work, whilst Irish National Opera looked at Vivaldi's take on the same story. Opera seria is such that each production can be somewhat different, taking a different route to addressing the fundamental issues at stake in the opera. Whilst Tamerlano does contain two of the greatest dramatic scenes that Handel wrote in his Italian operas, the opera's […]
2022-04-12 07:08:30
Historical stagecraft & modern sensibilities: a powerful Tamerlano from Cambridge Handel Opera Company
Handel: Tamerlano - James Laing, Leila Zanette, Christopher Turner, Caroline Taylor - Cambridge Handel Opera Company (Photo: Jean-Luc Benazet) Handel: Tamerlano - James Laing, Christopher Turner, Thalie Knights, Caroline Taylor, Leila Zanette, director: Dionysios Kyropoulos, conductor Julian Perkins; Cambridge Handel Opera Company at The Leys9 April 2022 (★★★★½) Cambridge Handel Opera Company (CHOC) debuted in 2018 with Handel's Rodelinda (but the company inherited the mantle of Cambridge Handel Opera Group which ran from 1985 to 2013). CHOC's follow up production was intended to be Handel's Tamerlano in 2020, but events got in the way and the production finally debuted last week at the Great Hall, The Leys, Cambridge (seen 9 April 2022). The opera was directed by Dionysios Kyropoulos, conducted by Julian Perkins (CHOC's artistic director) and designed by Rachel Szmukler. James Laing was Tamerlano and Christopher Turner was Bajazet with Caroline Taylor as Asteria, Thalie Knights as Andronico, Leila […]
2022-02-14 07:43:59
Vivaldi: Bajazet - Gianluca Margheri - Irish National Opera (Photo Kip Carroll) Vivaldi Bajazet; Gianluca Margheri, Eric Jurenas, James Laing, Niamh O'Sullivan, Claire Booth, Aoife Miskelly, dir: Adele Thomas, Irish Baroque Orchestra, cond: Peter Whelan; Irish National Opera at the Royal Opera House Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 12 February 2022 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★) A vividly theatrical evening as the cast of Irish National Opera's production combine brilliant virtuoso singing with highly theatrical performancesVivaldi's Bajazet (also known as Il Tamerlano) was premiered at the end of his operatic career, in 1735 in Verona. It is in fact a pasticcio, Vivaldi combining elements from his back catalogue and arias from other composers to create a new work, a sort of greatest hits piece where the arias from other composers were ones principally associated with two of the greatest singers of the day, the soprano castrato Farinelli […]
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