Hans Haym News
German conductor who championed the works of Frederick Delius
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2024-04-21
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2023-09-17 09:22:00
Polite pastoral: Handel's Tolomeo from Baroque Encounter
[…] Glenn Kesby as Tolomeo, Carmen Lasok as Seleuce, Lucy Thomas as Elisa, John Lofthouse as Araspe and Alexander Hutton as Alessandro.Tolomeo is a rather strange work, combining elements of the pastoral and dynastic types of opera seria - the hero and heroine - Tolomeo (Glenn Kesby) and his wife Seleuce (Carmen Lasok) - are both in disguise (separately) as shepherds on Cyprus. What little plot concerns their attempts to find each other with the librettist (Nicola Haym, based on the libretto from Carlo Sigismondo Capece's Tolomeo et Alessandro) inserting various devices to delay the inevitable conclusion. But there is dynastic struggle too, Tolomeo has been banished by his scheming mother, Cleopatra, who has usurped his throne and also on the island is Tolomeo's brother Alessandro (Alexander Hutton), whilst the King of Cyprus, Araspe (John Lofthouse) and his sister Elisa (Lucy Thomas) have designs on Tolomeo and Seleuce themselves. It can work, John […]
2023-09-10 16:29:00
Extravagantly theatrical: Handel's Flavio revived by Bayreuth Baroque in the splendour of the 18th-century theatre
[…] Cencic - Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival (Photo: Falk von Traubenberg)Handel's taste in opera was always more varied than that of his patrons and he seems to have had a fondness for that Venetian-style opera mixing comedy and tragedy. During his period at the Royal Academy of Music in the 1720s he tried and failed to persuade his backers to produce Partenope (which he would finally do when he became his own master). His librettist, Nicola Haym seems to have played cello in performances of Flavio in Rome in the 1690s and this may be the origin of Handel's idea to stage it. Flavio is something of a surprise alongside the heroic tragedies of the 1720s. Mixing comedy, pathos and sentimentality with satire and real tragedy, it is a pacey, short piece that pokes fun at opera seria itself. This causes problems for modern directors, how to poke fun at an […]
2021-09-27 06:47:57
From Rinaldo to Amadigi di Gaula: a look at Handel's highly experimental early London period
[…] a French opera, but we do know that he had scores of French operas in his library. And his approach to the incorporation of dance into his operas seems to owe something to the French tradition. Both Teseo and Amadigi di Gaula had some sort of dance content, though as the complete autograph scores do not survive were are somewhat frustrated in this matter. Teseo seems to have been an attempt to marry French and Italian styles. Nicola Haym's libretto is based on that which Philippe Quinault's wrote for Lully's Thésée, which premiered in 1675. Teseo is Handel's only opera to have five acts, in the French fashion, and the placement of the arias owes something to the French original. Whereas Italian opera was focused on the large-scale da capo exit aria (sung just before the character left the stage), French opera was more flexible with shorter arias dotted around the work. In […]
2021-05-19 08:28:08
Making goodness interesting: a new recording of Handel's Rodelinda from the English Concert with Lucy Crowe, Iestyn Davies and Joshua Ellicott
Handel Rodelinda; Lucy Crowe, Iestyn Davies, Joshua Ellicott, Jess Dandy, Brandon Cedel, Tim Mead, The English Concert, Harry Bicket; LINN Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 18 May 2021 Star rating: 4.5 (★★★½) The English Concert's new recording belies any lockdown restrictions to give us a full account of the opera, finely sung and vividly characterisedHandel's 1725 opera Rodelinda is not only one of his acknowledged masterpieces but also an opera where Handel's approach to the opera seria form created an opera that resonates with contemporary audiences in a way that many others do not. The opera was based on pre-existing sources and, as with his other operas written for London audiences, Handel and his librettist, Nicola Haym, heavily trimmed the source material; Londoners were not keen on vast quantities of explanatory recitative (which usually meant following the translation in the printed libretto) and some of Handel's later operas get […]
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