We’re turning to La Scala for another opera on this week’s Sunday Opera (7/13 3:00 p.m.), and this one is a forgotten one by a popular seventeenth century composer named Antonio Cesti. It’s the 1656 work entitled L’ORONTEA which features the trials of the title character who wants to marry for true love and not duty.
As is usual in most Baroque operas, there is a prologue where Love, who is perpetually cranky, has an argument. This time it’s with Philosophy regarding who has more power over mankind.
Orontea (Stephanie d’Oustrac) is an Egyptian princess who must marry. Her chief advisor Creonte (Mirco Palazzi) insists she marries for the good of the country. However, Orontea has fallen in love with Alidoro (Carlo Vistoli), a young artist who is a political refugee from Phoenicia. Alidoro is travelling with his presumed mother, Aristea (Marianna Pizzolato).
Enter Giacinta (Maria Nazirova) who is disguised as a young man named “Ismero.” When she explains that she had been sent to ambush Alidoro by the Queen of Phoenicia, Orontea must stop herself from killing Giacinta/Ismero. However, Giacinta/Ismero convinces her that she has repented, and in doing so, Aristea falls in love with “him.”
Things do work out for a happy ending when it is revealed that Alidoro is actually the heir to the King of Phoenicia as evidenced by the royal medallion he carries. Aristea is actually the wife of one of the pirates that had abducted Alindoro in his infancy and has raised him as her son. In actuality, he is Floridano and, as a royal, can marry Orontea.
In this performance we’ll hear the La Scala Orchestra conducted by Giovanni Antonini.
Following the opera, more musica of Cesti has been programmed and includes another forgotten work which was written around 1667 for Holy Week celebrations. It’s an interesting treatment surrounding the death of Christ entitled Natura et qutuor elementa dolentia ad Sepulchrum Christi (Nature and the Four Elements Mourn at the Sepulchre of Christ) where Mother Nature and her four “daughters” (earth, air, water, fire) come together to lament the death of Christ. The performers include Alexander Schneider as Mother Nature, Johannes Gaubitz as earth, Joowon Chung as water, Magdalene Harer as air, and Matthias Lutze as fire. They’re joined by the Ensemble Polyharmonique Teatro del Mondo directed by Andres Kuppers.
