Ariodante (concertante)

Linke Wienzeile 6

1060 Wien

 

With his opera Ariodante, composer George Frideric Handel opened a new chapter in his oeuvre. The story of the Scottish princess Ginevra, loved both by the knight Ariodante and the duke Polinesso, is set in the Middle Ages, a period that had previously not figured in Handel’s work. And the composer also took a new musical approach in the opera, which received its premiere in 1735: because his costly Italian singing stars had all defected one after the other to the newly founded Opera of the Nobility, Handel shifted his emphasis away from the vocal virtuosity of his soloists and focused more on portraying his characters with greater musical depth. This is one reason why the title role of Ariodante is a superb part for singers such as Magdalena Kožená who has been fêted for many years, and far beyond the world of Baroque music, for her vocal versatility.

Concert performance in Italian with German surtitles

(Source: theater-wien.at)