Aci, Galatea e Polifemo – G.F. Händel | Teatro Miela, Trieste

The performance of Aci, Galatea e Polifemo is part of the 2023 playbill of the MusicAntica Festival BAROQUE STORIES Reflections, incroci, rivisitazioni, produced by the BAROCCO EUROPEO Association of Sacile (www.barocco-europeo.org) in collaboration with Epicantica and the Wunderkammer-Trieste Festival.

Aci, Galatea e Polifemo HWV 72 by G. F. Händel is the opera chosen this year as the project for the LABORATORIO PER L’OPERA BAROCCA, in order to create a new professional opportunity for young artists. Such Serenata has been revived at the theaters of the Friuli-Venezia-Giulia region.
In the roles of the protagonists will be the young winners of the Vocal Competition held precisely for the staging of the performance. The young students of NABA – New Academy of Fine Arts in Milan – have contributed their fresh inventiveness to the realization of the set design, under the banner of a modern and appealing reading of the Baroque repertoire. Musical support will be provided by the Cenacolo Musicale orchestral ensemble, under the direction of Riccardo Doni, a well-known expert in the Baroque repertoire and attentive to the education of new generations.

Aci, Galatea e Polifemo is a Serenata for three voices for soprano, alto and bass, composed by G.F.Händel during his stay in Naples in 1708, with a libretto by Neapolitan abbot Nicola Giuvo. The work was commissioned by Donna Cecilia Capece, Princess of Squinzano, for the wedding of the Duke of Alvito to Beatrice Sanseverino and is intended to sing the praises of marital fidelity.
Stylistically, the serenade is set in the very particular expressive context of the Academy of Arcadia, founded in Rome after the death of Christina of Sweden by a circle of literati with the aim of creating a new poetic style in antithesis to the artifices of the seventeenth century and aimed rather at exalting the simple life of shepherds, in the name of an ideal of classicism and rationalism.
From a vocal point of view, the opera requires special technical and performance skills and especially tests the voice of the bass, for whom Händel wrote one of the most difficult and challenging arias in the Baroque repertoire (“Fra l’ombre e gli orrori”), the melody of which involves a vocal range of two and a half octaves and unfolds in dizzying leaps. The female voices must also demonstrate particular gifts in coloratura embroidery and expressive intensity, in a constant search for melodic beauty and ornamental refinements.

Performers

Aci – Maddalena De Biasi
Galatea – Emma Alessi Innocenti
Polifemo – Yuri Guerra
Mimes – Andrea Maddalozzo, Leandro Bertolo, Marta Lucchese

direction by Cesare Scarton
conducting Riccardo Doni
conception Donatella Busetto

Cenacolo Musicale Orchestra
Tommaso Luison – first violin
Alessandro Mele, Massimiliano Tieppo, Matteo Rozzi, Ludovica Lanaro, Elisa Franzini – violins
Alessia Turri, Michele Sguotti – violas
Giancarlo Trimboli, Cristina Vidoni – cellos
Mauro Zavagno – violone
Davide Giacuzzo, Andrea Bracco – trumpets
Gregorio Carraro – oboe/recorder
Fabiano Merlante – theorbo
Donatella Busetto – organ

Date event and location

17th November, 9:00 pm | Teatro Miela of Trieste