(Photo: Thomas Ziegler) Among the lesser-known gems presented at this year’s Halle Handel Festival, Alessandro Scarlatti’s “La Santissima Annunziata” stood out for its spiritual focus and musical refinement. Composed around 1700/1703 and revived in 1708 under the patronage of Prince Ruspoli, this early Roman oratorio—with a libretto attributed to Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni—offers a deeply meditative take on the Annunciation. Unlike {…}
(Credit: Innsbruck Festival of Early Music official website) The Innsbruck Festival of Early Music has announced its 2022 season, featuring three operas and a number of concerts. For the purpose of this article we will focus on the vocal works. Here is a full slate. Operas Carl Heinrich Graun’s opera “Silla” spotlights Bejun Mehta, Eleonora Bellocci, Valer Sabadus, Roberta Invernizzi, {…}
The final opera of this year’s Innsbruck’s Festival for Early Music was “La Semele, o sia la richiesta fatale,” written in 1726 by the relatively unknown German composer, Johann Adolf Hasse, to a libretto by Francesco Ricciardi. Technically this is not an opera as such, but a serenata, although it could certainly fall within its ambit. Deriving from the Classical and {…}
