Bampton Classical Opera 2024 Season
Giuseppe Gazzaniga, L’isola d’Alcina – Alcina’s Island (1772)
Performances:
The Deanery Backyard, Bampton, Oxfordshire – Friday 19, Saturday 20 July
Westonbirt College, Gloucestershire – Monday 26 August
The Barn at Outdated Walland, Wadhurst, Sussex – Saturday 31 August
St John’s Smith Sq., London – Friday 13 September
For its 2024 season Bampton Classical Opera is delighted to current Giuseppe Gazzaniga’s L’isola d’Alcina, with a libretto by Giovanni Bertati. Will probably be sung in a brand new English translation by Gilly French as ‘Alcina’s Island’. Performances shall be performed by Thomas Blunt and directed by Jeremy Grey.
L’isola d’Alcina is a Dramma giocoso in 3 acts, loosely based mostly on the character of the sorceress Alcina from Ariosto’s epic Orlando furioso – an Englishman, Frenchman, Spaniard, Italian and German get washed up on Alcina’s magical island the place the seductive and exquisite sorceress (though 800 years outdated) has a behavior of discarding her lovers and turning them into rocks or animals.
Gazzaniga (1743-1818), wrote not less than 50 operas, of which L’isola d’Alcina was one of the vital profitable. His most well-known was Don Giovanni, 1787 (staged by Bampton in 1997 and 2004, and carried out on the Royal School of Music in November 2023). The primary efficiency of L’isola d’Alcina was at Teatro San Moisè, Venice in 1772, and it was broadly seen in Europe till 1785. There have been performances on the King’s Theatre, Haymarket, London in 1776 and 1777 – however most likely not in England since then.
On this effervescent and fast-moving opera set on a tropical desert island paradise, Bertati and Gazzaniga pit the (maybe restricted) wits of a motley assortment of Europeans in opposition to the harmful amorous snares of the insatiable Alcina. Luckily the Europeans are assisted by two charming however disloyal resident nymphs, with whom they ultimately escape from the island. A lot enjoyable is product of the linguistic confusions of the shipwrecked group, in distinction to the fervour and discontent of the ageless however maybe weary sorceress. The music is fluent, cheerful and swish, propelling the story ahead with stressed power.
Additional particulars of Bampton Classical Opera’s manufacturing together with casting shall be introduced sooner or later. Reserving for tickets will open on 15 January 2024.
Efficiency (as with Salieri’s On the Venice Honest in 2023) in collaboration with Dr Rüdiger Thomsen-Fürst, of Forschungszentrum Hof | Musik | Stadt, Schwetzingen, Germany.
Recorded on CD by L’arte del mondo, cond. Werner Ehrhardt (Deutsche harmonia mundi) 2023 staged at Schwetzingen Pageant, 2022.
Bampton Classical Opera phases productions in rural venues in Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire in addition to repeatedly in London at St John’s Smith Sq.. Different important venues and festivals have included Wigmore Corridor and Purcell Room, Buxton Pageant, Cheltenham Pageant and Theatre Royal, Tub. Eschewing acquainted repertoire, Bampton concentrates as an alternative on rarities from the late eighteenth century, sung in energetic new English translations, and has given many enterprising performances of forgotten operas. Amongst these have been UK premieres of Bertoni Orfeo, Marcos Portugal The Marriage of Figaro, Paer Leonora, Benda Romeo and Juliet, Gluck Il Parnaso confuso, Philemon and Baucis and Salieri Falstaff and La fiera di Venezia.
Bampton Classical Opera was a finalist within the Rediscovered Opera class of the 2020 Worldwide Opera Awards for Stephen Storace Gli sposi malcontenti (Bride and Gloom), and its latest manufacturing of Salieri La fiera di Venezia (On the Venice Honest) was shortlisted for the 2023 Awards.
For extra about Bampton Opera click on right here.
