Amadigi Di Gaula HWV 11 (new production)
Official Opening of the Handel Festival 2024
Opera by G. F. Handel
Musical director: Dani Espasa
Stage director: Louisa Proske
Set design: Kaspar Glarner
Soloists: Rafał Tomkiewicz (Amadigi), Franziska Krötenheerdt (Melissa),
Serafina Starke (Oriana), Yulia Sokolik (Dardano), N.N. (Orgando) // Handel Festival Orchestra Halle
Organised by: Bühnen Halle
In the original Italian with German supertitles // A Halle Opera production as part of the Handel Festival
85, 75, 60, 45, 35 €
The fifth opera written in Handel’s new home of London, Amadigi di Gaula, is an exuberantly inventive work with brilliant musical ideas full of youth, love and enchantment. The sorceress Melissa loves the knight Amadigi. But he loves Oriana, who in turn is coveted by Amadigi’s friend and rival Dardano. The four figures stumble around in a labyrinth of deceptive images and feelings and run the risk of losing not only their way, but above all themselves. Hurt and filled with hate, Melissa uses all her magical powers to destroy the inclination of Amadigi and Oriana for one another. She plots, lies, begs, flatters and threatens death and torture. But love is victorious in the end. In collaboration with the Halle Opera ballet corps, Louisa Proske stages the opera as a hallucinatory odyssey through an enigmatic realm of images in Kaspar Glarner’s imaginative scenic design.