Bajazet: The Broken Hero

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Handel’s Tamerlano focuses not on any glittering hero, but on a broken man. Bajazet, the defeated sultan from whom power and pride are slipping away, becomes the epitome of the tragic man – a figure whose dignity oscillates between humiliation, anger and existential despair. Handel portrays him with a psychological accuracy of which the audiences of his period understood little. The opera flopped. With the help of his star tenor and highly esteemed colleague Francesco Borosini, he drew up a heart-rending portrait of a man that exploded the image of the ideal Baroque hero: we witness the fate of a man whose inner conflict and the hopelessness of his situation are mirrored in music of intense emotion. Tenor Sam Boden lends voice and form to this broken ruler. He is accompanied by Kateryna Kasper in the role of Bajazet’s daughter Asteria, who is torn between love and loyalty. Together with La Stagione Frankfurt conducted by Michael Schneider, they interweave arias from Handel’s Tamerlano with music by Vivaldi and Gasparini, who interpreted the same material in their own fashion. A programme all about the male figure at a moment of failure – and the raw drama of Baroque opera.