- Ezio (opera)
Handel operas
"Ezio" ("Aetius") is an
opera byGeorge Frideric Handel . It was his last opera based on alibretto byPietro Metastasio . Metastatio's story was partly inspired byJean Racine 's play "Britannicus". [Strohm, Reinhard, "Handel, Metastasio, Racine: The Case of "Ezio" (November 1977). "The Musical Times", 118 (1617): pp. 901-903.] The same libretto was also set byNicola Porpora for an opera of the same name, first performed four years earlier.The opera received its first performance at the
King's Theatre ,London on15 January 1732 . It received a total of only 5 performances before falling from the repertoire, in what turned out to be Handel's greatest operatic failure. It did not receive another performance in London until 1977, by the Handel Opera Society at Sadler's Wells Theatre. Winton Dean has stated that the failure of the opera related to the artistic incompatibility between the more "classical" nature of the libretto and the more "romantic" nature of the music. [Dean, Winton, "Music in London: "Ezio" (January 1978). "The Musical Times", 119 (1619): pp. 59-64.]Handel's "Ezio" is considered one of the purest examples of
opera seria with its absence of vocal ensembles.Roles
ynopsis
The protagonist is the fifth-century AD Roman general
Flavius Aetius (Ezio in Italian), returned from his victory overAttila .elected recordings
VOX 1995: Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, D'Anna Fortunato, Julianne Baird, Jennifer Lane, Nathaniel Watson, Frederick Urrey, Raymond Pellerin, Johannes Somary
E-book
[http://mdz1.bib-bvb.de/~db/0001/bsb00016925/images/ Score] of "Ezio" (ed.
Friedrich Chrysander , Leipzig 1880)Notes
References
*citation|first=Winton|last=Dean|title=Handel's Operas, 1726-1741|publisher=Boydell Press|year=2006
id=ISBN 1843832682 The second of the two volume definitive reference on the operas of HandelExternal links
Complete libretto (in Italian): http://www.haendel.it/composizioni/libretti/pdf/hwv_29.pdf
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