Autumn Trilogy: L’invisibil fa vedere Amore
Messiah
by Georg Friedrich Händel
oratorio in three parts for soloists, choir, and orchestra to text by Charles Jennens
Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini
conductor Ottavio Dantone
Coro della Cattedrale di Siena “Guido Chigi Saracini”
choirmaster Lorenzo Donati
Three different operas on the same stage on successive days, an ingenious and adaptable stage mechanism, an experienced technical crew ready to meet any challenge: this is the unmistakable trademark of the Autumn Trilogy, an essential part of the Festival for years now, always focusing on different periods and styles of opera. Once again, walking the tightrope stretched across the centuries, we pay homage to one of the undisputed ‘fathers’ of our music, an incomparable composer and dramatic genius, a contemporary of Bach, equally great and ‘modern’, but committed to other horizons and, above all, to the theatre. From his extraordinary catalogue, we have selected the three parts of our ‘triptych’, created through the collaboration of Pizzi’s exquisite eye and Dantone’s undoubted talent, which will evoke the ideal and timeless world of the chivalric epic.
«For what we see Love re-creates anew,/ And makes all that we dream of visible»: love and madness, courage and imagination, a tangle of passions that animate the immortal heroes of Ariosto’s famous poem Orlando Furioso, the source of Handel’s operas. Heroes portrayed in the most fragile aspect of their human nature, vulnerable to the power of love that clouds their judgement and the power of magic that confuses their intentions. Heroes who, in their madness, manage to rise above the material weight of life and transcend reality to the point of understanding it in its essence: they imagine that ideal world, which may be unattainable, but which is the driving force behind all progress. How relevant this is, almost three centuries after Orlando and Alcina were written! The same relevance of the Messiah, which, in its wonderful blend of all European styles, continues to give us a sense of hope today.
