The dialogue between the Pier Luigi Pizzi‘s direction and Accademia Bizantina and Ottavio Dantone for the Autumn Trilogy is renewed: if in 2024 they tackled Monteverdi and Purcell, this year Händel takes centre stage with two new productions of Orlando (12, 14 November) and Alcina (13, 15 November), to which is added the performance of Messiah (Sunday 16), in this case with Dantone conducting the Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini and the Coro della Cattedrale di Siena “Guido Chigi Saracini” prepared by Lorenzo Donati. With this triptych entitled L’invisibil fa vedere Amore, the Alighieri Theatre continues its journey of discovery and rediscovery of the opera repertoire of the 17th and early 18th centuries – the so-called ‘baroque’ – with excellent performers and important directors.
Part of that operatic tradition that found inspiration in the characters of chivalric cycles and includes titles by Vivaldi and Lully, Orlando (1733) and Alcina (1735) revolve around characters from Orlando furioso, a masterpiece of Renaissance epic and a strikingly modern text. In Ariosto’s poem, the famous paladin of the Carolingian cycle loses his mind when his love for the princess Angelica is unrequited. The ambiguity between power and fragility is also repeated in the character of the sorceress Alcina, a deceitful seductress who, like Circe in the Odyssey, can transform men into animals or plants. If these works exalt the passions and their influence on our actions, the Messiah (1741), the summit of Händel’s oratorio production, celebrates the centrality of the figure of Christ who embodied and redeemed those passions and humanity.