Octavia (opera)
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| Title: | Octavia |
| Original title: | The Roman Unrest, or The Noble Octavia |
Title page of the libretto from 1705 |
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| Shape: | Singspiel |
| Original language: | German , Italian |
| Music: | Reinhard Keizer |
| Libretto : | Barthold enemy |
| Premiere: | 1705 |
| Place of premiere: | Hamburg |
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The Roman restlessness, or the noble Octavia is a baroque - Opera in three acts with prologue by Reinhard Keizer . The libretto written Barthold enemy .
action
Tiridates, the king of Armenia, was taken prisoner to Rome with his wife Ormoena. Emperor Nero falls in love with her. So that he can marry her, he orders Octavia to kill herself. However, she is prevented from doing so by Piso. Piso starts a rebellion against Nero, who leaves the city as a precaution. On Seneca's advice, Octavia disguises herself as her own ghost, appears to Nero and accuses him of murder. Moved by this, he regrets his behavior. After the rebellion was put down by Fabio, he learns that Octavia is still alive and forgives Piso for saving her. In addition to Nero and Octavia, the three other couples of the opera, Tiridates / Ormoena, Lepidus / Clelia and Fabius / Livia also come together. Tiridates gets his crown back.
layout
After Georg Friedrich Handel's Nero, the opera was the second to be shown in Hamburg in 1705 about the Roman Emperor Nero . Keizer saw his work as a response to Handel's early work and had his textbook redesigned by Feind. The plot of both works, however, is very different. Handel later took a copy of the work to England and used many motifs from it in his own works.
Octavia was the first enemy libretto. This started a series of eight collaborative projects with Keizer. The opera is known for its elaborate instrumentation. A French horn is used here for the first time in an opera. The aria of Octavia Geloso sospetto , accompanied by five bassoons , is the opera's most famous piece. It was recorded several times separately on phonograms, so in 2012 by Joyce DiDonato .
The opera is mainly written in German, but also contains some arias in Italian.
Performance history
The world premiere took place on August 5, 1705 at the Opera am Gänsemarkt in Hamburg.
More recently it was performed again in the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe as part of the 27th Handel Festival in 2004. Andreas Spering was the musical director and Ulrich Peters (director) directed . The cast was: Claudia Barainsky (Octavia), Stephan Genz (Nero), Patrick Henckens (Fabius), Klaus Schneider (Piso), Edward Gauntt (Lepidus), Christof Fischesser (Seneca), Hans-Jörg Weinschenk (Davus), Klemens Geyrhofer (Tiridates), Ina Schlingensiepen (Ormoena), Susanne Cornelius (Livia) and Soojin Moon (Clelia).
In 2017 the opera was given at the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music . The baroque ensemble: Jung played under the direction of Jörg Halubek . It was directed by François de Carpentries . The set and costumes were from Karine van Hercke. Suzanne Jerosme (Claudia Octavia), Morgan Pearse (Nero), Akinubo Ono (Fabius), Camilo Delgado Diaz (Piso), Jung Kwon Jang (Lepidus), Paolo Marchini (Seneca), Roberto Jachini Virgili (Davus), Erik Jurenas sang (Tiridates), Federica Di Trapani (Ormoena), Yuval Oren (Livia) and Robyn Allegra Parton (Clelia).
literature
- Gesine Manuwald: Nero in Opera. Librettos as Transformations of Ancient Sources. (= Transformations of Antiquity. 24). Berlin / Boston 2013, ISBN 978-3-11-031713-8 , p. 159 ff. (Preview on Google Books)
Web links
- Score by Octavia (supplement volume of the Handel edition, edited by Friedrich Chrysander and Max Seiffert, Leipzig 1902)
- Libretto from 1705 as a digitized version in the directory of 18th century prints published in German-speaking countries in the German Digital Library
Individual evidence
- ↑ John H. Roberts: Octavia. In: Grove Music Online (English; subscription required).
- ↑ Max Seiffert: Foreword to the score edition in the supplement volume of the Handel edition, ed. v. Friedrich Chrysander u. Max Seiffert, Leipzig 1902.
- ↑ Ernst Euting: On the history of wind instruments in the 16th and 17th centuries. Let Me Print, 2012, ISBN 978-5-88015-893-5 , p. 37. (Original edition 1899 on Google Books)
- ↑ a b Report on the performance at the Handel Festival in 2004 in Online Musik Magazin, accessed on July 29, 2014.
- ^ Review of the CD Drama Queens by Joyce DiDonato on gramophone.co.uk, accessed on July 29, 2014.
- ^ Review of the Karlsruhe performance at operabaroque (French), accessed on July 29, 2014.
- ↑ Collection of press comments on the website of the director Ulrich Peters , accessed on July 29, 2014.
- ↑ Thomas Molke: Nero as a game master. Review of the performance in Innsbruck 2017 , accessed on December 11, 2017.