Screening of Boston Baroque's Friday, April 22nd 2022 performance of Handel's opera, Amadigi di Guala, recorded at Boston's GBH Calderwood Studio.
Boston Baroque brings Handel’s opera to life onstage with a world-class cast of singers—countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, soprano Amanda Forsythe, mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack, and the Boston Baroque debut of soprano Camille Ortiz.
Amadigi di Gaula is a co-production between Boston Baroque and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale. This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Run time: 2 hours and 47 minutues (including a 5 minute intermission)
No RSVP necessary!
About Handel’s Amadigi di Guala:
The opera originally opened on May 25, 1715 at the King's Theatre in London in a production that was full of spectacle and magical effects. Amadigi was a triumph and helped cement Handel's reputation with the London public, which still remembered the sensation of his opera Rinaldo written some four years earlier. With these two operas alternating in the repertory, the season was a great success. The king himself attended several performances, and Handel earned enough to be able to invest £500 in the speculative frenzy of the South Sea Company (on which he made a good return on his money before the bubble burst).
Amadigi was brought back in the 1716 season and yet again in the following season, when it was once more in the repertory with Rinaldo. But then it disappeared. Handel never revived it, although he did adapt some of its music for use in later works. Aside from some performances in Germany over the next few seasons, the opera was not heard again for over 200 years.