UoT Opera’s annual Student Composer Collective production was presented on Sunday afternoon at CanStage Berkeley Street. This year Michael Patrick Albano’s libretto took three stories from antiquity and presented each twice; essentially in the original and then with a modern twist. The three stories were Antigone, Medea and Helen and five composers were involved in creating the music. Sandra Horst conducted with a seven piece ensemble on stage to one side.
Alessandro Scarlatti wrote at least sixty operas but only one of the extant ones is a comedy; Il Trionfo dell’Onore which premiered in Naples in 1718. Cunningly Scarlatti insisted on an Italian, rather than Neapolitan, libretto so it soon got productions further north. It’s a piece of its time. It had only just become allowable to produce operas that weren’t based on classical myth or history. Even Cavalli’s most tongue in cheek works like Il Giasone had roots in the classics! But here we have an opera whose characters are quite ordinary though clearly based on the typical types of the commedia dell’arte.
operaramblings 