Tag Archives: sardelli

Il Bajazet

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Vivaldi’s pasticcio Il Bajazet was composed for carnival season 1635.  It sets an earlier libretto by Agostino Piovene concerning the defeat and capture of the Ottoman sultan Bajazet (Bayezid I) by the Tartar leader Tamerlano (Timur) in 1403.  Tamerlano is contracted to marry the Princess of Trebizond, Irene, but falls for Bajazet’s daughter Asteria to the consternation of his Greek ally Andronico who is in love with Asteria.  Various plot twists and turns happen before Bajazet poisons himself, Tamerlano marries Irene after all and Asteria returns to Andronico.  Andronico also has a sidekick Idaspe.

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Acis et Galatée

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Acis et Galatée was Lully’s last completed opera.  Like pretty much all of his work it displays in abundance the qualities that Voltaire claimed made Racine and Corneille superior to Shakespeare.  How you feel about that will probably affect how you feel about Acis et Galatée, which is an elegant and classically correct retelling of Ovid’s tale of a nymph who loves a shepherd and the Cyclops who spoils the fun.  It has an allegorical prologue too, which celebrates the glories of Louis XIV (natch).  It also has lots of dance numbers.

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A baroque rarity

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Cavalli’s Il Giasone isn’t a work one sees performed often.  It’s a peculiar beast.  It’s about Jason and Medea and the Golden Fleece but has few of the elements of the version of the story that everone knows and everybody from Charpentier to Reimann has made into an opera.  In Cavalli’s version Giasone has got Isifile, a princess of Lemnos, pregnant with twins and then gone off after the Golden Fleece.  In Colchis he spends his time in bed with a mysterious local beauty, much to the disgust of Ercole who thinks he’s gone soft.  Eventually Giasone works out that his squeeze is Medea and with her help defeats some monsters and grabs the fleece.

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