Antonio Cesti Orontea, opera in a prologue & 3 acts Although little known today, Antonio Cesti (1623-1669) was one of the most important Italian composers of the second half of the seventeenth century, the only figure to seriously challenge the dominance of Cavalli as an opera composer. Born in Arezzo, he began his peripatetic career in Venice, Cavallis own territory. His earliest Venetian operas, of which Orontea has frequently but erroneously been cited as one, conformed to the type popular in that city during the middle of the century. Such operas consisted of a prologue followed by three acts of swiftly moving drama involving a mixture of dramatic recitative, arioso, and strophic arias. Arias were most frequently allotted to the comic characters, usually servants and other members of the lower orders. By 1652, Cesti had been appointed to the Innsbruck court of the Archduke Ferdinand Karl, and in 1666 he joined the imperial court of the music-loving Leopold I in Vienna. There, intense activity culminated in the production of his gargantuan Il pomo doro in 1668, one of the most famous events in early operatic history. Spread over the two evenings, and featuring lavish staging, ballets, and a named cast of over 40 in addition to a large chorus, Il pomo doro is said to have run for over nine hours. Orontea, first performed at the court theater in Innsbruck on February 19, 1656, makes rather more modest demands. Indeed, its high repute today is based on a plot of unusual dramatic veracity and on Cestis sympathetic treatment of human characters as opposed to gods. The libretto, revised for Innsbruck by Giovanni Filippo Apolloni from a previous Venetian setting of the opera, revolves around Orontea, Queen of Egypt, who has forsworn love. Rather inconveniently, she falls in love with Alidoro, a humble young painter, who is revealed as a prince (and therefore an eligible suitor) only at the denouement. Although the plot, which also involves a secondary romantic couple, is handled with a light touch by both librettist and composer, it does not exclude some highly affecting music for the perplexed Orontea. But there are also many moments of high humor, a genre at which Cesti excelled. These particularly involve Gelone, a drunken court servant and his sidekick, the young page Tibrino. In its fluidity and its brilliant intersections of musical style and character, Orontea must be accounted one of the most successful operas in the later seventeenth century Venetian style. Along with Cavallis Giasone, it was also one of the most popular, finding revival on many occasions.
Posted on: Sat, 29 Nov 2014 07:29:18 +0000