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ACI, GALATEA E POLIFEMO Lugo 2018 Alicia Amo, Marta Fumagalli, Mirco Palazzi
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Aci, Galatea e Polifemo
- Composer: Handel George Frideric aka Händel Georg Friedrich
- Libretto: Nicola Giuvo
- Venue & Opera Company: Teatro Rossini, Lugo, Italy
- Recorded: September 28, 2018
- Type: Concert Live
- Singers: Alicia Amo, Marta Fumagalli, Mirco Palazzi
- Conductor: Vanni Moretto
- Orchestra: Atalanta Fugiens
- Stage Director:
- Costume Designer:
Information about the Recording
- Published by: Vanni Moretto
- Date Published: 2018
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: nosubs
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
Like today’s young people, the Saxon Georg Friedrich Händel, a composer of great promise, undertook a long formative journey in Italy at the age of twenty: he mainly visited Florence, Venice and Rome. After his first great successes (often greeted with “long live the Sassone”), he stayed for a few months in Naples from May to July 1708, during which he had the opportunity to frequent a rich benefactress of the arts, Donna Aurora di Sanseverino, Duchess of Laurenzano, called “Donna Laura” in Mattheson’s Handel biography. At her request, at the age of twenty-three, Händel composed the serenade Aci, Galatea e Polifemo to a text by the Neapolitan poet Nicola Giuvo, who at that time was in the service of Donna Laura as secretary. It was performed with great success on 19 July 1708 at the Court Theatre in Naples, probably during the celebrations for the wedding of the Duchess’s niece, Beatrice Tocco, to Tolomeo Saverio Gallo, Duke of Alvito. Neither an opera nor an oratorio, the “serenade” was a very popular genre at the time in Italy, to be performed in costume and without scenery, in gardens or private theatres, with few characters and edifying subjects taken from the epic. In this case from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which tells the story of the monster Polyphemus who lusts after the nymph Galatea who, however, loves Acis. Rejected, Polyphemus kills Acis, overwhelming him with a rolling stone. Galatea, desperate, asks for the intervention of her father Neptune who immediately transforms Acis into a river towards the sea