CRITIQUE – Performed for the first time at Bastille, Antonia Bembo’s opera rediscovered by conductor Leonardo Garcia-Alarcon lacks the dramatic tension to carry the audience along. Remains a top-flight cast.
The influence and persuasiveness of chef Leonardo Garcia-Alarcon are irresistible. This time, however, he was unable to convince us that he had found the forgotten masterpiece.Hercules lover is an opera written in 1707 by the Italian composer Antonia Bembo, welcomed by the court of Louis XIV. The Argentine maestro consulted the score at the National Library of France and became passionate about this work, never performed, in which he sees an example of “tastes united”, between Italian bel canto and French lyric tragedy.
At first listen, we hear more of a composite object. Certainly, a few pages are astonishing, including a trio, a chorus and a sleep scene of great intensity. But the recitatives are (very) long and the construction drawn out, without that dramatic tension which was the genius of Bembo’s master, the great Cavalli, author of a Hercules unforgettable on the same booklet.
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This impression of length is accentuated by the production…
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