Il c aro Sassone ('The dear Saxon', as the composer was nicknamed) filled it with fantasy and fine melodies to produce a highly polished work that ranks alongside Orlando and Ariodante. The wonderful score mixes penetrating recitatives with varied accompaniment, musical arias where one senses the subtle feminine touch, chorus interventions (canzonetta and madrigals) to represent court ladies, demons, enchanted trees, freed knights and sinfonias, colorful ritornelli and instrument interludes.This practically unknown opera marks in fact an important stage in Italian music of the first half of the 17th century: the Salon d’Hercule will be an ideal setting for its revival by the inspired Paul Van Nevel. The plot of Alcina, one Handel's most popular and inspired operas, came from the epic poem Orlando furioso by Ludovico Ariosto. The work so impressed the Polish Prince that it was also performed in Poland. The court composer Francesca Caccini, the first opera composer in history, wrote the music. Ferdinando Saracinelli, superintendent of the Medici court is the author of the libretto of this “Balletto” (as it is called on the first page of the edition). Alcina rules over an enchanted island, its trees, rocks and animals all. Madrigal Soloists, Alexandre Kravets, Symphony Orchestra of la Monnaie. Seductive enchantress Alcina can conjure anything she wants anything, except love. The crowning event of his visit is a performance of the “commedia in musica”: La Liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina, an opera commissioned for this occasion by the grand-duchess of Tuscany, Maria Maddalena of Austria, widow of Cosimo da Medici (1590-1621). one of the most famous works by Georg Friedrich Handel, the opera Alcina.
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