Pietro Metastasio

Every year, Bayreuth Baroque stages a new production directed by Max Emanuel Cencic, the artistic director and creative head of the festival. This year, he is staging the love drama Alessandro nell'Indie by Leonardo Vinci based on a libretto by Pietro Metastasio. Alessandro nell'Indie was published in Rome in 1730, where women were barred from performing for religious reasons. The Bayreuth production takes up this fact with an all-male cast featuring the Brazilian soprano Bruno de Sá and the countertenors Franco Fagioli and Jake Arditti in the leading roles. The orchestra is the Polish {OH!} Orkiestra Historyczna under the direction of Martyna Pastuszka. The Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival stages music theater in the authentic ambience of the Margravial Opera House in Bayreuth.

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"L'impresario delle Canarie" is a satirical opera intermezzo libretto attributed to Pietro Metastasio, written in 1724 to be performed between the acts of his opera seria "Didone abbandonata". Dorina, an opera singer, waits impatiently for the visit of a foreign impresario, Nibbio.

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The 1791 La Clemenza di Tito (or 'The Clemency of Titus') marked Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's final opera seria. With a libretto by Metastasio (edited slightly by Caterino Mazzolà), the work dramatizes the palace intrigues surrounding emperor Titus's attempts to coronate a new bride and the envious Vitellia's attempts to have Titus assassinated (with the help of Titus's friend Sextus) following the deposition of Vitellia's emperor father. Stage director Martin Kušej mounted Tito in August 2003, at the Felsenreitschule in Salzburg; a film of that live performance now appears in this home video release. The cast includes Michael Schade as Titus, Vesselina Kasarova as Sextus and Dorothea Roschmann as Vitellia. The Wiener Staatsopernchor, under the baton of Nikolaus Harnoncourt, provides musical accompaniment; Jens Kilian designed the sets.

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This is an effective staging, though the set looks medieval and the costumes are modern. It’s well paced, well played, well sung. Jonas Kaufmann is an ideal Tito. His voice is not only beautiful and flexible, it’s also ample, retaining warmth and sweetness when he sings out. The character of Tito is too good to be true, but Kaufmann makes him intense, noble, and beliveable. Vesselina Kasarova is riviting as Sesto. Her voice is gorgeous and multi-colored, her technique exquisite, her immersion in the role complete.

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