L'Ercole amante

Description

The premiere of Antonia Bembo’s opera L'Ercole amante waited nearly 340 years. This delay may be due to the subject, since her teacher, Antonio Cavalli, had already composed a festival opera based on the same tragedy for the marriage of Louis XIV and Maria Theresa of Spain in 1660. Although the Sun King, who is said to have been an admirer of her compositions, took the Venetian singer under his wing after her separation from her husband and her move to France, he was already well acquainted with the tragic story of Hercules. And so he was carried away by the enchanting and moving music, rich in arias. Finally, on May 26, 2023, Jörg Halubek and Il Gusto Barocco enabled this long-neglected masterpiece to make its well-deserved breakthrough at the Liederhalle in Stuttgart.