Opéra Royal - Haendel : Acis et Galatée

Cultural

When the young Handel arrived in Rome in 1707, he dazzled the city's elite with his exceptional talent.

He became the ‘fashionable’ composer and his fame grew so fast that he was called to Naples, where he premiered his pastoral Aci, Galatea e Polifemo in July 1708 at the Court Theatre in the Ducal Palace of Piedimonte Matese for a sumptuous wedding.

Born as a small opera for private performance, and adored by its contemporaries, Handel's Acis and Galatea enjoyed a second life as it was reworked and re-orchestrated several times. Handel's masterpiece, it is a pastoral that achieves a brilliant synthesis of English and Italian styles, with da capo arias and a major contribution from the choruses. The argument comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses, which had already inspired Lully to write an opera (1686), and boldly blends comedy and tragedy.

Little by little, the transparent lightness of the Arcadian landscapes, where the shepherds Acis and Galatea blossom, is replaced by darker, more disturbing atmospheres: the young Acis is savagely killed by the Cyclops Polyphemus, jealous of his love for Galatea. Galatea, in mourning, nevertheless abandons herself to peace by turning the corpse of her beloved into a spring that flows through the grove.

Leonardo García-Alarcón leads his Cappella Mediterranea from the organ in this music that Mozart himself admired, to the point of making a German version.