Arianna in Creta
Arianna in Creta ("Ariadne in Crete", HWV 32) is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel.
The Italian-language libretto was adapted by Francis Colman from Pietro Pariati's Arianna e Teseo, a text previously set by Nicola Porpora in 1727 and Leonardo Leo in 1729.
[2] Among other performances, Arianna in Creta was staged by the London Handel Festival in 2014[3] and performed in concert by the Handel Festival, Halle in 2018[4] Long before the action of the opera, King Minos of Crete fought a war with King Aegeus of Athens, who had killed Minos' baby son and carried away his baby daughter.
Among the Athenian maidens sent to be sacrificed is Carilda, whose beauty is noticed by the Cretan champion Tauride; he instantly falls in love with her.
Inside the palace, a double betrothal is announced – the hero Teseo will marry his Arianna and Alceste has now been accepted by Carilda.
A tremendous success, Rinaldo created a craze in London for Italian opera seria, a form focused overwhelmingly on solo arias for the star virtuoso singers.
[6][7] The Royal Academy of Music collapsed at the end of the 1728–29 season, partly due to the huge fees paid to the star singers.
As a replacement for and rival to Senesino, Handel engaged an equally renowned castrato for the role of Teseo, Giovanni Carestini, of whom 18th century musicologist Charles Burney wrote:“His voice was at first a powerful and clear soprano, which afterwards changed into the fullest, finest, and deepest counter-tenor that has perhaps ever been heard... Carestini’s person was tall, beautiful, and majestic.
He was a very animated and intelligent actor, and having a considerable portion of enthusiasm in his composition, with a lively and inventive imagination, he rendered every thing he sung interesting by good taste, energy, and judicious embellishments.
It was the opinion of Hasse, as well as of many other eminent professors, that whoever had not heard Carestini was inacquainted with the most perfect style of singing.”[13]Returning to the cast of a Handel opera premiere after an absence of nine years was Margherita Durastanti, who had worked with Handel in his early days in Italy and had been a member of his first London opera company.
[5] Lady Bristol wrote in a letter after attending the second performance of Arianna in Creta: "I am just come home from a dull empty opera, tho' the second time; the first was full to hear the new man, who I can find out to be an extream good singer; the rest are all scrubbs except old Durastante, that sings as well as ever she did".
[10]: 225 Charles Burney praised Arianna in Creta as testimony to Handel's "powers of invention, and abilities in varying the accompaniments throughout this opera with more vigour than in any former drama since the dissolution of the Royal Academy of Music in 1728".
