CLEOFIDA with Il Gusto Barocco
A highlight of our novelties is the concertante premiere of Handel's opera "Poro, Re dell' Indie" in a German/Italian version by Georg Philipp Telemann. Some of Handel's Italian operas were so popular that just one year later they were being performed not only in England but throughout Europe - for example, under Telemann at the Gänsemarkt Opera House. So that his Hamburg audience could understand the turbulent story of Alexander the Great and his entanglements with the Indian royal couple Cleofida (who now became the title heroine) and Poro, Telemann translated the plot-driving recitatives into German and recomposed them; Handel's arias remained original and in Italian. "CLEOFIDA - Queen of India" was a box-office hit in Hamburg at the beginning of the 18th century - virtuously interpreted on cpo by Il Gusto Barocco, one of the most important baroque orchestras in southern Germany, which here once again fills an old material with new life through different approaches.