If we are to believe the accounts of the composer’s first biographer, John Mainwaring, the twenty-year-old Georg Friedrich Haendel, while in Hamburg, looked with a hint of contempt at the scores of Italian composers. However, Ferdinando de Medici’s words soon came true, that what Handel needed was “only a journey to Italy to embrace the style and taste that prevail there”. Indeed, immersion in the artistic life of Florence, Rome, and later Naples and Venice, gave the composer’s mature style a special originality and refinement. One of the fruits of this journey to Italy is Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno HWV 46a from 1707 – an oratorio written for Rome, described as a “secret opera” by Romain Rolland. At that time, the city had a church ban on performing drammi per musica, which did not cool down the aesthetic needs of an elite group of audiences enamored with lavish dramatic works.
The libretto prepared for Haendel by Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili concerns universal issues – the nature of Beauty, the essence of Truth, the limits of Pleasure, and the inevitability of the passage of Time. The dispute of the four allegorical characters leads the audience deeper and deeper into reflection on the challenges posed to man by the reality surrounding him. Alongside high values, temptations and disappointments arise. Notably, this first version of the oratorio is crowned by Bellezza’s wistful aria Tu del Ciel (changed to a triumphant Alleluia in subsequent versions), dominated by a sense of helplessness and – given the experience gained – a longing for innocence. The creators of the stage interpretation of Haendel’s masterpiece at the Polish Royal Opera follow the shadow present in this vision. By embedding musical dialogues within a contemporary narrative, they pose bold, engaging questions about the role of values in a world where knowledge and understanding come at a high price.
MUSIC DIRECTOR KRZYSZTOF GARSTKA
DIRECTOR WALDEMAR RAŹNIAK
SET DESIGN AND COSTUMES BARBARA GUZIK
LIGHTING DESIGN ADA BYSTRZYCKA
VIDEO PROJECTIONS WOJTEK KAPELA
ASSISTANT DIRECTORS SŁAWOMIR JURCZAK, AGNIESZKA KOZŁOWSKA
STAGE MANAGER WANDA KARPIŃSKA
CAST
BELLEZZA JULIA PLIŚ
PIACERE JUSTYNA RAPACZ
DISINGANNO JAKUB FOLTAK
TEMPO ALEKSANDER REWIŃSKI
ACTORS PATRYCJA GRZYWIŃSKA, JOANNA LICHOROWICZ-GREŚ, VOVA MAKOVSKYI, WOJCIECH WEREŚNIAK
THE PERIOD INSTRUMENTS ENSEMBLE OF THE POLISH ROYAL OPERA CAPELLA REGIA POLONA
CONDUCTOR KRZYSZTOF GARSTKA
Duration: approx. 2 h 20 mins (with one intermission)
The seats in the auditorium are not numbered.
PLEASE NOTE: the entrance to the Royal Theatre is located on Agrykola street.
