OperaStreaming – “Il Tamerlano” by Vivaldi with Accademia Bizantina
When the new production of Vivaldi’s Il Tamerlano makes its debut at the Teatro Alighieri di Ravenna, almost 290 years will have passed since the first staging of the opera during the Carnival. Or, maybe, only a moment – because, after all, "the emotions are the same as three centuries ago, you just need to know how to convey them" says Ottavio Dantone, conductor and harpsichord of Accademia Bizantina in the opening performance of the Teatro Alighieri Opera Season, live streamed on January 15 (03:30 pm CET) on operastreaming.com –the portal offering to an international audience the opera productions by the theatres of Emilia-Romagna.
“Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century dramatic theatre has a timeless emotional strength – emphasizes director Stefano Monti, who also designs the sets and costumes –. Despite being built around historically relevant characters, the work in question is characterized by its timelessness. Everything revolves around passions, even madness, the sublime mixes with the terrible, beauty with brutality… they are nothing more than the continuous oscillation between the high and the low of life”.
Between the poetics of Baroque "maraviglia" and the sense of a timeless space, the new production integrates different languages: puppetry, video and 3D content, illustrations, sculptures, and dance, in particular, by DaCru Dance Company, which becomes an amplification of the characters’ mood.
Il Tamerlano or rather Bajazet is presented in the critical edition by musicologist Bernardo Ticci, with the variations introduced by Ottavio Dantone. “Being a ‘pasticcio’, this score is obviously characterized by a marked stylistic variety, but Vivaldi’s writing is easily recognizable compared to the style of the authors involved, namely Broschi, Hasse and Giacomelli – explains Ottavio Dantone, at the head of Accademia Bizantina, which celebrates 40 years of rediscovering ancient and Baroque repertoire and prestigious achievements all over the world.
Among the interpreters, countertenor Filippo Mineccia and alto Delphine Galou – Tamerlano and Asteria – had already participated in the celebrated recording by Accademia Bizantina for the Naïve Classique label in 2020.
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