Arminio at Theater an der Wien

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2. Arminio

The season 1736/37 was extremely laborious for Handel, its own opera company at Covent Garden was the competition of the Opera of the Nobility in the King's Theatre bitter feeling. Handel wanted to counteract this with as many new productions and composed between August 1736 and January 1737 three new operas: Giustino, Arminio and Berenice. It was wasted effort, his company went bankrupt end of the season, and Handel suffered a health breakdown. What he likes but have gained satisfaction: the Opera of the Nobility was also bankrupt. Although Arminio then not was very well received, because the Italian operas were unfashionable in London, offers Handel's brilliant composition a lot for today Handel lovers: The composer used a previously often set to music the libretto, but to renew the interest in Italian opera, let it streamline the text and modified the strict form of opera seria, he worked with duets and designed unusual variants of the usual da capo arias. Against the background of the Varus Battle (.. 9 AD), when the Germans under the leadership of Cheruscan Arminius (Hermann) the Romans sustained weakened and the Roman conquests in Germania stopped, the opera shows the private entanglements - love, desire, loyalty, generational conflicts - that take place within Arminius' family, but ultimately lead to the Varus Battle and the victory of the Germans.