Baroque opera is a battlefield once more. Just as 17th-century Venice thrived on rivalry, dazzle and excess, today’s Early Music scene brims with competition. Into this arena, the Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival — founded only in 2020 — has stormed with astonishing speed, staking its claim through neglected Italian gems and the intoxicating intimacy of the UNESCO-listed Margravial Opera House. No dry concepts here: Bayreuth trades in beauty, detail, and theatrical seduction. This year’s jewel, Cavalli’s Pompeo Magno (1666), became both a Venetian centrepiece and a specialist’s odyssey under conductor Leonardo García-Alarcón.
What unfolded on stage in Max Emanuel Cenčić’s production veiled Roman history beneath the mask of a kaleidoscopic Venetian carnival. The Doge’s Palace façade dominates the foreground with austere symmetry, while a distant set of arches, like a window onto another world, subtly reflects the passage of time and changes in light throughout the performance. Costumes collide in palette and style: courtesans in lurid bodices, princes draped in crimson, Pulcinella-like clowns in stark white masks, and a troupe of dwarves whose initially startling presence amplifies the twisted comic absurdity. Commedia dell’arte coaching lends both vivid gesture and brisk, seamless scene changes, keeping the carnival’s momentum alive.The result is a living tableau imbued with Tiepolo’s Venetian ease: airy, spontaneous, luminous and vibrantly alive – a spectacle where grandeur, mischief and human folly coexist in harmonious chaos, as though the stage itself had awakened the Baroque spirit long slumbering in the fragile wooden frescoes of the opera house.
If the staging dazzles the eye, the music exhilarates the ear. Cavalli’s continuous writing lacks the formulaic recitative-aria alternation of later opera seria, anticipating Gluck’s reforms a century on. Shifting tempi and rapid emotional turns mirror the brisk scene changes: tender lyricism gives way to agitation or comic frenzy in a kaleidoscopic musical spectacle that keep audiences alert and engaged.
Moments of brilliance from the singers were too numerous to count and it was clear that the cast themselves delighted in the rare opportunity to bring this seldom-performed work to life. The production required no fewer than eight countertenors, many performing behind masks, challenging the audience to identify characters by voice alone. Cenčić himself sang the title role with clarity and expressive shading, especially in Pompeo’s yearning for Giulia. Valerio Contaldo’s Mitridate was fiery yet lyrical, a king in disguise with gravitas. Nicolò Balducci, whose artistry has blossomed rapidly in the past two years, brought youthful passion and technical finesse to Sesto, contrasting with Victor Sicard’s darker Cesare. Mariana Flores portrayed Issicratea with elegance and quiet emotional depth, while Sophie Junker’s Giulia shone with crystalline phrasing. Dominique Visse’s brash, piquant Delfo and Marcel Beekman’s eccentric Atrea added comic zest and timing impeccable as ever.
García-Alarcón conducted with brisk energy, his precise gestures guiding Cappella Mediterranea to near-perfection. The ensemble responded with irresistible spontaneity, melodic vitality and irresistible swingas if being a vast palette of colours. Brass added playful distortions, biting satire and grotesque exaggeration, while the continuo provided psychologically acute shading, illuminating characters’ inner intentions and emotional nuances.
In an era when few corners of Early Music remain undiscovered, the revival of Cavalli’s operas feels especially vital. Monteverdi’s three surviving works have long dominated attention, but Cavalli’s 27 extant operas offer even richer terrain. May Bayreuth Baroque continue its ambition, bringing forgotten Italian masterpieces to life with the vitality, ingenuity and joyous humanism that audiences deserve.
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