Superstar castrati Farinelli and Caffarelli sang at the première of Johann Adolf Hasse’s Siroe. What incredible feats of song the Bologna audience must have witnessed! A leading opera composer of his time, Hasse was forgotten after Gluck revolutionised the art form, ditching the ornateness and formulaic structure of Italian opera in favour of simplicity and dramatic veracity. Thanks to the ongoing excavation of Hasse’s works, we continue to rediscover how they hold their own against those by Handel, his most valued fellow exponent of the galant style, with its focus on emotional expression and tuneful elegance.
In 1763, thirty years after Bologna, Hasse put on a heavily revised version of Siroe in Dresden. This time he was more faithful to Metastasio’s original libretto, resetting practically all the recitatives and rewriting fourteen of the arias. This version was used for the Dutch première of Siroe, with abridged recitatives and two arias borrowed from other operas, a common practice in the eighteenth century, one by Hasse himself and one by Carl Heinrich Graun. The passionate and accomplished Armonia Atenea and a cast of baffling virtuosity demonstrated Hasse’s dramatically vivid scoring of the dialogues and asides, the dazzling beauty of his arias, and the depth of expression he achieves with means such as alternating instrumental colours. Although it does not lack stock Baroque characters and situations, Metastasio’s text retains its timeless refinement and his character-driven plot unfolds coherently.
Siroe is the historical Persian prince Sheroe, heir to Khosrow II (Cosroe in the opera). His father imprisoned him to pave the way for his half-brother Mardanshah, son of his favourite wife, to ascend the throne. After much dynastic strife, Sheroe assumed power in the year 628 as Kavadh II, whereupon he promptly had his father and all his brothers and half-brothers executed – he need not have bothered because he died only six months later. The operatic Siroe is not even remotely as bloody: he is principled, peace-loving and loyal to a fault. Although his father Cosroe is willing to believe the smear campaign against him, he refuses to defend himself. His brother Medarse is an oleaginous intrigant, but Siroe forgives him and everyone else in the end, after Cosroe abdicates in his favour. No harem wives in Metastasio, but a piece of work called Loadice, who is Cosroe’s mistress, but is in amorous pursuit of his beleaguered first-born. Siroe is in love with Emira, daughter of an Indian ruler who was killed by Cosroe. She has come to the Persian court to avenge her father, naturally disguised as a man called Idaspe. Divided loyalties torture Emira, and Siroe is also tugged in all directions by love, politics and filial duty. His only friend is Arasse, an army general. “Everyone at court speaks in riddles”, observes Medarse, and the scheming and dissembling result in plenty of emotional crises to be worked through during agitated arie di caccia (arias with horn accompaniment) and anguished cantilenas of extreme loveliness.