SpartacoVersion de concert

Slave rebellion at the Vienna court (theatre)! Here it was that, in 1726, Giuseppe Porsile staged the dramatic story of Spartacus and the revolt he led. Naples-born Porsile had been living in the emperor’s city since 1713. Seven years later, he was at last given the engagement at court he had desired for so long. The years that followed proved to be his most successful as a theatre composer, yielding over twenty stage works and thirteen oratorios. The cast for the premiere of Spartaco included the singer Faustina Bordoni who, that same year, left for London where she advanced to the status of a celebrated prima donna in works by George Frideric Handel. Giuseppe Porsile composed in the Neapolitan style, which was later to influence Viennese compositional style. Spartaco tells the story of the most famous slave rebellion of the ancient world, albeit from a Baroque perspective: Consequently, the plot does not centre on the struggle of downtrodden slaves against a tyrannical ruling class (as in Stanley Kubrick’s well-known film version of this historical event with Kirk Douglas and Peter Ustinov), but more on the brutal revolt of a power-mad man who ultimately turns out to be the biggest tyrant of them all.

Concert performance in Italian with German surtitles

Introduction to the work 30 minutes before curtain-up