Vivaldi tenor arias4/1/2023 ![]() This production, from the 2006 Spoleto Festival, features the opera in a reconstruction it had been presumed lost until recently. Along the way there are many arias of vengeance and some of romantic longing, battle scenes featuring trumpets and drums, and a last-minute appearance by Diana who declares peace and performs a double marriage overseen and approved by both Hercules and Antiope. Teseo, Alceste, and Telamone are his warriors who are smitten with the Amazon women. Hercules, of course, is the hero at war with the Amazons (one of his labors), but he seems merely to show up, act ferocious, and give orders and advice, the latter to Martesia about love(!). ![]() The man-hating Amazons are led by Antiope Ippolita is another Amazon warrior Martesia is a flirtatious younger Amazon who really finds nothing wrong with men. ![]() ![]() The opera has both serious and comic elements. Conducted by a Catholic priest–Vivaldi himself–with red hair, the entire proposition boggles the mind. ![]() Portraying either the Amazons of myth or Greek warriors, the castrati must have been quite a scene and made quite a sound. There was a Papal ban on women appearing on stage at the time and so the opera was sung by seven castrati and a male tenor, the latter singing the title role, Hercules. Ercole su’l Termodonte was Vivaldi’s 16th opera, appearing in 1723 in Rome. ![]()
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