Product Description

OP3426. EZIO (Handel), recorded 1994, w. Richard Auldon Clark Cond. Manhattan Chamber Orch.; D'Anna Fortunato, Jennnifer Lane, Nathaniel Watson, Frederick Urrey, Raymond Pellerin, etc. 2-Vox 7503, w.27pp. Libretto-Brochure. Very long out-of-print, Final Copy! - 047163750328
CRITIC REVIEW:
“Handel's EZIO is considered one of the purest examples of opera seria with its absence of vocal ensembles. It was his last opera based on a libretto by Pietro Metastasio. The same libretto was also set by Nicola Porpora for an opera of the same name, first performed four years earlier.
The opera received its first performance at the King's Theatre, London on 15 January 1732. It received a total of only 5 performances before falling from the repertoire, in what turned out to be Handel's greatest operatic failure. It did not receive another performance in London until 1977, by the Handel Opera Society at Sadler's Wells Theatre. Winton Dean has stated that the failure of the opera related to the artistic incompatibility between the more ‘classical’ nature of the libretto and the more ‘romantic’ nature of the music.”
- Winton Dean, Music in London, THE MUSICAL TIMES, pp. 59-64.]