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A Great Revival
Leonardo Vinci and Pietro Metastasio's
'Didone Abbandonata',
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI
On 8 January 2017, in the small (350 seat) and quite pretty Teatro Goldoni in Florence — an early nineteenth century building with orchestra seats and four rows of small boxes — a masterpiece of early eighteenth century was revived, for the first time in modern times: Didone Abbandonata by Leonardo Vinci on a libretto by Pietro Metastasio.
The opera had its debut in January 1726 in the newly built Teatro delle Dame in Rome. It had tremendous success and circulated all over Europe for a few decades. It has a major historical importance as one of the few fully developed examples of opera seria; in the early eighteenth century, the world of musical theatre was searching for something different from baroque with its vocalizing, improvisation and the inclusion of moment of coming relief in even quite tragic dramas...
Copyright © 15 January 2017
Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy
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