Orlando at Theater an der Wien

In his for the London King's Theatre in the Haymarket opera written Orlando George Frideric Handel drew on the history of the amorous knight from Ludovico Ariosto's epic Orlando Furioso (1532). The battle-hardened Orlando falls into frenzy, as the beloved of him Angelica the warrior Medoro preferred. The magician Zoroastro succeeds in freeing by pretense various mirages Orlando of his obsessive love and bring him back to the path of reason. Handel has mobilized for this unusual libretto everything that was available; not for nothing that Orlando is regarded as one of its most inventive scores. About the composer for the Starkastraten Francesco Bernardi alias Senesino title role of Handel specialist Reinhard Strohm ruled that she was "the only one that touches all emotions, key areas and vocal styles; he has to sing heroic, virtuous, desperate and even meditative arias ". Of course a great mad scene, which is linked to the English tradition of "mad songs". Senesino but finished with this section, the collaboration with Handel: The vain singer had fallen out with the choleric composers so that it only a few weeks after the end of the series of performances for competing companies, the so-called Opera of the Nobility, overflowed.