The Handel Opera Project presents a Baroque double bill during the 2024 Berkeley Festival and Exhibition.
A craze for the game of Quadrille swept through many European capitals in the eighteenth century. A trick-taking game with bizarrely complex rules, the fad was firmly established in Vienna by the summer of 1734, when Mr Handel’s Italian contemporary Antonio Caldara celebrated the Austrian Empress’s birthday with a charming operatic gem, Il giuoco del Quadriglio (The card game). For this gentle satire the composer provided roles not only for his own wife Caterina, but for the seventeen-year-old archduchess. Olivia Freidenreich is the stage director.
One of the first true operas in English, Henry Purcell’s beloved Dido and Aeneas was composed for a girls’ college in London. It is justly celebrated for its vivid dramatic concision, its emotional range, and its exceptionally lucid setting of English text for the singing voice. A landmark in the history of opera, Dido and Aeneas recounts the Trojan hero’s callous abandonment — under the influence of sorcery — of the Carthaginian queen, and its tragic consequences. This production was enthusiastically received when it premièred in February. The stage director is Ellen St. Thomas.
Handel Opera Project founder William Ludtke conducts both works from the harpsichord.