Cavalli’s Opera Eliogabalo in Preview at Brookhaven Lab, April 7
The performance preview of Cavalli’s Opera Eliogabalo at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory will feature one complete semi-staged act, sung in the original Italian (with projected subtitles) and directed by David Lawton, with accompaniment on period instruments directed by Arthur Haas. The concert will be held on Wednesday, April 7, at noon in Berkner Hall. Sponsored by Brookhaven Science Associates, the company that manages the Lab, the concert is free and open to the public. All visitors to the Laboratory age 16 and over must bring a photo I.D.
The young emperor Heliogabolus was notoriously corrupt and licentious. In Cavalli’s opera, Eliogabalo is clearly much more interested in the conquest of beautiful young women than in affairs of state. A figure whose behavior is strikingly similar to that of Don Giovanni, Eliogabalo spends most of the opera intriguing to seduce first Eritea, betrothed to the captain of the Praetorian guards, Giuliano, and later Flavia Gemmira, Giuliano’s sister, engaged to Eliogabalo’s own cousin Alessandro. Eliogabalo was never performed during the composer’s lifetime because of political and religious censorship in Venice.
Stony Brook Opera and Stony Brook Baroque Ensemble will present the complete Eliogabalo on Friday April 9, 2010 at 8 p.m., and Sunday, April 11 at 2 p.m. in the University’s Staller Center. Stony Brook Opera’s production will be the New York premiere of the opera, which will be sung in the original Italian, with projected titles in English.
(Source: Brookhaven National Laboratory News)
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