Rinaldo

Theater an der Wien, Wien

George Frideric Handel began his operatic career in London with a bang: his Rinaldo, premiered in 1711, tells the story of crusaders who want to wrest the holy city of Jerusalem from the "infidels". But the Christian warrior Rinaldo soon loses his way on a confusing battlefield between Europe and the Orient, between magic and witchcraft, between virtue and sexuality. What does heroism even mean in a war for the right faith that is almost impossible to win? In her production, director Nadja Loschky does not focus on the clash between two political-religious systems, but shows Rinaldo as the victim of a brutal war, before whose inner eye the opulent images of Handel's opera appear. Handel wrote perhaps his most magnificent and varied score for his crusaders and Ottoman warriors, for the Christian princess Almirena and the sorceress Armida. His arias are character studies on the one hand and drive a gripping drama on the other. Francesco Corti, one of the most exciting conductors of baroque music at the moment, is on the podium of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin.

Co-production with La Monnaie / De Munt Brussels

In Italian with German and English surtitles

Introduction to the work 30 minutes before the start of each performance